From what i've read the increased cost in tuition has not created much in the way of more teachers. But there has been a 39% increase in administration hiring/costs/etc.

Rising costs are actually remarkebly easy to explain, especially on a college. Lets say food costs go up 1%, utility costs go up 1%, teachers and admin staff get a 2% Cost-of-living raise, and health premiums go up 2%. Now my guess is that these increases (especially healthcare) are pretty low, but what do you suppose the increases end up totaling? Now couple those increases, pretty basic I'm sure we can agree, with deceased state and federal funding and tell me where you're at. At some point it doesn't matter how much private funding you can get, if we can't get people to pay to support our educational system there's not much the schools can do except raising tuition and saddling students with more debt.

I'm as much in favor of good management and cost-effective education as the next taxpayer. But in Washington NOW, the cost of educating an undergraduate is actually about $1,000 LESS than it was 20 years ago. (That's adjusted for inflation.) So I'm looking for that vast increase in spending on education and ... I'm not seeing it. I'm not sure that we can say this of any other service, public or private -- that costs have actually declined over two decades. If you look at what the state was paying back in 1990, it covered about 80 percent of the cost of education for residents. Now it's about 30 percent. At the same time, Washington ranks in the bottom handful (46th or so) in how many bachelor's degrees it provides. It's fine to ask the universities to be partners in solving these problems. And maybe it's time to try an entirely new model that acknowledges no additional state support will be forthcoming. In the absence of action by public entities, maybe the market will "solve" the problem -- but I'm not convinced we'll like the solution.

I don't see that this TVD column advances the higher ed financing discussion in the least. It's just platitudes. And he felt obliged to take a shot at public school teachers, completely off the subject. Why was that necessary? How about discussing what the gubernatorial candidates had to say about higher ed yesterday in the debate? BTW, Austin Jenkins did an outstanding job in moderating that debate. I would love to see Austin moderate a presidential debate, with the same format and freedom to ask initial and follow-up questions. He came right back to the candidates when he felt they hadn't addressed the question. Really fine.

There is NOT ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE in this whole piece that the UW or any other public university needs tighter fiscal control. As such, it seems to be simply saying: the UW needs to figure out how to do more with less. Even there it falls short, because it doesn't identify how to do that: more online classes? Larger class size? Cut the research functions of the university? Etc etc.

How about turning UW into a two-year institution, with the first two years to be online at the same rate charged by Western Governors University?

In fact, my dept. at the UW has been under tighter financial control starting 11 years ago. We operate with half our office staff, we have graduate education program (unfortunately), many key lecturers have retired early. We are already down to the bone. And the legislature continues to cut. The tuition raises constitute the last resort stemming from 10 years of fiscal restraint. The UW has been under siege for many years now, predating the present financial crisis. I think very few people realize that. I am surprised to see such a shortsighted poorly researched piece in Crosscut.

Responses thus far are about as anticipated. A couple points:

---Public higher-education budgets have risen over a long period
more greatly than the factors cited by Jason would would cause them to rise. Trevor indicates that he sees no reason "the UW or any other public university needs tighter fiscal control." I've spent brief periods both as a college administrator and faculty member. I suggest
you speak with anyone presently serving in either capacity, at the UW or elsewhere, and you'll hear chapter-and-verse recitations of waste, inefficiency, and unresponsive bureacracy. Higher-education institutions---especially public ones---have grown accustomed over a long period to running loosely. "Cost-efficiency" is not a term normally associated with the field.

---The overwhelming reality is that state governments are only now emerging from a several-year period in which slow economic growth, reduced tax revenues, higher social-service demands, and other factors have shrunk the revenue base available to pay for many functions.
It is entirely possible, moreover, that we will fall back into a double-dip recession which will keep state governments in red ink.
49 of the 50 states, including Washington, are legally required to
keep their budgets in balance---albeit often through fudging and dubious devices.

Hard-pressed citizens do not want fresh tax increases for even meritorious purposes. Such tax increases now, in any case, would retard badly needed growth. Federal, state, and local governments, over a long period of economic growth and rising public revenues,
routinely financed programs which are not now sustainable in the current economic environment. If new taxes are not a short-term option, and current spending levels are too high, governors and legislators must make choices. By all means, public higher education
should get more state money in Washington. But if, in the present
climate, that is not possible, then the only options are to tighten up internally and to seek other revenue sources. Railing against the darkness is pointless.

Ted I didn't say I see no reason for tighter fiscal control. I said you present no reason for such controls. Anecdotes about "waste" shouldn't be the basis of public policy. If you want to cut taxes without cutting the quality of services, step out from behind the rhetoric and explain exactly how you would do so. Otherwise, this is just a Republican talking point rehash about how we don't really need to raise taxes (on the wealthy) to fund education...

Trevor, did you suffer a blow to the head? Did it cause amnesia? If so, then I'm sorry to hear it, and will fill you in on recent events. There was a statewide referendum a few years ago on a proposal to initiate an income tax on upper incomes. It failed in every single county in the state, including King.

