Johann Neem's blog

Americans face growing international economic competition. Washington, poised on the Pacific Rim, expects to be one of the beneficiaries or victims of the emergence of powerful economies on the other side of the ocean. It is common sense today that education, and higher education in particular, will determine which economy will emerge victorious in this new global age.

To many Washington policymakers and citizens, economic competition requires technical training—focusing on those specific jobs that are expected to grow. At both the community college and the four-year college level, there is an effort to direct money and students to “high demand” fields that will help Washingtonians develop a vibrant economy for the twenty-first century.

Certainly, we should offer vocational and technical training to our citizens, especially in two-year colleges. But is this enough? Are the more broad, more general, liberal arts and sciences programs that have long defined baccalaureate education a waste of money and time? Are they a luxury we can no longer afford? Are they likely to encourage the kind of economic innovation we need? To answer these questions, perhaps we should look abroad, to the very economies from which we now face competition.

There has been much discussion of Asian tiger economies and the importance of technical higher education in China and elsewhere. For a long time, the Chinese government invested heavily in developing technical experts, hoping that their well-trained workers would compete successfully against Americans and Europeans for jobs. But now, as China emerges as an important economic power in its own right, it is rethinking this strategy. No longer willing to be just technicians, the Chinese wish to be leaders. And, they have discovered, to lead requires investing in the liberal arts and sciences.

China, for example, has recently opened a new liberal arts university to encourage students to be more creative. It is encouraging its students to think outside the box. It is investing in small student-centered classrooms and embracing a more flexible curriculum. In doing so China is moving beyond its traditional vocational focus in its bid to become the world’s economic leader. The Chinese know that the leaders of tomorrow will require a broad education in the arts and sciences.

This is the same conclusion reached by Michigan State University professor Yong Zhao in his book Catching Up or Leading the Way. Zhao, who was born and raised in China but is now living in the United States and raising his family here, argues that Americans are being short-sighted in emphasizing technical education and easily quantifiable results. Observing his young children’s education, Zhao notes that what makes American education distinctive is not its obsessive focus on standardized tests, but the unquantifiable value of programs that promote creativity—the arts, music, theater, and extra-curricular activities. He concludes that even as Americans fall behind on international standardized tests—something, no doubt, we hope to change—they continue to have the most competitive and creative economy precisely because of the broad education their children receive, an education that is overlooked by most international comparisons.

In short, the broad education provided by Washington’s four-year institutions creates the kind of people that our economy and our society needs.

Perhaps no experiment speaks more of this effort to go from being the world’s technicians to its creative leaders than the opening of the new New York University campus in Abu Dhabi. Funded by the Abu Dhabi government, the campus hopes to become the “world’s honors college.” But Abu Dhabi’s government, like China’s, knows that the most creative students would be ill served by a narrow, technical education. The world needs technicians, but Abu Dhabi also wants to educate the next generation of innovators. The core curriculum is oriented around four major areas:Pathways of World Literature; Structures of Thought and Society; Art, Technology, and Invention; and Ideas and Methods of Science. In short, NYU-Abu Dhabi seeks to replicate the American liberal arts and sciences model for the world.

There are places in the United States, too, that are refocusing on liberal education. Business schools are increasingly arguing that their students need to receive more humanistic education in order to be better leaders and thinkers. Medical schools seek students who have a strong liberal arts background because they know that these doctors have not just the creative capacities but also the empathy that future doctors will need. In short, both business and medical schools believe that it is not enough to have technical knowledge; one needs the broad foundation that only a liberal arts and sciences education provides.

The liberal arts and sciences matter for more than just economic reasons. Baccalaureate education prepares people for life. We hope that a democratic society offers its citizens the education necessary to lead fulfilling lives. Moreover, in a tradition reaching back to the Founding Fathers, liberal education is intended to prepare students to be responsible and effective citizens. The nice thing, however, is that the four-year colleges’ curriculum of liberal arts and sciences can do all these things. In helping students prepare for their personal lives and their roles as citizens, it also develops their creative, analytic, and thinking skills—the skills that other countries recognize have been the basis for Americans’ economic global dominance.

