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Education Roundtable with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

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US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined Governor Chris Gregoire and legislative leadership today for an education roundtable. Duncan congratulated state lawmakers on discussing the issue of education reform, even through tough budget times. He further drew attention to the grave problems troubling education in the United States—a 25% national dropout rate, poor STEM education, the large number of students taking remedial courses, and gaping budget gaps, which challenge the adequate funding of education.

Of particular interest, Duncan commented on the current system of education governance in Washington, claiming: “Washington has eight different agencies with different strategic plans working in Washington and it’s very difficult for me to understand how having different agencies handling education…will transform education.”

Governor Gregoire has bills in both chambers to consolidate education governance into one Department of Education headed by the Governor. The plan would also consolidate many existing state education agencies into four primary education divisions: Early Years Division, K-12 Division, Community College and Technical Education Division, and the University Programs Division. All units would report to a new Department of Education Secretary.

Secretary Duncan reiterated President Obama’s commitment to investing in education despite the economic downturn, and gave examples of strategic programs and innovations the administration is working towards:

-Investing in Early Learning programs like Head Start, which studies have shown to improve achievement especially for disadvantaged students who do not have many educational opportunities at home

-Continuing the Race to the Top program which rewards schools for outstanding innovation and improvement in education (if approved by Congress)

Lastly, Governor Gregoire distributed a document describing how much it costs taxpayers when students “fall through the cracks” of the education system– by dropping out, taking remedial courses, or repeating grades–a number her advisers estimate at around $ 100 million a year. Though the problems facing education in Washington state and in the nation are indeed grave, it was encouraging to see lawmakers pause during a critical week to discuss education. As Secretary Duncan asserted, “our children cannot wait for the economy to bounce back”—education must remain a priority, despite the dire budget situation.

State Budget Updates

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OPB published a new brief yesterday discussing expectations for the upcoming Washington State revenue and caseload/entitlement forecasts, and how both are likely to affect UW state funding levels.

**EDITED TO ADD: Note that after we released this information, the new caseload forecast was released and lowered the expected growth of caseloads for K-12, Medicaid, and Corrections. In particular, the anticipated impacts of federal healthcare reform lowered the predicted caseload for state-supported medical programs by $117 million in the long-term and $70 million in the short-term.**

Nationally, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) updated their analysis of state budget shortfalls this week. They summarize the challenges faced by states via their blog:

  • For fiscal year 2012, one of the most difficult budget years on record. Some 44 states are projecting shortfalls totaling $112 billion for the year, which begins July 1 in most states. (See chart below.)  This figure is somewhat lower than in our previous version of this analysis, largely because of actions that Illinois took in its last legislative session that reduced the size of its 2012 shortfall.
  • The loss of emergency federal assistance. Assistance through the 2009 Recovery Act and the August 2010 jobs bill has been a huge help to states, allowing them to balance their budgets with smaller budget cuts and tax increases than they would otherwise need to make.  But that aid will largely be gone by the end of fiscal year 2011.
  • A long road to recovery. Already, 26 states are projecting shortfalls totaling $75 billion for fiscal year 2013, which begins in 16 months.  This number will likely grow once all states have prepared estimates.

NYRB Assesses Recent Higher Ed Literature

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The New York Review of Books has published a high level review of the recent spate of ‘higher education in crisis’ books. In Our Universities: How Bad? How Good?, Peter Brooks takes a look at common themes contained in four recent publications on the state of higher education in the US.

Read the whole piece if you get a chance, but we have pulled out a couple of passages that especially struck us:

  • “On the whole, one has to say that the relative autonomy of the American university has been far more beneficial than the contrary. American higher education is a nonsystem that is messy, reduplicative, unfair—just like American society as a whole—but it has made genuine commitments to quality and to a greater degree of social justice, to the extent that is within its control, than most other institutions of the society.”
  • “Research and teaching have always cohabited: anyone who teaches a subject well wants to know more about it, and when she knows more, to impart that knowledge. Universities when true to themselves have always been places that harbor recondite subjects of little immediate utility—places where you can study hieroglyphics and Coptic as well as string theory and the habits of lemmings—places half in and half out of the world. No country needs that more than the US, where the pragmatic has always dominated.”
  • “[Universities] often fail, they need reform and course correction, but they are not, at their best, merely venal and self-serving. They deserve better critics than they have got at present.”