What were you saying about those higher taxes?

I was saying that if you don't tax the rich, then get used to privatization and/ or reduced quality of public higher education. The low level of voter support for I-1098 changes that fact not at all.

Trevor, maybe it means having to get creative. Look at UW. Every day, it's clearer that they're a private company: a luxury hospital, a cash-generating minor league football team, and a university with some very profitable programs. Rather than subsidize any of this, the state ought to make it clear that, by virtue of various past subsidies and land grants, it has an equity interest in the gold mine.

Then set 'em completely free to charge what the market will bear, just like, say, the University of Pennsylvania. Then use the dividends (and sales tax to be imposed on tuition) to help the state's young people bear the cost of Western Governor's University and any other state school that will match WGU's tuition rates.

You want people to have access to higher-ed for real? Or do you just want to play the martyr in return for a crumb or two from UW's table every now and then? Like I say, time to get creative. Don't be such a whiner. It's a new world.

"Then set 'em completely free to charge what the market will bear, just like, say, the University of Pennsylvania."
--
Please get a clue. The University of Pennsylvania is not a comparison. It is a private university, a heavily endowed Ivy League school.

Please get a clue. The University of Pennsylvania is not a comparison. It is a private university, a heavily endowed Ivy League school.

I disagree. The UW is always complaining about how much they lose by taking in-state undergrads instead of out-of-state undergrads who will pay Ivy League rates, or so the UW thinks.

I'm fine with it. Let the UW go private, and be free to charge whatever they can get away with. All I'd ask in return is that a) the state get an equity share commensurate with what it's put into the UW over the years, including the value of the land, and b) the UW pay taxes like any other private business.erevho steiner

Can you provide some specific examples of inefficiency at the UW or other state educational institutions.

There are plenty of private Universities - do they provide comparable education for less?

If you contract UW scientists to conduct research the UW charges an overhead rate above the direct costs of the salaries of those involved in the research of just over 50% - This supports its beauracracy and facilities. Comparable rates in the private sector are 200-300%

The real issue at all universities, public or private, is the degree to which their customers require loans for their education. You see, that whole merry-go-round is going to stop, just like the residential real estate one did a few years ago.

There will be a period where hardly anyone can get a college loan, followed by a massive upward reset of credit standards. The result will be many fewer transactions, and a very different market. The higher-ed establishment is completely unprepared for its illusion of indispensability to be exposed as the faith-based fairy tale it's always been.

College is very much a luxury item, especially as it has been provided. The entire structure is hideously inefficient, not to mention largely unnecessary. Take away the debt financing, and we'll find out quickly just what a bubble it's all been.

Good post.

This article seems to be yet another example of the decline in the quality of articles in Crosscut or at least a lack of any editorial oversight.

Mr. Van Dyk tells us that "it is alleged, state legislators are not providing adequate taxpayer money to the schools" and then one paragraph later that "In FY2000, student tuition was paying 28 percent of higher-education costs compared to 72 percent in state funding, while in FY2013, tuition was payng 65 percent and state funding 35 percent." The cuts are not "alleged" they are real.

As previous comments note, the article presents no concrete example of how the UW and other state colleges are meant to improve efficiency nor does it discuss what our institutions of higher learning are already doing. Perhaps Mr. Van Dyk could take the time to do a little research and come up with some specific suggestions. If not, the perhaps the editors of crosscut should look elsewhere for future contributions.

I'd like to agree with David Smith's comment: "This article seems to be yet another example of the decline in the quality of articles in Crosscut or at least a lack of any editorial oversight."

The underlying "factual claims" are simply wrong. UW's overall academic budget, and the state component of that budget, have *not* been increasing faster than inflation. The first figure here displays this clearly, going back 20 years:

http://opb.washington.edu/sites/default/files/opb/Policy/Peer-Funding-Comparison-BRIEF.pdf

There is plenty of room for debate about what to do. But that discussion should begin from a clear understanding of the facts of the matter.

As long as you're in a reading mood, take a look at these too:

http://news.cs.washington.edu/2012/06/07/meet-the-future-these-21-uw-computer-science-grads-are-ready-to-change-the-world/

http://news.cs.washington.edu/2012/05/31/who-ya-gonna-hire/

Classic TVD dismissive/contemptuous comments (as usual citing his personal experiences, albeit "brief") toward legitimate criticism from a number of commenters. Would TVD regardless closing state corporate tax loopholes as tax increases that would retard growth? Even Republican Rob McKenna supports closing loopholes. TVD insists that voters reject higher taxes. But if they are presented with a choice between higher taxes and ending loopholes for those who can afford to pay more, and cutting or eliminating programs for those who can't afford to do without them, perhaps the voters will support certain new taxes. Gov. Gregoire has tried to frame that choice for us on school funding. This takes leadership, and just falling back on statements that the voters won't accept it is indeed "railing against the darkness," as TVD puts it. BTW, Jay Inslee has repeatedly called for "Lean" -- total quality management -- reforms across state government. How about taking a closer look at that? It's working in leading health care organizations such as Virginia Mason and could be applied to public universities and other government entities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/treating-you-better-for-less.html
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/story/2012-01-05/health-care-collaboratives/52394918/1

Mr. Van Dyk - This is a case where I agree with you 100%. Most of the above comments are to the effect, "Prove to me that the UW can save money".

