Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[lightning]

Super Dinky was also intellectually feeding on itself. It accepted students that could pay tuition, but were mostly un-prepared and un-movitvated. The only way to retain students like those were to lower standards. This drains institutional resources because remediation isn't cheap, and also remediation creates an expensive assessment bureaucracy (Poly's job for a while) that is necessary to provide evidence to accreditors that the idiots that the school accepted were actually learning something. The high-performing students are turned off by the idiots around them, so they leave (or don't come at all when they see that their future peers have really low standardized test scores), marring Super Dinky's reputation for future recruitment of the high-performing students that make a college look good and attract more of the same high-performing students who would go out and do great things after graduation. The students that get through only because of lower academic standards, go out into the world with a degree from Super Dinky and flop on the job & tarnish Super Dinky's reputation further--and those employers will then no longer want to hire Super Dinky grads. Then there are the few prepared and motivated students who got a sub-standard education because the school and faculty were too busy coddling the under-performers, so they didn't learn enough to have the skills to be employable. So, they make the school look bad, and probably trash their alma mater. And, then there are those graduates that don't even land a job. They are living in the region complaining to their peers about how much Super Dinky sucked because they couldn't get a job after graduation (even though it was the students who sucked), and so their peers are dissuaded from attending. And then of course there were the students that were so lame, they didn't graduate even with the lower standards--they will trash Super Dinky and lower the reputation. Further doom--none of the aforementioned groups will be significant contributing alumni. At the end of this vicious intellectual feeding cycle, is a degree that has no value & that no one wants and an institution whose reputation is so bad, no potential students want to be affiliated with it. Add this intellectual self-feeding cycle to the demographic problem and bloated non-academic units draining resources, and it makes me wonder why Super Dinky didn't go belly-up sooner. Oh, yeah, Poly liked to cut academic programs there were not STEM, so maybe that bought her a little time, while she was sewing her parachute.

The moral of the story about Super Dinky that no one seems to mention, which I warned Poly about: you can't lower standards, for student recruiting and student retention, as a pathway to long-term financial success.

[Mobius]

My president, at least publicly, states our retention issues boil down to cost and the tight labor market. While jobs are plentiful in my region, good jobs are not unless you teach K-12, nurse or equivalent, or something like HVAC work. Even auto repair doesn't pay well.

Most students receive a Pell Grant. There are decent institutional grants available compared to other state systems. The local CC/vocational school is also hurting for students, and those students receive even a better deal on tuition. Higher ed in any shape or form in our region is a tough sell. If you can't compete against college-aged young adults lured by fast food places only paying $10/hr, I don't know what else a school can do since we can give a loan-free education to many of our students, or close to it.

[selecter]

Poly was not an advocate for lowering standards.

[Hibush]

My president, at least publicly, states our retention issues boil down to cost and the tight labor market. While jobs are plentiful in my region, good jobs are not unless you teach K-12, nurse or equivalent, or something like HVAC work. Even auto repair doesn't pay well.

Most students receive a Pell Grant. There are decent institutional grants available compared to other state systems. The local CC/vocational school is also hurting for students, and those students receive even a better deal on tuition. Higher ed in any shape or form in our region is a tough sell. If you can't compete against college-aged young adults lured by fast food places only paying $10/hr, I don't know what else a school can do since we can give a loan-free education to many of our students, or close to it.

This kind of market analysis is crucial. Who are the prospective students, based on the schools strengths, and what are their alternative choices? What makes the alternatives more attractive to these prospects?
It's not super difficult, but you are doing a better job than the president.

[Ruralguy]

Although I am not 100% sure that my school has turned a corner, we are better off in some ways, especially considering enrollment is a bit higher than it was, but still at a low point of the last 20 years. We have a significantly better endowment, and that has been aided with much better fundraising. In fact, getting better professionals in a few key offices was probably better for us than any faculty or programmatic changes (I know, heresy for a faculty member to say). Those offices were: Development, Registrar, Dean of Students, Career Services, HR, and Computing. All had so-so people for many years. Once they were replaced, this place functioned. This was actually much at the assistance of our latest President, and I think other than just the sum total of the money he's raised with the development office, probably these hiring changes were most critical. if he could get enrollment up before he retires, then he'd probably be remembered as one of our best presidents.