More on the Public/Private University Resource Gap

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Two higher education news stories leapt out at us this morning as emblematic:

  • Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett announced 50 percent state funding cuts for four-year public institutions. The largest institution, Penn State, would see its state subsidy reduced from $465 million per year to $233 million. The University describes the proposed cuts as devastating:  “A reduction of this magnitude would necessitate massive budget cuts, layoffs and tuition increases, with a devastating effect on many students, employees and their families,” said Al Horvath, senior vice president for Finance and Business. “While we have for many months been planning for a potential state funding cut, we could not have envisioned one so damaging to the future of the University and the Commonwealth.”
  • Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the University of Southern California kicked off the day with an announcement of a new, record high, unrestricted $200 million gift to the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The College will be named after the alumni donors, David and Dana Dornsife, who told the Los Angeles Times that they “had confidence in USC faculty and administrators to spend it wisely.” USC intends to use the money primarily to enhance the humanities and social sciences through faculty hiring, graduate fellowships and research funding.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post about faculty salaries, the growing resource gap between public and private institutions predates the Great Recession, which appears to be dramatically accelerating the existing trend. Read the 2009 Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) report, Competitiveness of Public Research Universities & Consequences for the Country, to learn more about this concern: “from 1987 through 2006 revenue per student in private research universities in every revenue category except state funding has grown to be multiples of that available to the publics.”

Public/Private Faculty Salary Gap Widens

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New CUPA-HR faculty salary survey results released today show that faculty at public institutions of higher education, on average, received no salary increase for the second year in a row, while salaries for faculty at private institutions increased, on average, by about 2 percent (compared to also being stagnant last year).

This trend is particularly troubling because the current economic crisis seems to be accelerating pre-existing gaps between public and private faculty salaries.  Inside Higher Ed reports.

State Budget Pressures Continue to Mount

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Here are a few interesting and updated resources on the current budget pressures being faced by states across the US:

  • This CNN chart shows, by state, projected deficits for FY 2012, ruling political parties, number of public employees, and whether most public employees have bargaining rights.
  • This NASBO document is continuously updated and contains compiled information on municipal debt, pension liabilities, bankruptcy proposals and other issues related to state and local government finances.
  • This CBPP report compiles information about initial FY 2012 budget proposals for those states that have released them, documenting a fourth year of deep cuts for many states.

GAO Details How For-Profit Colleges Exploit Veterans

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report and recommendations, DOD Education Benefits: Increased Oversight of Tuition Assistance Program is Needed, ahead of another Senate hearing focused on the conduct of for-profit colleges, this time held by Senator Tom Carper.

The GAO report focused on the DOD Military Tuition Assistance Program, which provides tuition benefits for active duty soldiers. In 2009, the program provided $517 million in tuition assistance to over 375,000 service members of which for-profit institutions received a disproportionate amount. The report addressed two primary points:

  • DOD oversight of schools receiving Tuition Assistance Program funds
  • The extent to which DOD coordinates with accrediting agencies and the U.S. Department of Education in its oversight activities

The Senators discussed the gaps in oversight exposed by the report, and also discussed the fact that Tuition Assistance Program revenue is not included in the calculation to determine whether at least 10 percent of annual revenue comes from non-federal sources, which is required for an institution to be eligible to receive federal student aid. This is a rule that Senator Tom Harkin has specifically mentioned as a target for reform in earlier hearings he has held on for-profit institutions.

Meanwhile, the association that represents for-profit colleges is suing the US Department of Education in an attempt to block new federal regulations, and House Republicans included an amendment to block the controversial gainful employment rule from moving forward in their recently passed budget.