Totally missing the point: Instead of getting in line to beg for MORE, the UW needs to prove they can do more with less!

Any jackass can raise tuition 16%. There were similar raises in 2011,2010, 2009 and 2008!!

Mark Emmert and now Mike Young are the highest paid public officials in the State - not counting football coaches.

What are we paying these guys for? Their skill at cocktail parties?

The UW has the income from the Metropolitan Tract. They've built new facilities on nearly every square inch of the Campus and expanded far west of 15th and both south and west along the lake.

As a former public official and program manager, anyone who can with a straight face tell me there are NO opportunities for efficiencies or to save money out of a FY 5.6 BILLION dollar budget is either kidding themselves, or just flat out lying.

Ross Kane
UW, English, 1971

Unfortunately the vast proportion of the UW budget is either directed at conducting Federally funded research or providing medical care. It probably can become more efficient in these areas but that is not going to improve the delivery of undergraduate education because cross subsidies are not legally permissible and are closely policed by federal and state auditors.

Federally-funded research is federally-funded -- by grants and contracts. So lower campus pays for itself. There are three separate UWs: lower campus, the athletic program, and upper campus. Only the latter is poor.

I posted the comment below in another higher-ed discussion thread. It's unusual for me to cut-and-paste a duplicate, but the same points apply to this discussion.

The higher education establishment is even less prepared for what's coming to them than the housing industry was. As a proportion of the education business, the student loan bubble is just as big as the mortgage bubble was.

But at least the developers, as a group, were familiar with bankruptcy. A lot of them knew how to do the dance. But just wait! When the student loan bubble pops, we're going to see some amazing stuff.

Part of the U.S. higher ed system will sell itself to foreigners. That process is already underway. The "University of Washington" will became the functional "University of Eastern China." It will have to, in order to pay the bills. Those "out of state students" they're always talking about? A lot of them are foreign students, and soon just about all of them will be.

A lot of other schools -- the vast majority of them, in fact -- will not be so lucky. You are going to see all kinds of colleges, including some very surprising names, go belly up. As it happens, "higher ed" is going to change in a big way; it will become much more vocational in nature, and much more on-line.

The legislature has no business trying to prop up UW. It should be privatized, with the UW repaying the state for its equity share and paying taxes like any other business. State funding should be redirected toward the new model that WGU represents. I don't have any illusions about this actually happening right now; not only is government in general and this state's government in particular backward looking and reactive, but the higher-ed lobby is very rich and has the whole American Dream shtick down to a science to a degree that homebuilders and car companies can only dream of.

Everyone will wait until the disaster smacks them right in the face before doing what they should have done. The four-year residential collegiate model is quite literally bankrupt. It's a dead man walking, waiting only for some event, i.e., the equivalent of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in the spring of 2008, to get to the ball rolling.

Then, and only then, will people face the music. Not because they want to, but because the money simply will not be there any more. I remember having this conversation with investors in the early part of the last decade about the real estate bubble, and being patronized and dismissed like crazy. No one ever wants to believe it can happen to them.

Put it this way: If I was a college professor right now, I'd be salting away as much cash as I could. The gravy train is headed straight for the cliff. It won't be long now.

Well at least you're clear with your politics. You want higher education to be for-profit, not non-profit, and primarily online only (like the diploma mill Western Governors University) instead of with "brick and mortar" buildings where you might have-- oh, I don't know-- classroom discussion.

You clearly know nothing about higher education. The supposed "gravy train" for teachers has been in decline for at least 3 decades. The majority of instructors at community colleges are temps, and receive about as much income as their department administrative assistants (if not less). More and more teaching is becoming online only. The liberal arts are being squeezed and in some cases eliminated. The community colleges pioneered what other four year colleges are now adopting. What is happening is that the liberal arts education is going back to grooming the wealthy for power, as it used to be before World War II. Meanwhile public schools are increasingly training people to take tests, not teach them how to learn or think critically, with the hope that they might acquire a narrow set of marketable skills. This has been evident for some time. It is because people like you either don't want to pay taxes or don't care what kind of change is happening that we are closing the door to the middle class by privatizing public education.

Trevor, higher ed already is for profit. If you think that the UW is a non-profit institution, then I'd sure hate to be your checkbook at the used car lot.

As for taxes, we already pay a sales tax of nearly 10% here. I can't help it that the majority has seen fit to waste huge amounts of money on things like new stadiums and a white elephant light rail system that will lose money on every ride, and not make it up on volume.

We have a fixed pool of dollars. If we waste it on stupid crap, this is what happens.