Of course, Washingtonians need and deserve more than one kind of higher education. There is an important place in Washington for technical, vocational training. But, as our economic competitors know, we also need the broader, creative education that will inspire new ideas and new solutions to current and future problems. We have tended to focus our resources on the former and forget about the latter. In a competitive global world, however, China, Abu Dhabi, and other countries will claim the ground that we abandon. It’s time for us to reclaim it—both to improve our society and to retain our competitiveness.  

One of the big claims being thrown against Washington’s elected leaders is that they have been profligate during good times and now, because of their spending binge, must cut back during hard times. Behind this rhetoric is an assumption that Washingtonians are being heavily taxed, much more so than their counterparts in other parts of this country. A recent study by the conservative Tax Foundation suggests otherwise. In fact, Washingtonians are taxed well below the national rate.

According to the Tax Foundation, Washington’s state and local tax burden was 40th in the nation (one being the highest) in 2000, and had risen only to 35th in the nation in 2008. This includes state taxes, local taxes, and taxes paid by Washington citizens to other states. In 2008, Washingtonians were taxed about 8% below the national average for citizens of other states. In short, Washingtonians’ tax burden remains significantly lower than that of citizens in most states. Click on chart...

There are two implications to take from this study. While overall taxation did go up during the early 1990s, it dropped dangerously below the national average in the latter half of the decade. By the early 2000s, Washingtonians were taxed at a rate 10% below the national average. The result is that Washington leaders had to correct for under-taxation. Nonetheless, Washingtonians’ tax burden remains lower than the national average today.

Second, and more important, the study helps explain why an income tax, even a revenue-neutral income tax, is so important. Washington citizens believe that they bear a much more heavy tax burden than other states because Washington is one of the most regressive tax regimes in the country. The result is that the burden of taxation falls disproportionately and unfairly on lower and middle income citizens, while the richest taxpayers do not pay their share, especially in contrast to citizens in other states.

So long as the tax burden is so unevenly distributed, support for public institutions and public programs will be weak. But if we can distribute Washington’s lighter than average tax burden more fairly, citizens will also be relieved of the illusion that we are over-taxed. In turn, the public institutions that serve lower and middle income Washingtonians—schools and universities, fire and police protection, basic health care—will gain the popular support they deserve.

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.

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.

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.

Washington state does not produce enough bachelor degrees to meet its economic—much less its civic and social—needs. For individuals, there is a clear correlation between education and future earnings. For the state, there is a clear correlation between investing in education and future economic growth.

At the moment, much of the state’s focus seems to be on community colleges and on vocational programs that train people for specific economic tasks. To an extent, this makes sense, especially as hard times force many experienced workers to return to school, retool, and find new opportunities. Yet, as earlier posts have suggested, there is a fundamental difference between training and educating. This difference is not only philosophical and ethical, but also economic.
 
Four-year degrees carry more market value than two-year degrees. The most valued degrees come from schools that emphasize the liberal arts and sciences. This may be surprising. We often think that vocational degrees—“practical” degrees that prepare people for a job—make economic sense. And, for many, it does. But one need only look around at the most prestigious universities and colleges to realize that the most highly-prized degrees in the market are not vocational. In short, supporting four-year colleges’ liberal arts and sciences programs makes good economic sense.
 
Why is this? It appears paradoxical. We all hear stories of the liberal arts major who now serves coffee. But in reality, the liberal arts and sciences majors offer exactly what Washington’s economy needs: highly capable creative thinkers with portable skills for an ever-changing market. The more narrow, the more useful, a major sounds, the less it prepares students for long-term success, and Washington’s economy for long-term growth. The bachelor degree’s market value stems from the simple fact that business leaders know that students educated in the liberal arts and sciences can think, write, and analyze; have had exposure to other cultures; understand how to use data; and have developed creative and imaginative perspectives on the world. All of this has cash value. The liberal arts and sciences are practical; they always have been.
 
