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January 2010

Burn Down the Mission

25Jan2010

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Our new favorite Republican here at the blog is Larry Haler. Representative Haler hails from Richland and has been sent to Olympia by the fine people in Washington’s 8th legislative district. 

He also seems to be one of the few legislators who really gets it about the destruction of our state universities.  

Representative Haler is a member of the House Higher Education Committee, and he has recently made a point of regularly reminding his colleagues that state appropriations to 4-year higher education were cut 26% last year and that Washington ranks 48th in the nation in both 4-year university participation and 4-year university funding per student.  He understands that the additional $46 million in cuts in Governor Gregoire’s  supplemental budget proposal will devastate our universities, making them significantly smaller and exponentially more private.  

Representative Haler’s insight was again on display last week as the House Higher Ed committee heard testimony on House Bill 2655 (pdf).  HB 2655 is the brainchild of the Higher Education Coordinating Board and it is being peddled by members of the HEC Board as the product of last summer’s System Design Study. 

Faithful readers of the blog will recall that the System Design Study was assigned to the HEC Board after last year’s grueling legislative session.  It was supposed to put an end to the perennial parade of pork bills calling for the state to build a brand spanking new university in Everett or Marysville or various other places with ambitious legislators.  In the wake of last year’s budget free fall, the legislature asked the HEC Board to come up with a coherent and methodical plan for expanding higher education that would be responsive to state goals and needs rather than political arm wrestling.  

The result, of course, was that the political hurly burly moved to the HEC Board.  The System Design Committee meetings revealed and crystallized a variety of tensions, especially those between the community colleges and the state universities.  A repressed, confrontation-averse academic food fight ensued.  But, under the steady hand of HEC Board Executive Director Ann Daley, the committee eventually produced a relatively sane report.  Check it out here (pdf).  The report calls for expansion upon proven demand, it pays attention to all sectors of higher ed (research universities, regional comprehensives, branch campuses, university centers, community and technical colleges), and it highlights the needs of underrepresented students.  From the totally objective point of view of us here at the blog, the report is still biased toward community and technical colleges (let’s face it, those folks are just better organized and more persistent than we are), but overall it’s a decent and useful report.

Unfortunately, something seems to have happened on the way to the capitol.  HB 2655 calls itself “An act relating to expanding the higher education system upon  proven demand” and purports to represent the System Design Plan, but it might more accurately be called “An Act to Try to Produce More Baccalaureate Degrees Without Actually Paying For Them By Allowing Community Colleges to Run Amuck.”  Despite the fact that the System Design Report included all sectors of higher education, HB2655 focuses almost exclusively on 2-year colleges.  It specifically removes a statutory prohibition on community colleges becoming 4-year liberal arts colleges and provides a road map for “mission change.”  

Turning a community college or two into a four-year school is not, theoretically, a bad idea, but such transformation should be pursued only after our current state universities have been adequately funded.  Representative Haler understood this when he called HB 2655 “the wrong bill at the wrong time,” and went on to remind his colleagues that Washington ranks 48th in the nation in funding for our state universities.  

Perhaps the most telling moment in the hearing came when Representative Scott White (probably the most engaged, intelligent, and passionate supporter of state universities in the legislature) questioned Bellevue Community College President Jean Floten about the tension between the resources required to offer legitimate 4-year degrees and the claims that community colleges are more cost effective at producing bachelors degrees.  With the pride in exploitation that only a boss can bring, President Floten announced that the applied baccalaureates at Bellevue were getting most of their momentum from faculty who were “volunteering” their time.  

There you have it folks: the grand plan for producing more bachelors degrees in Washington State is to make faculty work for free.

The Universities Strike Back

21Jan2010
House Ways and Means Committee, January 13, 2010

Work Session: Presentation of the Governor's 2010 supplemental operating budget proposal. For the entire hearing, visit this link.

Mike Reilly...

Bill Lyne...

Sherry Burke...

Marsh Riddle-Buly...

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

17Jan2010

So the 2010 Washington State legislative session is a week old and already the writing is on the wall for our state universities.  Governor Gregoire summed it up in her state of the state address:

“Our higher education system is a major economic engine for our recovery.



We need to keep the doors to higher education open to students of all income levels by restoring funding for the State Need Grant Program. 

We owe it to all those, like Janel, who couldn’t attend college without our help.



I’m asking you to provide funding to our community and technical colleges to retrain 2,500 of our workers for the jobs of tomorrow.


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And I’m requesting you provide our four-year institutions with competitive tuition flexibility so we can continue to be ranked among the best in the nation in producing the most innovative workers and employers.”


To translate and sum up, the governor wants to restore the cuts to financial aid that she made in her “Book 1” budget, she wants to further shift the balance of higher education funding to the community and technical colleges, and she wants to give tuition setting authority (“flexibility” isn’t fooling anyone) to the universities and call it good.  You’ll notice that there’s money there for everything except the state universities.  

The restoration of the State Need Grant was a no-brainer.  That $146 million gives those below the middle of the middle class some access to higher education and is the foundation of programs like Husky Promise and other university-based financial aid.  There was talk that the governor’s choice to cut the Need Grant in her Book 1 budget was a shock and awe tactic designed to drum up support for new revenues.  That talk was loud enough that Governor Gregoire felt compelled to vigorously refute it in her various public comments this week, saying that she was simply meeting her obligation to present an all-cuts budget and not trying to scare people into new taxes.  

Certainly there is a lot of evidence to suggest that she was absolutely sincere in saying that.  The guv’s Book 2 budget calls for almost $800 million in new revenue, but it’s very coy about where that money will come from.  In her remarks in various legislative hearings, Governor Gregoire spoke confidently about conversations with her new pal Vice President Biden and the promise of up to a billion dollars in new federal stimulus money.  It’s hard to imagine that a careful politician like Governor Gregoire would raise our hopes like that if she wasn’t pretty damn sure she could deliver.   

And that’s good news and bad news.  

These days any money is good money, even the kind with the treasury printing press ink still drying. But, as our Republican friends are fond of pointing out, getting hooked on fed cash in 2010 can make the withdrawal that much harder in 2012.  

So the bad news is that the VP’s stimulus promises have led our Eymann/Rossi haunted governor to back way off from the taxes she was talking about just a few weeks ago.  And in an election year when Democrats are poised to take a backlash beating, no one’s stepping up to take her place.  So right now it looks like the best we’re going to do is a couple of closed loopholes and maybe a bite on gum.

And that’s too bad, because at a time when everyone’s running around talking about the opportunities in this crisis and the need for fundamental reform, it seems like the least we could do is overhaul the most antiquated and regressive tax structure in the country.  Even if it didn’t net the state one more dime of new revenue, it’s way past time for the legislature to change a system that taxes poor people at a rate of about 17% and rich people at a rate of about 3%.

But we digress . . .

Back at the state o’ the state, right after restoring financial aid, the governor called for more money for worker retraining in community and technical colleges.  This is not a change from the Book 1 budget.  On its face, worker retraining is a laudable goal, but let’s be clear—the governor’s proposal does not add money to the community and technical colleges, it just makes the cut to the universities deeper in order to mitigate the cut to the CTCs.  Keep your eye on the shell with the pea under it: Federal rules for the first stimulus check limit the higher education budget cut to $78 million.  But if you “add” $11.5 million to the CTCs, you can then cut higher ed by $89.5 million.  Divide that evenly between the CTCs and the universities and you can give the false impression that the two sectors were cut equally.  If you wanted to avoid all the unnecessary arithmetic, you could get to the same place by simply cutting the universities $46 million and the CTCs $32 million.  Of course, then you wouldn’t be able to claim that the cuts are equal.  

Funding community colleges is, of course not a bad thing.  But here at the blog, we feel compelled to continue to look at higher ed funding decisions and ask whether anyone in this state gives a shit about having a legitimate 4-year university system.  As always, the numbers make it hard to answer that question with anything but a resounding No:

--Washington ranks 5th in Community College participation and 48th in 4-year college participation

--Washington ranks second in the country in percentage of the higher education budget devoted to community colleges

--Washington is in the bottom five in the country in total per student and total per degree funding for 4-year colleges

--In the last 10 years, state funding for higher education overall has grown by 17%, state funding for community and technical colleges has grown by 28%, and state funding for public 4-year colleges has declined by 7.3%.

--Last year, state funding for public four-year universities was cut by 23%, while state funding for community and technical colleges was cut by 5%.

Public four-year higher education has fallen so far down the budget ladder that the governor and legislators can make tuition-setting authority the big prize for universities and act like they’re really doing something.  Tuition authority will give the universities a little bit better ability to plan and manage, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who sets tuition.  The university boards of regents and trustees aren’t going to raise tuition any higher or more rapidly than the legislature has over the last 20 years.  Tuition authority coupled with more cuts to state appropriations will only continue the current downward spiral.  

From the day she released her Book 1 budget, the governor made it clear that she had no intention of using any new revenues to buy back the cuts to university state appropriations.  Politically, she’s on pretty safe ground, as no one other than representatives of the universities has really complained.  A pretty safe bet right now is that at the end of this legislative session, our state universities will be cut another $46 million (on top of the over $400 million we were cut last year) and their boards of regents and trustees will have tuition setting authority.  

This result will only keep Washington’s universities on the road to becoming smaller and more private.

Learning from China

12Jan2010

There is good reason to focus money and energy on workforce development and training in Washington’s community colleges. After all, as the recession worsens, many Washingtonians need access to local institutions and the opportunity to retrain themselves. In the short run, this is all good and necessary.

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But in the long run, we need to learn from China what China has learned from us. The secret to economic growth lies in the intellectual and creative capacities of a nation’s citizens. The key, they discovered, is to ensure that college education does not just train but that it educates students to think up new ideas. In short, many in China are urging Chinese colleges to follow America’s example of providing a broad, general liberal arts education.          

China has recently opened a new liberal arts institution and its leaders are encouraging a broader, general education than China’s universities have traditionally offered, according to a January 3, 2010 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  To encourage student creativity, China is pushing for smaller student-centered classrooms rather than large, impersonal lectures. To encourage innovation, Chinese leaders are urging students to explore learning in interdisciplinary environments rather than pursue pure vocational training. Increasingly, Chinese are embracing residential colleges that encourage student sociability and intellectual exchange.

What’s going on? What is authoritarian one-party China doing?

The Chinese seem to know that if they want to be on the leading edge of technological innovation they will have to reimagine their education system. They will need to offer students and professors the opportunity to think deeply and freely about complicated ideas. They cannot expect students to be creative if the curriculum is not. Nor can they expect to remain economic leaders if their education is narrowly practical, preparing students for what exists today without thinking about how they might be the ones who lead tomorrow. In short, the Chinese are realizing that they must do what America’s colleges four-year colleges do best: liberal arts education.

It’s ironic that as the Chinese become more American, Washington is becoming more like China. Vocational training is not enough to be a world leader. Our economy, and our society, depends on generating new ideas. This means teaching students to be broad thinkers. Oddly, the practical thing may be to offer less practical education!  

China knows that the creators of tomorrow’s economy will be educated in liberal arts institutions. Educators in other countries are coming to similar conclusions as they seek to move beyond serving Western economies to becoming leaders in their own right. If Washington wants to compete, it needs to invest in four-year liberal arts education so that our graduates are capable of doing more than finding work today. We want them to create jobs for tomorrow.

Just Business

10Jan2010

“It’s easy to wish we had invested that $3 billion more directly into our workforce development, adult basic education, English as a second language, community and technical colleges and our universities.”

- Representative Reuven Carlyle, on the concessions given to Boeing before they split for a low-wage state.