Did you see where the Chicago public school teachers have authorized a strike if they do not receive a 29% pay raise? The Chicago public school system has the shortest school day, 5 hours and 45 minutes, of the nation's 50 largest school districts.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06/D9VBKPU80.htm

What has Chicago public school teachers got to do with a discussion of funding higher education in Washington State?

The Seattle Times recently ran a story that described a year-long effort by UW students to find savings in the school's budget in order to avoid more tuition increases. It's worth reading: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018362862_uwbudget06m.html

The 14 students, both undergrad and grad students, represented a range of academic disciplines. They formed a committee (The Provost's Advisory Committee for Students) to study the budget in detail and then met for a month with the UW's provost who is reponsible for the budget.

It would seem that they had a strong incentive, both personally and as representatives of their fellow students, to identify areas where efficencies might be found. They looked at administrative salaries. And they suggested several priorities for spending including student support services such as mental health counseling.

They were unable to find savings that would have offset the $217 million the Legislature cut from the school's 2011-13 budget. Ultimately they reommended a 15 rather than 16 percent tuition increase. The regents went with 16.

A cynic might say that the students, not being budget experts, were bamboozled. Perhaps. But they did much more work to understand the numbers than most of us are willing to put in.

I remember that story. It had a picture of students meeting with Provost Ana Mari Cauce. She was wearing a shirt that said "It's your education. Fight for it." She was also making in excess of $300,000/year.

http://data.spokesman.com/salaries/state/all-employees/

Provost Cauce may or may not be overpaid, but for someone at her level of power she's surprisingly accessible and willing to talk, which is refreshing.

Did they look at faculty and administrative staffing levels and compensation? How about the whole idea of physical class attendance to begin with? Didn't think so.

How about recording "evergreen" classes, i.e., the 100- and 200-level surveys, and distributing them, and their instruction materials, online? How about a serious examination of textbook requirements, with an eye to using many texts for a much longer period of time? We all know what a racket textbooks are. And why hold upper level seminars in a physical location, anyway? Why not online? It would save on building costs.

Was anyone really creative? I doubt it. After all, it's a university, which is pretty much the last place you'd ever find truly creative people.

Textbooks may be pricey but assuming freshmen can read why waste taxpayers' or students' money recording 100 and 200-level classes. Just give them a second hand textbook and answer key and administer the end of quarter test. It would probably cost $50 per credit or $9k for 4- year degree and we could set up a state endowment to support this in perpetuity by selling off our state university campuses

The lectures are useful, but I don't see the need to have thousands of professors manufacturing their own freshman English classes. No need for "second hand textbooks." Put them online, and students can print out their own brand-new copies. And don't distribute answer keys.

By the way, if students take their tests online, it might help control the rampant cheating seen on campuses. Or maybe not. Where there's a will, there's a way. The cheaters will go online.

What is completely overlooked is the collective benefit to the citizens of Washington State in having 1) a highly educated population, 2) world class research / medical facilities in our state, and 3) the economic benefit that 1 & 2 above bring us. It is the best and most profitable public investment that our legislature makes.

All of those benefits would continue to accrue if UW was set free to operate as a private, taxable business, partly owned by the state.

"Show us how you are tightening your management, and setting internal priorities, the legislators say. Explain why your costs keep rising, year after year, as compared to those in the private sector and the general inflation rate. What is your plan to contain those increases?"

Here's an example. UW's College of Education has an alternative certification program for people who want to be teachers. This is a good idea as there are many Washington State residents who WOULD like to teach as a second career.

Oh wait, I forgot one thing. See, the Dean at the COE, Tom Stritikus, is a former Teach for America alum, and he wanted a program just for TFA. And that's just what we have.

Oh, and due to the fact that we have a plethora of full-qualified, experienced, yet unemployed, teachers, between Seattle and Federal Way, there are only 11 TFA students in the COE program. It needed between 35-40 to break even. (And Renton School district just declined to sign with TFA because...they found enough fully-qualified teachers to hire.)

So let's get this straight - Our state's largest public university and their only alt cert program for teaching and it's just for people pre-screened by an outside group AND most of them are not Washington state residents. And, it's running in the red with no discernible hope that it will close that gap.

That would be one place to start with looking at for cuts - Deans and their pet projects.

This is a great idea. The savings would balance the uw's budget without the need for further tuition increases

I'd assume you're being facetious here.

Look, I'm not saying one program's elimination would change a lot. But clearly, they need to have programs that DON'T run in the red. And, if there's one pet program, there's bound to be me.

The point is what Mr. Van Dyk's point - what ARE they doing to check costs, cut costs and think more creatively?

I understand your infatuation with TFA but you are sufficiently well educated that you ought to take a broader and more enlightened view. Even with the drastic tuition increases, the UW has over just 4 years taken a nearly 20% cut in the funds it has to educate each student. Moreover 4 years ago the UW was already receiving ~20% less than peer institutions so at least by those measures was running efficiently.

Do you really want to eliminate programs that "run in the RED" at the UW? That would get rid of most if not all STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and leave the UW offering one mass production Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. The fine arts and language degrees could all go too since they require small classes and extensive faculty-student contact hours.

