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November 22, 2004

MARXISTS, MEET MARKETS:

High Bias:
It's time to bring some intellectual diversity to America's colleges and universities. (John Fund, November 22, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

One way to combat groupthink would be if donors to universities and regents began pressuring faculties to adopt an Academic Bill of Rights that would forbid university faculties from hiring, firing, and granting or denying promotion or tenure on the basis of political beliefs. When Mr. Horowitz suggested the idea be adopted at Colorado's public universities, he was accused of advocating "quotas" and "McCarthyism." He calmly explained that his plan eschews quotas and only requires universities to judge professors on their merits, not ideology. After several legislative hearings, Colorado university officials voluntarily adopted a variation of his Academic Bill of Rights to ward off a more muscular one the Legislature was considering.

Colorado has also gone further and adopted a reform that could serve as a model for how to make higher education more accountable to students and the taxpayers which pay its bills. Starting next year, the state will start shifting its higher-ed dollars from direct payments to universities to vouchers that will go directly to students. The idea is hardly radical. It is taken from the GI Bill of Rights, which is widely credited with giving returning veterans a chance at college through a program that won universal acclaim.

Debating such reforms is perfectly legitimate given that about half of the budget of public university systems come from taxpayers. Private universities derive about 35% of their budgets from public money, largely research grants. In addition, much of the student loan and grant money used to pay college tuition flows from taxpayer sources.

Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, argues that its time to scale back taxpayer subsidies to universities and move towards a voucher plan so that schools would have to compete for students as paying customers. That might also end the punishing double-digit tuition increases many schools have been imposing. Our colleges and universities would benefit not only from some intellectual diversity, but also some diversity and competition in how they pay their bills and how students and taxpayers hold them to account.

It's no coincidence that the last bastion of the far Left is the area most insulated from market forces.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 22, 2004 8:32 AM

Comments

And what's with tenure? Why can't I get tenure at my job? I asked my only professor acquaintance about tenure once, he went on and on about how competitive high-level academia is and how it's the "cream of the cream," that deserves extra job security. I never did understand it with my under-educated brain. However, maybe if you 86 tenure, the market could begin to do it's work. [this same professor opined that Bush's re-election was due to a coalition of the super-rich and "their unaccomplished and unaware tools"]

Posted by: JimGooding at November 22, 2004 10:39 AM

Jim,

Tenure, believe it or not, was created like civil service protection to insulate academia from the pressures of politics. What it has done however is institutionalize sclerosis.

As for the article, anything that gets professors into the classroom or out on the street if they can't teach is a positive. The average student gains little to no benefit from a professor who spends his days writing about trivia for obscure journals of zero circulation.

Make all but the obvious academic stars teach a 20-25 hr/wk schedule and watch tuition drop.

Posted by: Bart at November 22, 2004 11:35 AM

Here is another nail to stick in the coffin of left academia.

Package the same IVY league content (books, science, history, etc.) minus the left wing dogma, and sell it out of DeVry and other dynamic content providers.

Make the "buyers" sign waivers that they understand that the grading will be as tough as IVY leagues, but that they can keep trying if they fail (for a nominal cost)

It has long been my view that the money you spend a the IVY leagues is like the money spent on a Mercedes. You are buying the name. Yes, that is a "value", but how much of one?

Just imagine stripping the IVY leagues of their "obscene profits" and IQ pool by opening up their knowledge for everyone at a dramatically reduced price.

Posted by: at November 22, 2004 1:27 PM

Sounds like you're asking for MIT's OpenCourseWare:

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

Posted by: PapayaSF at November 22, 2004 2:57 PM

Somebody is going to have to explain to me again about markets.

Around here, Harvard is evil. Harvard is also expensive.

There are plenty of Cow Colleges that are a lot cheaper than Harvard. How much do you have to undersell Harvard for the market force to work?

Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 22, 2004 8:55 PM

Harry:

For some, Harvard is THE market. All the others put together don't mean spit. Of course, for this group, money is irrelevant.

It's all cachet. Like $300 sneakers. Again, money is (almost) irrelevant.

Posted by: jim hamlen at November 22, 2004 9:39 PM