February 2010

The Second Time as Farce

27Feb2010

The big news in Olympia last week was about the budget, but the real show was about tuition in the House Higher Ed committee.

No matter how you felt about the bill, you had to like the Senate floor debate on Senate Bill 6562. That’s the bill that would have given some tuition-setting authority to UW, WSU, and WWU, provided certain performance targets were met and certain financial aid guarantees were made. It was the lone survivor of four or five bills regarding tuition that were introduced this legislative session. SB 6562 was introduced by Senate Higher Education Chair Derek Kilmer, but the version that arrived on the Senate floor had significant contributions from Republican Senator Joseph Zarelli. The ensuing debate and vote were similarly bi-partisan. Senators spoke thoughtfully and with very little looking over their shoulders for political consequences. And the 29-19 vote broke along the line of genuine conviction rather than party lines.

Then something happened on the way to the House.

Whatever the House consideration of tuition lacked in substance, it made up for in Olympia theatre. After passing the Senate, the bill was referred to the House Higher Education Committee, where the chair, Representative Deb Wallace, didn’t schedule a hearing until Tuesday, February 23, the last day to vote bills out of committee. This tardiness, along with Representative Wallace’s longstanding opposition to university tuition authority, led to speculation that she would attempt to kill the bill procedurally. This suspicion seemed appropriate when the bill turned up last on an otherwise pretty dull agenda.

The hearing was barely underway when Representative Scott White, a strong proponent of university tuition-setting authority, surprised Representative Wallace by moving that the agenda be changed to make sure that there was ample time for testimony on the tuition bill. Much hubbub ensued, with the Democrats leaving the room for a fraught caucus, much to the bemusement of their Republican colleagues. When they returned, the agenda was changed and testimony soon began on SB6562.

Representative White won the procedural battle, but he lost the war. After more than two hours of testimony, Representative Wallace chose not to have a vote on the bill. If she had, it wouldn’t have passed.

The testimony, on both sides, was generally pretty good. Everyone, from students to faculty to university trustees and administrators to business leaders recognized that the real problem is years of declining state support for state universities. They may have differed on how to approach the problem, but they all understood that our universities are facing a crisis.

But on the legislator side of the TVW cameras, there was little more than confusion and piety. The hearing was supposed to be about SB6562, but by the time the testimony began, there were at least two substitute bills—one from Representative Wallace that simply raised the cap on tuition increases from 7% to 9% and one wonderfully imaginative piece of writing from ranking Republican Glenn Anderson that would have kept legislative and university staff busy for years to come trying to figure out what it meant. The three different bills would have had dramatically different consequences for the operating budgets of the three universities involved, but that didn’t seem to matter to committee members, as all they really wanted to talk about were lofty principles of “accountability.”

Three or four times Representative Wallace announced that “the buck stops with the legislature,” and several other committee members expressed reluctance to transfer authority for what students pay from the people’s elected representatives to unelected trustees and regents who are accountable to no one.

Here at the blog, we feel pretty strongly that trustees and regents should not see their jobs as much more than hiring and firing presidents and raising money, so we’re pretty sympathetic to the idea of not giving more authority to politically appointed rich people who show up for a meeting every couple of months and may or may not know anything about universities.

So the accountability argument would have been interesting if . . . any of the bills under consideration had actually given tuition-setting authority to trustees and regents. But none of them did. The Senate bill and Representative Wallace’s bill had clearly defined limits on tuition increases and Representative Anderson’s bill didn’t really give anybody authority to do anything.

All the bluster about who is elected and accountable and who isn’t was really beside the point. And at the end of the day, as almost every other state in the nation has demonstrated, it doesn’t really matter who sets tuition. What matters is who appropriates state funds to universities, and that will always be the legislature, and as long as those appropriations keep going down, tuition will keep going up.

The nadir of the hearing came when Representative Wallace pushed the whole moral high ground thing too far and gratuitously called the universities untrustworthy liars. She did this in response to University of Washington President Mark Emmert’s testimony. The whole exchange is worth watching here:

In response to all the emphasis on accountability, President Emmert points out what everyone from the universities has been trying to point out for a while: pound for pound and dollar for dollar, Washington’s universities are the best in the country. We’ve felt compelled to point this out at every opportunity in response to all the blog commenters, op-ed writers, and legislators who, no matter how much evidence they see to the contrary, continue to feel that if the universities just cut out all the bloat, greed, and corruption, we’d be O.K.

In her response, Representative Wallace doesn’t go quite that far (although she has in the past), but she does continue to pick at a sore that has tormented her since the end of last year’s legislative session. After last year’s cuts, the universities, the Council of Presidents, and this blog have regularly pointed to the fact that state appropriations to universities were cut by an average of 23%. This has stuck in the craw of Representative Wallace and some other legislators who feel that we haven’t been appropriately grateful to them for the “hard vote” they took to let the universities double the statutory tuition increases in order to mitigate some of that cut.