How do you think Seattle Schools would fare if their budget was cut by 20% over the next 4 years along with trite comments suggesting that the savings could be obtained by reducing waste and beauracracy and eliminating programs that run in the red such as those for gifted or special ed students.

Interesting contributions in the comment stream. A couple further reactions:

---Few question the benefits of strong public higher education.
That case does not need to be made---except, perhaps, to a few who
will in any case oppose state funding on principle.

---This piece focused on the UW and other state institutions but made the point that this is a national phenomenon. At federal, state, and local level governments find themselves with spending commitments in many areas that are not sustainable. Robust economic growtn and ever rising tax revenues are not likely to return over at least the next several years. We cannot expect otherwise.

---Here in Washington, there are places we could find fresh revenues for higher education, without general tax increases. State and local tax expenditurs---subsidies, loopholes, and special tax treatment extended to favored companies and sectors---now amount to three times the size of the state's biennial budget. Political leaders of both parties give lip service to their review and repeal. But are Boeing, Microsoft, and others going to step forward to volunteer their subsidies for removal? No, they will instead make statements about
the need for greater funding for public higher education, presumably from regressive taxes on ordinary wage earners.

Over time, our governor and Legislature will be forced to take on
the tax-expenditure issue. But no important removals or reductions
will take place in the next couple fiscal years. That is another reality.

---It is entirely reasonable to ask that our public universities and colleges undertake fundamental reviews of their priorities, staffing and salary levels, and internal procedures. Businesses and households do this all the time. I mentioned in my piece the attempt by the UW
to extract a huge sum from the Legislature to fund a Husky Stadium rebuild. When turned down, other ways were found to pay for it. One commenter mentions the salaries paid to Emmert and Young. I agree on Emmert. He had never been a college president before and was given the second-highest salary of any public university president in the U.S. When his colleagues at other state institutions volunteered for
temporary salary cuts, he refused to do so. All this at a time when higher-education funds were in jeopardy and the UW's faculty salaries
had stagnated over a long period. When he got the chance, Emmert leapt to an even higher-paying job at the NCAA, to pursue his true interest of football. Young is paid less than Emmert, despite his stronger prior credentials, and has shown a healthy interest in the academic side of the university and its management. Do you feel more favorably disposed toward another financial-sector bailout because its managers refuse to reduce their outsize compensation? Legislators (and taxpayers) have every right to expect higher-education leadership by personal example.

Public higher education in Washington deserves healthy public support.
But it must accept the same disciplines as other institutions in tough times.

You state that "Public higher education in Washington deserves healthy public support. But it must accept the same disciplines as other institutions in tough times." Doesn't a nearly 20% cut in the funds per student over 4 years coming on top of a nearly 20% deficit with respect to peer institutions in other states prior to these cuts mean that it already has? Do you feel that the current level of public support (state funding per student down by 2/3 at the UW over 4 years) is healthy? Aside from noting that Emmert was a terrible President, your article and subsequent comments are woefully lacking in specifics about what state institutions should be doing differently.

More pontificating from TVD, without any useful specifics. As the UW students found in their budget review, cutting top administrators' pay wouldn't come anywhere close to solving the funding shortage. At least TVD belatedly acknowledges the need to close corporate tax loopholes. But why just shrug and say it won't be done. How about presenting a strong argument for making the people and companies that can afford to pay more do so, TVD, instead of continually arguing for cuts in safety net, health care, and social insurance programs hitting people who can't afford those cuts? What kind of protege of Hubert Humphrey are you anyway? Not one he'd recognize.

TVD's complaint about "constant pressure from public-employee unions, including teacher unions, for ever-rising pay and benefits and elementary- and secondary-education funding increases" is both inaccurate and gratuitous. It's another cheap shot at public workers, which is popular among pundits these days.

School employees know the global economic recession (which they didn't cause) has hurt our state budget. The Legislature cut funding for teacher salaries by 1.9 percent this year. The Legislature previously cut three teacher prep days, which is another 1.6 percent cut. The Legislature has failed to fund voter-approved educator cost-of-living adjustments for half of the years since I-732 passed. Funding for health benefits has remained stagnant, which means educators are paying more out of pocket. In all, the Legislature has cut more than $2.6 billion from K-12 public schools in recent years.

In January, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state is failing to fund K-12 public schools as mandated by the state Constitution. So yes, teachers DO think the state should step up and comply with the Constitution. So does the Supreme Court.

Maybe the Supreme Court can hold a bake sale, then.

Clearly no research went into this article. If you go to: http://www.washington.edu/discover/budget you will find that the cost for an undergraduate education at UW has actually gone down in constant dollars from 1990 to the present. A UW education is $400 less than it cost in 1990. At the same time state funding has gone from 70% to 30% of the cost per student. What part of this is so difficult for you, and sadly members of the legislature, to understand.

There has been an unprecedented public dis-investment in higher education and you want to blame the public school teachers for this?

My long and successful career was made possible by the Great Society investments in higher education and it is very difficult for me to watch students in similar circumstances today unable to get the support they need without incurring crippling debt.