Students in baccalaureate institutions are not trained to be specialists but to have depth. To the extent that our economy depends on innovation, training specialists is not enough. We need economic leaders who are imaginative and who can use their knowledge to create new, exciting things. To the extent that our society depends on creative answers to public problems, many unknown today, we do not need specialists but citizens able to think critically about the past, present, and future. Otherwise, we might as well have a planned economy.
 
Ultimately, the value of a liberal arts and sciences education extends beyond the workplace. America’s Founding Fathers supported liberal education because they understood that educated citizens and leaders were vital for a successful democracy. (The word “liberal” in liberal education shares the same root as “liberty.”) Moreover, a liberal arts and sciences education enriches those graduates who gain a vantage point from which to understand the human condition—our relationship to the social and natural worlds.
 
The nice thing, however, is that the civic and personal benefits of liberal education are not in tension with its economic benefits. In business, this is called synergy. By promoting the liberal arts and sciences in baccalaureate institutions, we can improve the health of Washington’s democracy, enrich our citizens’ lives, while also producing the most valued degrees in the market

In a previous post we noted that reduced funding for classroom instruction is not sustainable. In the short term, some faculty may be willing to over-enroll students in their class, taking on extra work, in order to help those already enrolled graduate. In the long run, however, without adequate funding, there will be fewer classes, and perhaps bigger classes. In essence, quality of instruction will go down even as the time it takes to get a degree goes up.

To understand this equation, we must clear up a misconception. When higher education funding is cut, faculty are constantly asked, "why don't you just raise class sizes?" It is often assumed that faculty are too lazy to raise their class sizes. In reality, faculty are protecting the quality of education, not the quantity of work.

Faculty will work the same amount regardless of class size. They already spend well over forty hours each week on teaching, research, and service to the university and the community-all part of their job description. Think about teaching. A good teacher must not only be up to date in his or her field-which takes time during the school year and over summer-but must design effective courses, evaluate student learning, and offer meaningful feedback on student work. Moreover, we know that students learn better when they are engaged in the learning process-when they can discuss the readings, design their own experiments, write their own research papers. If we want students to learn well, we must invest in each of them.

This simply cannot be done effectively in a large class. Faculty work the same number of hours whether the class is large or small, but students do not get the same quality of instruction. Large classes tend to have more lecturing. Large classes have fewer and inferior assignments. Often, multiple choice tests replace essays. Large classes offer students fewer opportunities to engage with the material. Certainly, large classes rarely allow faculty to cultivate the kinds of relationships with students that research suggests is vital to student learning. Smaller classes, on the other hand, allow faculty to offer detailed feedback on papers and assignments. Faculty can assign more work per student, can evaluate that work better, and give each student more time to ensure that she or he leaves the class comprehending the material. For faculty, the work is the same. For students, larger classes are decidedly inferior.

Reformers and policymakers often accuse faculty of not paying enough attention to teaching and learning. Almost all scientific research on learning suggests that students learn best when they have meaningful relationships with their teachers, have opportunities to be actively involved with the learning process, and can grapple with difficult material in class and in their assignments. Compare this with a large lecture class filled with half-engaged students scribbling notes and taking multiple choice tests that assess their short-term memory rather than their long-term development!

Faculty do not teach small classes because they are lazy. Small classes often take more preparation time because faculty cannot recycle notes from last time and because they must offer more feedback on complicated assignments. If we were lazy, we would just teach large classes straight from the textbook and offer tests that machines could grade. Instead, we want our students to learn.

Large classes are inefficient. Efficiency means doing the same for less. Large classes are, however, decidedly inferior because faculty simply cannot offer the same quality of instruction as they do in smaller classes. For faculty, their workload does not change. For students, however, it makes a big difference.

Johann Neem is Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University and author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts.