How to Fix Higher Education
Get rid of all the people who don't belong
So it’s a tricky time to be a college president. You have to manage a weary board, juggle a wide range of responsibilities, and deal with constant pressure from interest groups. On top of all that, the higher education business model is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain at many universities.
This all invites an existential question about the presidency: Should it really be done by one person?
Oh, no Ben. Don’t go there. Don’t say that expanding the administration is the solution. It is a big part of the problem.
Fundamentally, there are too many people on a college campus who don’t belong there.
When I was an adjunct at George Mason, most of my students could not write or do math. Reading their essays or grading their exams was painful. I wanted to forward them to the admissions department and ask, “What are you doing?” It was the rare student who could actually think at a level that justified being in a college-level course.1
This country is sending way too many young people to college. Instead, they should be going to training programs to become allied health professionals, or electricians, or solar panel installers, or something.
There are also many faculty members who do not belong on college campus. Obviously, you have the grievance studies departments. But if you were to dial back the number of students in the humanities and social sciences to a number that is actually qualified to study those subjects, you would have to cut the majority of faculty positions.
There are way too many administrators on campus. It is not just the DEI bureaucrats who could be jettisoned. Many of the administrators are there to coddle the students who should not have been admitted in the first place. Tighten up the admissions standards and you can get by with fewer administrators.
There are too many ungrateful foreign students on campus. A lot them engage in rampant cheating. Some of them participate in violent demonstrations. We should only be admitting students who are motivated to learn. Stop taking unmotivated foreign students just to collect their tuition money.
The trouble with higher education is bloat. The student bodies are bloated. The faculties are bloated. And the administrations are bloated. If colleges and universities were right-sized, many of the problems with higher education would be taken care of.
Substacks referenced above:
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The one I can remember was Adam Gurri. His father is Martin.
As a former college administrator, my motto has long been "There is nothing wrong with higher Ed that a 50% budget cut wouldn't solve."
another area of bloat is people employed to handle compliance with federal and state regulations of universities - I teach at a large state university and we are accredited by dozens of bodies for our various degree programs, plus state oversight, regional accreditors, and DOE. Most of what our Vice President for Research office does is grant compliance. Then there's the office that carefully checks I am not taking anything not allowed to be exported (I'm a lawyer and economist, so the answer there is "no" no matter what I am doing) every time I leave the country. And so on!