Here at the blog, we often find ourselves keeping company with other people who are concerned about the abysmal funding for our state’s public universities.  When casting about for ideas as to how to better convince legislators that more support for Washington’s universities is crucial for the future of the state, some of these folks inevitably hit on the idea that we need to get business leaders to be advocates for us.  Those people have clout, we say, and surely they understand the value of a college education.  Most of them went to college and they hire lots of people from all over the country with college degrees. 

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All we need to do is get the leaders of Boeing (the ones that aren’t packing for Carolina), Microsoft, Intalco, and Nintendo to call up their legislative buddies and explain to them that, if Washington’s residents are going to continue to have any kind of access to a university education, we’re gonna need more money.

Certainly it is not unusual to find individual business leaders who do more than their share to support our universities.  They make individual gifts, they sit on our boards, and they often put the bite on their rich friends to help us raise private money.  The Gates Foundation has lots of dubious ideas, but you can’t say that they haven’t put their money where their mouth is when it comes to education.  

But we should be careful not to confuse the support of individual business people with the support of business.  Those foundations and executives and CEOs write us checks on their own time.  In their day jobs, their primary responsibility is to their shareholders and the bottom line. 

And that’s why business will never be genuine, meaningful advocates for our state universities.  

Washington’s fanciest businesses employ lots of people with fancy degrees.  Our slice of the brain-power economy has helped make us the state with the third highest percentage of people with 4-year college degrees in the country.  With that kind of demand for four year degrees, you would think that business would have a strong interest in a robust system of four-year universities.  But if you thought that you would be wrong.  

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Any business executive knows that outsourcing is one of the most important tools for improving the bottom line.  If it’s cheaper to buy widget part A from a subcontractor than it is to make it in-house and the quality of your widgets doesn’t decrease (and sometimes even if it does), you do it in a heartbeat.  If you can fire all your janitors and contract with an exploitative sweatshop for the same service at half the price, you jump on that, and patch up what’s left of your conscience by writing a letter to said sweatshop reminding them of your company’s high standards for employee welfare.

The beautiful things about outsourcing the education for your best jobs are that you don’t even have to pay the subcontractor and the guilt factor is pretty low.  When you go looking for people to fill those jobs that require a four-year degree, there is absolutely no need to get squeamish about crossing the state line (or even mighty oceans).  Those jobs usually come with moving packages and Washington is a beautiful and desirable place to live, so why not let the taxpayers in Michigan, Ohio, and Texas pay to educate the employees who will be more than happy to move here after graduation.

(And while we’ve said this here at the blog before, it bears repeating: this dynamic is surely a lot of the reason for the huge disparity between Washington’s 2-year college participation rate—5th in the nation—and 4-year college participation rate, which vacillates between 48th and 49th.  The labor pool for those jobs that require AA degrees is not nearly as mobile as the bachelor’s pool, so you need a healthier home farm team.) 

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So no matter how warm and fuzzy the feelings of individual executives may be toward universities, when they’re talking turkey with legislators and policy-makers, their message will always be clear: Our state universities are great, but don’t even think about raising our B&O taxes or rerouting our tax breaks and subsidies in order to increase state appropriations for universities.  That’s what they say and that’s what we here at the blog would say too if we worked in the executive suite.

It’s just business.

Boeing will bring more jobs and goose the economy in South Carolina, but their arrival will not lead to more South Carolinians having access to better funded state universities.  

So if we’re waiting for business to take the lead in advocating for more state funding for state universities, we’re going to keep getting what we’ve been getting, which is steadily declining state funding which leads to steadily increasing tuition which keeps more and more of the middle class out of college.

If the legislature is going to be convinced to reverse the longstanding trend of declining state funding for state universities, the pressure will have to come from regular people. The children of the people who sit on our boards are all going to college, usually not at our universities.  It’s the children of teachers, firefighters, small business owners, information technology workers, and state employees who are getting less and less access to the education they need to compete for Washington’s best jobs.  If they don’t start letting their representatives know that college education is a voting issue for them, our universities will soon be dramatically smaller and more private.