Focusing on the salaries of a few administrators and coaches is simply a juvenile distraction and does not begin to deal with the true magnitude of the funding crisis. I don't think they should be paid as much as they are but changing that won't begin to address the real problems. Keeping faculty and staff salaries stagnant won't fix the problems either but no one seems to have a problem with that.

Offering students a second rate online education from a diploma mill like WG"U"is clearly not a productive option for the future either.

Offering students a second rate online education from a diploma mill like WG"U"is clearly not a productive option for the future either.

My understanding of the term "diploma mill" is that it refers to non-accredited places, or organizations that have no educational programs at all. Neither of those descriptions fit WGU, which offers accredited programs.

On what basis, therefore, do you smear WGU as a "diploma mill?" Sounds like pure snobbery to me. If you really want to play the credentialism game, trust me, I'd be more than happy to go there, given that my own educational credentials fairly leave the amusingly overrated University of Washington sputtering in the dust.

UW isn't nearly as good as it thinks it is. When the crackup comes, the only thing that'll get it through will be its role as a "safety school" for the Chinese students who can't get into Stanford, Berkeley, or UCLA. I really don't want to see the higher-ed system collapse, but I won't be the only one chuckling as the various provincial pretenses are brought crashing back to earth.

Well "NotFan" you don't seem to want to address the substantive issues on the true costs at UW and the decline of public support.

As for WG"U" unlike a real university they don't appear to have faculty who actually teach students (they are merely consultants who design canned courses). WG"U" has "mentors" who are the only persons who contact actual students. They don't necessarily have any expertise in the courses they mentor. And finally, the assessments are done by third parties not connected to the course creator or mentor. In my world this is not real teaching. How does one adjust the pace and content of a course when students need additional help or just find an area of more intense interest (something easily done when the creator, mentor, assessor are the same person and actually present with the students).

I witnessed a presentation by a WG"U" recruiter who indicated that although they offer a degree for the teaching of science in high schools they don't themselves offer an actual lab safety course. It was the recruiter's assumption that they would "pick that up" from their student teaching assignment. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a high school chemistry teacher, with thirty or more students in the room, to have no formal training in lab safety.

I also assume that your sputtering credentials know something about the Times Higher Education rankings that rank UW 25th out of 400 universities in the world. (Remarkable under the current budgetary conditions don't you think.)

As for WG"U" unlike a real university they don't appear to have faculty who actually teach students (they are merely consultants who design canned courses). WG"U" has "mentors" who are the only persons who contact actual students. They don't necessarily have any expertise in the courses they mentor.

First off, as much as I probably sound like WGU's promoter, I'm not. What has gotten me interested in them is that they are accredited and supported by several state governments, as opposed to the more typical online clip joints like University of Phoenix. I just wanted to say this in case anyone in this thread might think I'm uncritically endorsing WGU. The truth is that I think online education is the wave of the future, and that WGU appears to be a legitimate and responsible alternative.

As for faculty that actually teach classes, I'd argue that teaching has been downgraded for many years in both the big state schools and the elite private ones. Anyone who imagines that, say, the UW (or Harvard) is somehow practicing the Socratic method with its undergraduates is on some pretty nifty drugs. Therefore, given what higher ed actually is (and has been for a long time), I see no degradation in delivering "canned" classes online, as opposed to delivering equally "canned" classes in person.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a high school chemistry teacher, with thirty or more students in the room, to have no formal training in lab safety.

That's a reasonable point. Seems to me that the lab safety class class, or at least those elements that legitimately require at least some hands-on component, could be offered through a community college in cooperation with WGU. It certainly isn't a reason to route future teachers through a hideously expensive and unnecessary four years of physical presence at UW or a different university.

Most undergraduate education, and a lot of graduate schooling for that matter, can (and will) be done online.

I also assume that your sputtering credentials know something about the Times Higher Education rankings that rank UW 25th out of 400 universities in the world. (Remarkable under the current budgetary conditions don't you think.)

My impression is that UW has improved in rankings in recent years. But I'm a bit skeptical of many rankings. Law school rankings, in particular, have been pretty thoroughly debunked lately. A lot of rankings are based on absurd formulas that equate "quality" with excessive spending on elaborate, unnecessary, and irrelevant facilities.

In any case, whether you like it or not, very dramatic changes are coming to higher ed. The vector, as is so often the case, will be bankruptcy. It will start with the customers, and trickle up.

State universities and Ivy League universities are not competing on a level playing field. Ivy League universities have huge endowments and are able to gamble with risky investments. They were the beneficiaries of some of the financial trading that led to the recession. They are also able to take advantage of high frequency trading. One of the schools I went to had a 29% ROI on its investments last year. Hence Ivy League schools are very wealthy.

State ubniversities never had the funds or the ability to gamble on risky investments. Therefore the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

However, state universities are still trying to compete with Ivy League schools, which have inflated expenses. This occurs in the funding for senior faculty and executive salaries. The same with computing facilities.