[apl68]

Although I am not 100% sure that my school has turned a corner, we are better off in some ways, especially considering enrollment is a bit higher than it was, but still at a low point of the last 20 years. We have a significantly better endowment, and that has been aided with much better fundraising. In fact, getting better professionals in a few key offices was probably better for us than any faculty or programmatic changes (I know, heresy for a faculty member to say). Those offices were: Development, Registrar, Dean of Students, Career Services, HR, and Computing. All had so-so people for many years. Once they were replaced, this place functioned. This was actually much at the assistance of our latest President, and I think other than just the sum total of the money he's raised with the development office, probably these hiring changes were most critical. if he could get enrollment up before he retires, then he'd probably be remembered as one of our best presidents.

Good that you're seeing positive signs.  Better-quality key staff can make a lot of difference for an institution, that's for sure.  Here's hoping that your improving trend continues.

[apl68]

My president, at least publicly, states our retention issues boil down to cost and the tight labor market. While jobs are plentiful in my region, good jobs are not unless you teach K-12, nurse or equivalent, or something like HVAC work. Even auto repair doesn't pay well.

Most students receive a Pell Grant. There are decent institutional grants available compared to other state systems. The local CC/vocational school is also hurting for students, and those students receive even a better deal on tuition. Higher ed in any shape or form in our region is a tough sell. If you can't compete against college-aged young adults lured by fast food places only paying $10/hr, I don't know what else a school can do since we can give a loan-free education to many of our students, or close to it.

Are the local college-age students that unambitious, or are the local K-12 schools such that not trying to tackle college may be the most realistic strategy for many high school graduates?

[kaysixteen]

Could be either or both of these, but never forget or underestimate just how much contempt for higher education has permeated the white working class.

[lightning]

Poly was not an advocate for lowering standards.

Yes, Poly was not an advocate for lowering standards, but Super Dinky was.

[marshwiggle]

Could be either or both of these, but never forget or underestimate just how much contempt for higher education has permeated the white working class.

It's partly a reflection of the contempt people in higher education have for the white working class.

[Ruralguy]

The mutual contempt, such as it exists (and I think it is exaggerated) , is due to mutual misunderstanding.
I think some people think all academics are studying Uzbeki Transgender Poetry or some equivalent of highly specialized thing that doesn't matter to them or worse. Maybe that's true to an extent. However, many people have specializations related to creating more efficient energy sources, or better vaccines, or away from STEM, implementing more modern methods of communication through the masses.  Even the folks with obscure specialization aren't usually teaching that many courses directly related to that specialization and are often not communicating personal interpretations into their teaching at all.

On the other hand, I think some academics are a bit snobby and look down on people who don't listen to NPR and don't really want to. They also probably have some skewed notions about blue collar work.

[Wahoo Redux]

Could be either or both of these, but never forget or underestimate just how much contempt for higher education has permeated the white working class.

It's partly a reflection of the contempt people in higher education have for the white working class.

OMG, Marshy.  Come off it.  Where do you get this propagandistic crap?  Can you substantiate this self-righteous plaint somehow? 

The working class is well represented in our colleges.
Most professors are from middle class backgrounds, many are from working class backgrounds.

Conservatives have been stoking class division and blaming "the elites" for [whatever] for generations by this point.  I'm surprised you've fallen for it.

How can you be so resentful about academia and work in academia?

[secundem_artem]

Could be either or both of these, but never forget or underestimate just how much contempt for higher education has permeated the white working class.

It's partly a reflection of the contempt people in higher education have for the white working class.

OMG, Marshy.  Come off it.  Where do you get this propagandistic crap?  Can you substantiate this self-righteous plaint somehow? 

The working class is well represented in our colleges.
Most professors are from middle class backgrounds, many are from working class backgrounds.

Conservatives have been stoking class division and blaming "the elites" for [whatever] for generations by this point.  I'm surprised you've fallen for it.

How can you be so resentful about academia and work in academia?

I rarely engage in substantive discussion here since trying to have a reasoned argument online is something I find to be non-productive.

That said, Marsh has a point here.  A good friend whose opinion I value greatly is a good bit to the right of where I live politically.  He told me for years that he felt progressives were at least as biased against conservatives as much as progressive folk believed right wingers were biased against them.

And the more discussion I see from the left about the ubiquity of racism (a term that has become a catch all for all the ills in the world), the belief that working class conservatives "vote against their own interests",  and "if you can't find a job there, fer feck's sake just load up your pickup truck and move to where the jobs are" the more I believe that us Chardonnay drinking, Prius driving, NPR listening libs have some serious self examination to do.  Our hands are not nearly as clean as we'd like to think when it comes to tolerating our neighbors.