Well, O.K., but the point of highlighting how state support for universities has been steadily declining has not been to show up Representative Wallace or anybody else. It has been to try to show how such underfunding threatens to seriously compromise our students’ education, and to try to make 4-year higher education more of a priority for the state. And it seems ironic at best to chastise the universities for not crowing about tuition increases in a hearing where everyone is beating on the universities for wanting the authority to raise tuition. And to call the information about state appropriation cuts “misleading” and declare them a reason to be forever vigilant against university dishonesty and skullduggery is just beyond the pale.

Washington’s universities had their state appropriations cut by over $400 million last year, and we’re looking at another $45 million cut this year. Our total funding (state appropriations and tuition) ranks 48th in the nation. It’s time to stop talking about how to further regulate and control the best universities in the country and start talking about how to fund them.

Bill Lyne's blog

The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow

26Feb2010

So now we’re at that place where what’s Right has to take a back seat to Right Now.

This was budget week in Olympia, the week when 147 legislators hit the home stretch and started really galloping toward the finish line. Here’s hoping they all make it there.

As expected, both the Senate and House proposed budgets continue to treat Washington’s state universities like ATMs. The Senate followed the Governor in mandating a 6% and change cut to university state appropriations on top of the 23% cut to biennial state appropriations enacted last year. The House budget does a little better, keeping the new cut to around 4%. Both proposals continue the ten-year Washington tradition of robbing the Peter of the universities to pay the Paul of the community colleges, thus continuing to privatize 4-year higher education and put Washington’s citizens at a disadvantage in the competition for Washington’s best jobs.

But, truth be told, most of us in the university business breathed a little sigh of relief on Tuesday when these budgets came out—that’s how low our expectations have fallen. In the weeks leading up to the budget announcements, there had been rumors of the senate proposing to double the governor’s cut. So, given what could have been, if the final slice turns out to be somewhere between the house and senate, we’ll head home to figure out the least damaging way to make college less available for Washingtonians with a little spring in our step. It certainly won’t be the best possible outcome and the state’s long-term neglect of public universities will continue to have long-term consequences, but we’ll live to fight another day.

Right now, everybody needs to take the same approach to the legislature’s attempts to raise new revenues. All three proposed budgets—the governor’s, the house’s, the senate’s—depend on new tax dollars. The governor needs $605 million to get home, the house is looking for $854 million, and the senate wants $918 million in new revenue. Both the governor and the senate close loopholes and institute some new pollution and venal sin taxes, and the senate calls for a slight and temporary increase to sales tax. As of this writing, the house has said how much but not how—we’re all still waiting for the specifics of the house tax proposal.

None of this is enough none of it does anything to fundamentally reform the meanest tax structure in the country, but it is what we need right now to keep schools reasonably effective, to keep college somewhat accessible, to keep thousands of people from losing their jobs, to keep people from dying.

Almost from the minute the budgets were released on Tuesday, legislators started getting cold feet. There have been almost continuous caucus meetings in an attempt to get House and Senate Democrats to agree on a package. Nobody has to be reminded that it’s an election year.

So right now, we here at the blog feel compelled to look away for a moment from the world we want and focus on and the world we actually live in. The tax plans on the table now are inadequate in a variety of ways, but our representatives need to hear that they won’t be punished for them in November.

Go to this link to show them the love...

Bill Lyne's blog

Should Colleges Operate Like Businesses?

18Feb2010

Johann Neem

A recent survey of Americans has suggested that they have lost faith in higher education. In fact, they believe, there is little difference between higher education and a business. Both seem to be out to generate money, and both, Americans feel, care little about people. (See link.)

On the one hand, this is not true. Faculty members could have had much more lucrative careers in other fields. By choosing to teach rather than to go into law, medicine, or business, they have already decided to earn significantly less than their similarly-educated peers. They did it out of love: love of students and love of subjects.

On the other hand, it is all too true. It reflects the success of the Reagan Revolution, and the effort to privatize all American institutions, especially those of the public sector. Since the 1980s, American policymakers have been seeking to make higher education more market-oriented. One result is the emergence of college presidents who are paid like CEOs with high salaries and exorbitant benefits. This is a result of colleges acting more like businesses.

But the real danger is not college presidents’ salaries but that colleges and universities will no longer be special places devoted to the development of students’ minds and character. And this is what Americans in the recent poll have concluded.

Since the 1980s, colleges and universities have been told to rely less on public revenue and more on generating their own. As a result, colleges and universities have invested less in teaching and more in promoting investments in research and programs that generate patents and revenue.