In the early 1990s the president of my Ivy League university was paid $150,000 and given the president's house to live in. Now the president is paid $850,000. Here at UW the president receives not only an exorbitant salary, but also all kinds of perks.

In the 1990s professors earned less than scientists in private industry. Now a professor of neuroscience can earn $300,000 and the same scientist in industry might be paid $160,000. Executive salaries are similarly disproportionate.

It is not valid to assert that secretaries, librarians or K-12 teachers are overpaid. But executive salaries in universities are out of control. Universities should not be a fast track beyond the means of private industry. This could be remedied if students and their parents would go out and do some old fashioned protesting. When I was young, when students didn't agree with university policies, we protested them (peacefully).

There is one other factor in the cost of higher education since the 1990s: computers. Remember that in the early 1990s personal computers were not as powerful or ubiquitous. Now every faculty and staff member and graduate student needs a computer. Labs may have custers as well as individual computing platforms. System, network and security administrators are needed and hardly any of this existed in 1990.

So there are both valid and invalid reasons why the cost of higher education has gone up.

Clarify, no one in this comment thread is supporting exorbitant salaries for public university presidents or top administrators (on the other hand if you want top talent you have to pay the market rate, same as for any other market commodity, which should be obvious to the ardent free-market boosters among the commenters). But if you read the Seattle Times piece referenced above about the group of UW students looking at the budget and salary issues, you'll see that even if you had the top UW administrators working for free, it wouldn't come close to solving the higher ed financing issue. So let's move off that one:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018362862_uwbudget06m.html

Clarify, no one in this comment thread is supporting exorbitant salaries for public university presidents or top administrators (on the other hand if you want top talent you have to pay the market rate

It will be a very different market in the not-too-distant future. Massive bankruptcies among the customer base will hit pretty much all at once. The only alternative is for the federal government to subsidize student loans (hence the bloated higher-ed superstructure) by forgiving the debt and extending new credit. That's not going to happen. The states won't do it either, because they don't have that much money.

The crackup will happen so fast that many academic necks will be broken trying to keep up with the speed of the change. Enrollments will drop off a cliff, and then the fun will begin. Folks, the "great recession" isn't going to be some temporary event. We're in for a series of rolling depressions and restructurings. The residential real estate sector was only the first.

Higher ed is next on the list. I'd say watch the law schools first. That bubble is popping as we speak, and it will spread.

You are getting a bit carried away with yourself! Since the world is going to end on 12-21-2012, there is probably no need to worry too much.

Well, I suppose you have a point, in that I've painted all of this in such apocalyptic terms. You can be forgiven for thinking that I'm predicting the end of the world, when in fact I'm only predicting one hell of an earthquake. Of course, if you read the history books, you'll learn that a lot of the people who lived through the hellacious earthquakes in New Madrid, Missouri thought the world was ending. You can't blame them; the accounts sound like something straight out of the Book of Revelations. To some in academia, what's coming will feel that way too.

But, in the end, the higher-ed crash won't be as bad, sector-wide anyway, as, say, those dot-com stocks that went from $200 to $0, or those companies with valuations in the tens of billions that went bankrupt. But it will be exactly that bad for some schools (more than you think) and people. Sector-wide, it'll be comparable to the NASDAQ index, which topped out at more than 5000 in March 2000, and remains below 3000 now. Or it will be like house prices in Vegas or Seattle, which are very far below their peaks, and are currently held up artificially by the Federal Reserve's historic interest rate intervention.

Higher education will still exist. But the funding mechanism is unsustainable. Not in a minor, tweakable way, but in a fundamental way. It's remarkably similar to the housing bubble dynamic: easy money fueling a price spiral. As when the housing bubble burst, past loans will be written off. But the future? That's another story. Keep reading, if you dare.

Universities are acting as if the merry-go-round will keep spinning. From my having witnessed a few bubbles up close, I give higher ed maybe five years, give or take a few, until the wave hits full force. When it does hit, even though higher-ed as a whole won't be a stock that goes to zero, I think the denouement will look more like the dot-com bubble than the housing bubble.

Why? Because in the end, higher-ed does not deliver a tangible asset that can be sold off in foreclosure. More of higher-ed than people want to admit has about as much staying power as Pets.com, and much of its rhetoric is no more substantial than the Pets.com sock puppet. Also contributing to higher-ed's distress will be the high fixed-cost component, and the purpose-built nature of many of the physical assets. What do you do with a college campus, or buildings, when the college goes bust?

When it comes to colleges as enterprises, I don't know what sort of hidden value they might have, of the kind that corporate restructuring finds and exploits. The obvious one at many colleges is the semi-pro athletic enterprise. But the value is strongly connected to the college's ongoing existence ("Cougar pride" or "Go Huskies," etc etc) so it's a tricky issue. Much of the value is even more directly connected to sports betting, so I could imagine a more direct and visible connection being formed. Or maybe you palm it off on a future Michael McGinn and the Seattle City Council and King County Council. Politicians are almost always the dumbest people in the room; they'll buy anything, especially if you find a way to slip 'em some cash.