For past OPBlog posts on this continuing story see:

Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Research Patent Case

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On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Stanford University v. Roche Molecular Systems et al.. At issue is whether the Supreme Court will agree with the argument made by research institutions to expand the current interpretation of what is known as the Bayh-Dole Act (1980’s University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act), which requires that royalties received from patents awarded based on federally funded research are retained by universities and used to fund research, education, and payments to inventors.

The case originated as a dispute between Stanford University and Roche, a company that required a Stanford researcher to sign a consultant agreement  containing language regarding patent rights (“do hereby assign”) that was stronger than the language contained in the Stanford contract he had signed a year earlier  (“I agree to assign”). Stanford sued Roche in 2005 after they refused requests to acquire a license to Stanford’s patents relating to the researcher’s work.  A federal district court initially ruled in Stanford’s favor, but that ruling was overturned by a federal appeals court, which determined that the Roche contract language  superseded the Stanford contract language, giving Roche a rightful patent claim.

While universities can be more careful with contract language going forward, a Supreme Court decision in favor of Roche could call  into question decades of patents that have provided billions of dollars in royalties to institutions. At the urging of the President and Justice Department, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In addition to the support of the Obama administration, many institutions and organizations have filed amicus briefs. Notably, former Senator Birch Bayh, co-sponsor of the Bayh-Dole Act in question, filed his own amicus brief emphasizing that the federal legislation was never meant to allow ambiguity about whether universities had exclusive rights to patents generated by federal funded research.

Monday’s oral arguments provided no clear indication of how they might rule in the case. A decision is expected by July.

Harvard Report Challenges Goal of ‘BA for All’

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Earlier this month the Pathways to Prosperity Project, based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, released a final report: Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century.

The report lauds the current goal to increase college participation and attainment in the US, but cautions against a ‘one size fits all’ model of higher education. The authors note that the US currently has the highest college dropout rate in the industrialized world, and they call for a renewed focus on career oriented programs and occupational credentials for the large number of American youth who are not currently served or even ill-served by the traditional two or four-year academic system.

The report provides best practices from around the world, highlights robust programs across the US, and provides a blueprint for greater government and employer engagement in preparing American youth better by developing stronger links between education and employment. The report does not question the value or role of traditional higher education but instead wonders whether we are asking it to be all things to all people and thereby failing a large number of Americans as well as straining institutions.

Higher Ed News Roundup

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The below are some of the non-Washington State higher education budget and policy stories that made the news this week:

  • Arizona: Senate Bill 1115 was passed out of Appropriations Committee after midnight on Tuesday. The hastily considered bill surprised many and would effect dramatic change in Arizona higher education should it make its way to law, including replacing the current state funding to institutions with a voucher system that would provide an as yet unspecified amount of money directly to the student, abolishing the Arizona Board of Regents and creating individual governing boards at each institution, and allowing for the addition of more state institutions, including making ASU’s East Mesa campus a freestanding Polytechnic University. Committee chair and bill sponsor, Andy Biggs, said, “I’m trying to get at greater autonomy and greater stability and flexibility to the university heads by having their own boards of trustees.” The universities oppose this measure.
  • Georgia: Budget pressures in Georgia make deep cuts and eligibility changes to the innovative HOPE Scholarship program likely. The current program is the most generous state financial aid program in the nation as it has no income caps and provides the full cost of an undergraduate degree at any public institution in Georgia for all students with a 3.0 or above high school gpa. Over one third of all resident students currently enrolled in Georgia public institutions benefit from the program.
  • Ohio: Inside Higher Ed pondered the role politics played in the resignation of University System of Ohio Chancellor Eric Fingerhut more than a year before his term was up.
  • Wisconsin: The revelation that Governor Walker was set to propose increased autonomy for UW Madison led to some fallout with the UW System Regents who support increased flexibility, but are troubled by the idea of separating UW Madison from the system. A special Regents meeting to discuss the proposal was called for today. In response, UW Madison produced a summary of the proposal and its anticipated effects to help quell opposition.

Also note that NYT reporter David Leonhardt published an interview with the authors of the recent book Why Does College Cost So Much?. We were pretty honored that Leonhardt recommended our summary of the book in the introduction of the piece!