Since the 1980s, colleges and universities have been told to orient their programs around the needs of the private sector rather than society at large. As a result, many of the disciplines—such as the humanities—that once catered to student learning are being gutted—even eliminated on some campuses—to make room for revenue-generating, market-oriented vocational programs.

Since the 1980s, colleges and universities have been forced to raise class sizes in order to achieve that great market goal of efficiency. Of course, it’s not efficient. Larger classes mean less personal attention to individual students, less feedback on courses, and, ultimately, less learning in a less caring environment. But they’re cheap. They’re also impersonal, and parents and students do not appreciate being treated like commodities.

Americans have discovered that they were wrong to ask colleges and universities to become more like businesses. By reducing public funding, they have created a system that violates their own values of what a place of learning should be like. They want teachers to focus on students. They want teachers to care. They want classes to be small and personal. They want higher education, in fact, to be different from the business world.

The only way to do so, however, is to fund it. Since the 1980s, we have been told that public funding is a bad system, and that the market mentality is superior. But now that colleges and universities have responded by focusing on their bottom line rather than students, Americans are questioning the results that they themselves demanded.

Johann Neem's blog

Everything Else Is Just Talk

11Feb2010

“The truth is, education reform without tax structure reform is a hollow promise, and we’ll never be able to sustainably fund K-12 and higher education until we move to a fairer and more adequate tax system. Everything else is just talk.”

--Goldy, from the inimitable horsesass.org

Governor Chris Gregoire talked the talk in front of the Washington State Labor Council on Thursday and her message was clear: the 2010 Supplemental Budget cannot be just another orgy of cuts. She didn’t come right out and say the word Taxes, but the crowd of labor leaders and state employees certainly heard it that way.

The halftime show of this year’s battle over cuts versus revenue takes place on Monday on the Capitol steps in Olympia, where the Teabaggers will be going toe to toe with the Rebuilding Our Economic Future Coalition. The Teabaggers are scheduled for 10 a.m., with the sane people following at noon.

The betting line on who will turn out the bigger and louder crowd remains even money, but it’s pretty clear which way the larger wind is blowing. Say whatever you want about Massachusetts and Centerfold Scott, out here voters in Oregon and Washington have seen the light on new revenues to get us through the economic crisis. Oregon passed new taxes handily last month and new school levies are winning overwhelmingly in Washington. All those legislators who worry that a yes vote on taxes will hurt them in the next election might need to start worrying that a no vote will hurt them worse.

It’s not just because we’re lazy, greedy state employees sucking on the public tit that we here at the blog support new revenues.

Along with the usual and obvious arguments about how many people will die, go broke, lose their jobs, and be denied access to an education if we keep cutting the state budget, there is also a pretty solid argument that new revenues will save and create jobs and boost the economy. Check out this analysis (pdf) from the Economic Opportunity Institute.

The problem with tax talk is not that we’re talking about raising taxes, but that we’re not going far enough. The legislators who are voting right now to suspend Tim Eyman’s oligarchical Initiative 960 are not going to go any further than closing loopholes on people who don’t vote for them, taking a bigger bite out of our sugar and drug vices, and maybe some slight new sales taxes.

It remains a moral failing of Washington’s political system (and probably the thing that gives Eyman, Inc. it’s faux populist life) that we remain a state with a low tax base but a very high rate of tax on people least able to pay. If we were to get religion here at the blog, we would probably think it a sin that poor people in this state get taxed at four times the rate of rich people. It is a shame that while there will probably be a tax increase in this legislative session, there won’t be tax reform to go with it.

So come to the rally on Monday and talk the talk to give our representatives the courage to walk the walk.

Bill Lyne's blog

Gambling, Baseball, Apple Pie, and College

7Feb2010

State Senator Jim Kastama, Democrat from the 25th legislative district and the fine city of Puyallup, has introduced SB 6409, a bill that would shift the Washington State Lottery proceeds currently devoted to the K-12 construction fund to a new “Washington Investment in Excellence” fund, which would fund scholarships, research, and innovation in higher education.

Compared to states like Georgia and Arkansas, where the lottery seems to be doing a booming business, Washington’s lottery seems to be underperforming:

Senator Kastama feels that this gambling gap is the result of a wrong-headed marketing campaign. Here in Washington, we plug the lottery as a get-rich-quick-scheme:

While in Georgia, they sell the lottery as a way to support education:

Senator Kastama’s argument is that the state is leaving a lot of lottery dollars on the table by refusing to push the lottery as an education fund. This has been a conscious choice. State and local school organizations have been reluctant to connect the lottery to K-12 education, for fear that this would lead voters to think that gambling had sufficiently funded K-12 and make them less inclined to vote for school levies and bonds. Since there are no levies and bonds for colleges, that conflict wouldn’t exist if the lottery proceeds were devoted to higher ed.