The professors and administrators are sitting ducks for a 50%-75% compensation haircut, and big layoffs among those whose services are commodities. And they'll take it, because there will be no alternative. But I don't think that'll be enough to rescue many institutions in the face of enrollment cuts of half or more, depending on the dependence on debt.

Some programs -- STEM, business -- will become even more closely tied to corporations than they already are. But corporations are more ROIC-driven than ever, so if you think all the duplicative programs around the country are going to be rescued, you should be prepared for painful disappointment.

All of this, and more, is what's coming. The world won't end, and higher-ed won't vanish. But it's going to be a different world, with fewer students, fewer colleges, less grandeur, and less public subsidy and involvement. At the elementary and secondary level, get ready for corporate-operated charter schools. They'll skim the cream and funnel it into their higher-ed STEM subsidiary. They'll smooth it over with some crumbs to the public; but that's all it'll be, crumbs.

I mentioned that I have witnessed a few bubbles up close. That's one reason why I am so unceremonious and unsparing here. Those of us who have financial experience tempered by crashes to earth realize just how unsentimental the Chapter 11 process is. Once the money dries up, the various forms of bovine effluent get flushed out of the room at a speed that those who haven't ever been there simply cannot imagine. It's a bankruptcy administrator's job to know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and they do it well. I've seen grown men cry, for real. After all, this is America, where you find out what everyone really thinks of you when your pockets are empty.

David, I can tell you haven't been there. When the receiver does call you into that room, figuratively speaking, my advice is to have money in the bank and a spare pair of underwear. Trust me, you'll need 'em both. They don't play games at the end of the road, so be prepared.

Those Mayans weren't too far off anyway. January 1, 2013 brings the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts, expiration of the temporary payroll tax cut, and triggering of the spending sequester.

(I don't really believe in ancient prophesy... I do believe in arithmetic though.)

Also I wonder if the true cost of UW's employee compensation is being assessed accurately. Washington State currently assumes a 7.9% rate of return on its pension fund investments. If actual returns are less than 7.9%, there will be additional costs which need to be allocated to somebody (to be chosen via the political process).

FYI: For those still interested in the subject, there is a Wall Street Journal story today (Friday, 6/15), p. 2 in the print edition,
entitled "Universities Feel the Heat Amid Cuts." It also is in the online edition, with following comment stream.

I've had a good deal of feedback, by the way, outside the comment stream. A surprising number of UW faculty members have checked in
to express their dismay at their lagging compensation as compared to administrators and other staff. Young is addressing the issue as a priority.

A surprising number of UW faculty members have checked in to express their dismay at their lagging compensation as compared to administrators and other staff.

Has anyone welcomed them to the real world? This economic system has rarely reserved its top rewards for those who actually produce whatever the enterprise sells. It's a hard lesson: Those who are associated with increased revenue get paid the most. If you're just a cost, you'd better watch your back.

I don't believe that administrators and other staff have tenure. That's worth quite a lot, I'd think, in this economy, but professors don't realize it because they haven't been in the outside world for some time.

Good article! I find that too many people are willing to cede the economic argument to the educational establishment, allowing them, at especially the primary/secondary levels, to freely tug at our heartstrings with “it’s for the children,” as if it’s heresy to insist on their having wise spending decisions. We elect unpaid school board members, usually with day jobs, to oversee those schools, yet don’t see financial documents, e.g. an income statement, progress on spending initiatives (e.g., on time and on budget, if not, why not), we’re just supposed to approve their levies. At the universities, there's even less transparency than almost none. Their administrator's hands are partially tied by the state’s archaic salary system for its classified (unionized) staff that requires meting out a 5% pay increase every 12 months to these employees until they reach the top – or 120% of average – most who are largely “average” performers, some who weren’t originally, but went there because that’s where the incentive is. These “step” increases are in addition to COLAs, when the latter are granted (not lately), and in spite of wage cuts (lately). For departments with enough of these inflation-beating, state-mandated “step” increases, that means cuts to materials and supplies vis-à-vis inflation. Then there’s the professors, many who have delegated teaching to graduate assistants at the UW. Check space utilization by time of day, and you’ll probably find few classes mid-day, yet new buildings for instruction still get built. In short, there’s plenty of material to work with here before just throwing more money at them.

Yes, I agree, a good article. I don't know who won the comments it was a lively and good conversation. Thank you Crosscut. I have to ask, does UW have a "diversity" vice president?

Mr. Van Dyke, you took a cheap shot at "for profit" colleges and the amount of student debt. I have one son that graduated from a private university and a second that is a sophomore at a public university. The public school son will have a larger student loan debt due to increasing tuition.

Also, whenever I drive down I-5 and see the big W on the old Safeco tower, I wonder if that investment was really a cost cutting move.

The problem is not electing the right people to the legislature willing to raise revenue to pay for our state universities. This is why I follow the Progressive Voter's Guide recommendations every time.

progressivevotersguide.com/2012/washington/primary/?src=CC