[Wahoo Redux]

I believe that us Chardonnay drinking, Prius driving, NPR listening libs have some serious self examination to do.  Our hands are not nearly as clean as we'd like to think when it comes to tolerating our neighbors.

No argument here.

I am a registered independent voter and have been for 20+ years.  I am fiercely moderate politically.  I am from a blue collar town and am a product of state universities.

I am frustrated by a great many things the liberals do, many of which I have argued against on these boards.

But that is not what I was talking about above.  The conservative media has fostered the "entitled elites," us-vs-them, they're-not-better'n-us propaganda since I was a little kid.  Conservatives have milked this very teet until it has seeped into the DNA of any debate or statement about class; you just slipped in the tar pit above.

Meanwhile, our colleges reach out to first generation, veterans, rural and urban poor students in droves.  Marshy's comment is negated by this very fact. 

Sure, there is bias between political persuasions----we could also call that a difference of opinion.

However, one political faction stormed the Capitol, one political faction elected the worst president in American history, one political faction has convinced a great many people to vote against their own interests----all these statements are defensible without deflecting to the "liberals aren't as tolerant as they think they are" strawman.  The Republicans of this generation are not the Republicans of my father and mother's generation.  I need no self-examination to make that statement.

I was downsized this year.  This is probably my last semester teaching parttime in academia.  I am building a portfolio for writing and editing jobs and my wife is getting a certificate in a related field in case her job goes belly up.  We know about losing a career.  Coal is not coming back.  Timber is a finite resource.  We are fishing the oceans to the point of extinction.  Our factory jobs have moved to China.  Trump is not going to bring that back no matter what he promises.  I'm sorry, but sometimes you have to pack the pickup truck and move to where the jobs are.  That's life and has nothing to do with liberal self-examination.

[kaysixteen]

I do get that denizens of the faculty lounge in Berkeley do have a tendency to look down on those in flyover country, and that the flyover folks do not like this.   I also know that those flyover folks really do, largely, nowadays, eschew higher ed, and think that sending junior there is going to reprogram him to become a her, a commie atheistic one as well (even though many of those flyover folks are not particularly religious-cum-spiritual themselves, just resident in a region/ subculture where public religious identification is very high, certainly very much higher than in Berkeley-- indeed, one of the problems of the prog left is that, like it or not, it has hardened into some very anti-religious attitudes).   That said, 'looking down on' the white working class is not exactly difficult to do nowadys, like it or not.  Simply put, we are now often seeing behavior in this class that used to be seen only in the underclass).   This is not only seen in such things as illegitimacy rates, drug use, refusal to work, etc., but even in basic attitudes and public behaviors.   It is just not uncommon to see and hear such people doing things that their grandparents, members of the same class, would not have been caught dead doing in public, and mostly would not have done in private, either.  Imagine in, say, 1975, a 30-ish mother standing next to her 5yo in a supermarket checkout line, where every other word out of her mouth would have to be bleeped out on tv, where she reeks of weed, and where she is dressed like a sex worker, and covered with disgusting tattoos and piercings, with her hair suggestive of her membership in species H. smurfensis.   And this is supposed to be acceptable, and 'looking down on' such people is not?   I recently had a skank go through my wm checkout line.  It was a hot summer day, and she was wearing little, revealing numerous tatts, many of which could not even be covered up with a nun's habit.  I quickly noticed one tatt, which looked familiar, but I thought it could not be what I was thinking... until she turned and I saw a corresponding tatt on her other side.   It was a swastika, and the other an SS rune.   Were I a manager, I would have gone up to her and given her a choice between going outside to get some sort of coat or shirt to cover up, or just leaving, and told her that she was under no circumstances ever to let such tatts be seen in our store again, period, and this not open to any discussion or negotiation.  And I am not Jewish, not black.  Put simply, Jews and blacks, etc., deserve not to be frightened, intimidated, etc., by Nazis in public venues.   Similarly, decent people deserve to be able to come to the store, park, and not be harrassed by intimidating junkies seeking 'donations' in the parking lot.

Another interesting vignette from my lucrative pt retail situation also demonstrates the situation rather well.   We have a regular customer, a 40-something local white working class woman, really scuzzily tatted up, etc., who loves to wear numerous Trump buttons.  And then, we she is told what her total is.... out comes the food stamp card.   I have one myself, and support the program.  But I struggle, when I see her and other welfare-using Trumpanzees, to avoid shouting out something like 'hey brainless, do you really think Donald Trump wants you to have that food stamp card?'