Senator Kastama estimates that shifting the lottery advertising focus away from early retirement and toward sending a kid to college will attract a whole new clientele and expand lottery proceeds by as much as $456 million.

From our unabashedly university-centric point of view here at the blog, there’s a lot to get excited about in this idea, so let’s pause for a moment to take a larger view. Right now, lottery revenues (after the prizes have been paid and the overhead covered) go to three things: paying the vig on Safeco Field, the K-12 education construction account, and a program to help gambling addicts.

Since Mariners’ boss Howard Lincoln is currently a trustee at WWU and it looks like the Mariners are poised for a playoff run this season, we’ll pass for now on the rant about the public subsidizing billionaires and their professional sports hobbies. Suffice it to say that it is what it is.

The idea of shifting the money away from K-12 to higher makes sense in terms of the marketing argument, but we shouldn’t forget that it moves money from already desperately underfunded schools (unconstitutionally underfunded, as the judge told us last week) to desperately underfunded colleges and universities. As much as we’re homers for higher ed here at the blog, we don’t want our universities to be funded at the expense of Washington’s children.

The blood money for gambling addicts raises the whole question of why have a lottery at all. It’s like funding Alcoholics Anonymous with a tax on booze. It also highlights the fact that the lottery is yet another incredibly regressive tax in a state with the most regressive tax system in the country. Looking at this situation, any competent ten year old would pretty quickly arrive at the question, If we want to fund education, why not do it with a progressive income tax instead of preying on the desperate hopes of those living in the neglected regions of capital?

But, all that said, let’s reluctantly turn away from the world we hope for and back toward the one we find ourselves living in. Senator Kastama’s point is that if we’re going to have a lottery, why not encourage more people who can actually afford it to play it by selling it as a tax for higher ed? That’s not a bad idea.

And, more importantly, Senator Kastama is the only person in Olympia right now arguing for a dedicated fund for higher ed. And we like that a lot. As a member of the Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development committee, Senator Kastama has shown that he understands the folly of using higher ed as the state’s rainy day fund, and he recognizes how bad it is for Washington that our four-year universities are among the worst funded in the nation. At a time when both Democrats and Republicans seem indifferent to destroying state universities with further cuts to already decimated budgets, it’s refreshing to have someone at least looking for a different way.

Bill Lyne's blog

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . .

1Feb2010

Despite the fact that Washington state politics never ranges beyond the relatively narrow spectrum of the rest of the country--from slightly right of center to a fair bit farther right—Washington politicians will often claim such labels as “liberal” or “progressive.” And almost all of them can be counted on in the clutch to call themselves “independent.”

But none of them will admit to being a communist.

And yet much of state government’s approach to higher education would make the old architects of Soviet-style planned economies proud. Whether it’s high demand enrollments, the HEC Board’s Master Plan, workforce training, or degree targets in performance agreements, the state legislature seems much more concerned with training and managing the workforce than educating the citizenry. The state senate committee on higher education is even called “Higher Education and Workforce Development.”

It is almost impossible to have a conversation about higher education in Olympia without it quickly turning to questions of training, utility and function. We need this many engineers, that many nurses, more people in STEM fields. Institutions of higher education are understood as little more than the handmaidens of businesses, which are like machines that need parts that our colleges and universities are supposed to produce. “Washington’s postsecondary education and training system,” says Governor Gregoire’s website, “prepares students for the knowledge economy and provides a skilled work force for industries of all types.”

This is why there has been so much emphasis on “workforce training” in the current budget discussions. The governor’s budget proposal robs the Peter of the universities to pay the Paul of the community colleges in order to create 2500 more “workforce training” slots. Word on the street is that budget writers in the state senate are considering an even larger fund shift toward training.

At this point in a discussion like this, you would understandably expect the frothy English professor to start waxing indignant about the humanity, self-fulfillment, peace, love, and harmony that come with a university liberal arts education. But here at the blog we’ve been trolling the hallways of state government long enough to no longer care much about the inherent virtues of reading Rousseau or boogying to Beethoven.

What we care about are barriers to opportunity for the middle and working classes.

When President Obama or Jill Biden or Governor Gregoire or the Seattle Times or state legislators who write budgets talk about the “workforce” and how and for what they should be trained, they’re talking about somebody other than them and theirs. What we have here are people from the winning side of the have/have not line prescribing limits for those on the other side. As long as state government continues to write budgets that define 2-year higher education as a public good and 4-year higher education as a private good, it will continue to look more like the Politburo serving a planned economy than a democratically elected set of institutions that are supposed to foster dreams and social mobility.

Education and training at every level are important. But funding choices, consciously or not, are ensuring that those born into the “workforce” are destined to stay there.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their economic class.

Bill Lyne's blog