The spiral of disillusionment

The weekend bonds between public universities and communities.

Some context.

Earlier this month, I organized a convening to discuss ideas for policy aimed at strengthening regional public universities in Michigan. A centerpiece of the meeting was this report, drafted by me, Jay Grenda, and Barrett Taylor, as part of a project supported by the Joyce Foundation. The conceptual contribution of our report is the idea of a “spiral of disillusionment” that weakens ties between public universities and communities. In what follows, I have excerpted (and lightly edited) that part of our report. Take a look at it and lease let me know if you think this model helps to explain why public universities and the public appear to be drifting apart.

The spiral.

When public universities face budget cuts or a declining pool of potential students, they begin to compete with one another for scarce resources and students. Rather than focusing on their core mission, universities often mimic institutions they see as their more successful peers—expanding research capacity, attempting to lure students with new campus amenities, or investing in ambitious and unproven delivery models. These responses can shore up university budgets and contribute to waning public trust and further divestment. Thus, the spiral begins anew with additional rounds of mistrust, state divestment, and institutional responses that reflect prioritizing the bottom line.

To make our university infrastructure work for people, communities, states, and the nation, we must break the spiral of disillusionment. The spiral weakens the bonds between public universities and communities, complicates mission fulfillment, and strains the ties between higher education and state populations. The spiral may encourage policymakers to view higher education more skeptically and may call into question the value of higher education for prospective students and their families. Breaking the spiral is, therefore a key step in a realistic agenda of attainment and reinvestment.

Recession and competing budget priorities.

Higher education is often among the first sectors state governments cut during recessions or when attempting to balance a budget with competing priorities. From a legislator’s perspective, cutting higher education funding often makes sense. Universities can generate their own revenue through tuition while most other public organizations cannot. This common approach to managing state budgets causes disruption and uncertainty in university operations.^[1] Moreover, fiscal uncertainty is one of the factors that has pressured universities to rely more heavily on contingent and temporary instructional staff, which negatively impacts student outcomes.^[2]

Direct state funding shrinks as a share of operating expenses.

The costs associated with providing quality higher education have grown over time.^[3] State funding has not. Successive rounds of cuts, only partial funding recovery, and competing demands on state budgets, including tax cuts, healthcare, corrections, K-12 education, and state pensions. The result is a shrinking share of university expenses that come from direct state funding. In Michigan, for example, the state covered 70% of public university expenses in 1979, 51% in 2002, and 22% in 2021.^[4] Placing most of the costs of higher education on families and individuals runs counter to the state’s claims of wanting to increase attainment and grow the college-educated workforce.

Increased Tuition Prices.

As states disinvest from higher education, universities pass along a portion of state disinvestment on to students in the form of increased tuition.^[5] Tuition increases also reflect growing costs of providing higher education and the investments universities make in improving education quality. In Michigan, average public university tuition increased 8.8 percentage points over the inflation rate between 2012 and 2020.^[6] Michigan universities have sought to offset tuition price increases by boosting student aid, but the state of Michigan has been among the country's lowest supporters of student aid.^[7] Increasing tuition prices makes going to college a more costly prospect for students and their families, who are especially sensitive to increases in the sticker, or list, price of tuition.^[8]

Universities compete for revenue and recognition.

State disinvestment and tuition dependence mean that universities need to attract students who can cover a big share of the cost of education. University officials also seek to attract private donations and grants. Because there are relatively few students who can pay full-price tuition and only so many big donations and grants to go around, universities increasingly compete with one another. Competition encourages universities to spend more money on amenities, sports, and research, to recruit out-of-state students and students from wealthy families. Universities also devote resources and energy into marketing and public relations.^[9]

Engaging in competition for status forces an impossible choice on campus leaders. Universities can focus on recruiting students, diverting resources from their mission of student access and success and furthering disillusionment. Or they can remain mission focused and hope that funding appears to support their missions, which has proved to be an elusive wish in recent years. Choosing between mission and money undermines public confidence and furthers the spiral of disillusionment.

Growing inequality between universities.

Competition for resources leads to growing inequality between universities. The most well-known universities are more able to pass along state disinvestment in the form of tuition price increases, are better able to win research grants, attract donations, and expand enrollments. This does not mean that well-known universities are “better” than their peers, only that they win more competitions and become even more prestigious wealthier and more relative to broad-access universities over time. Michigan is one of the states that has experienced considerable increases in between-university inequality in recent decades.^[10] Universities with more resources are better able to serve their students. A likely result of extreme resource inequality among Michigan’s public universities is uneven opportunity for students depending on their public university.

Drift from mission into self-interest and self-promotion.

As universities become accustomed to competition, they can be perceived as self-interested and focused on organizational self-promotion. Self-interest and self-promotion may be survival strategies undertaken by campus leaders to improve their universities’ market positions. But the public may nonetheless perceive that students and communities are subordinated to the university’s bottom line—and, in some cases, such mission drift may occur.^[11]  The irony of mission drift is that few universities experience improved market position by competing vigorously for prestigious status. Instead, they pull away from their mission with little in return.^[12]

The public and policymakers lose confidence. 

Public polling shows that people are increasingly suspicious of higher education. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019 found that 38% of Americans believe higher education has a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, 61% believe higher education is going in the wrong direction, and a whopping 84% agree that college costs too much.^[13] Put succinctly, a majority of the public believes universities are too expensive and becoming too self-serving.

Public disillusionment with higher education likely compromises the goal of increased educational attainment in at least two ways. First, with waning public support for higher education, legislators have less incentive to re-invest, furthering the spiral of disillusionment. Second, students are less likely to enroll as the public becomes less confident in higher education. Recent data suggest this is already happening, showing a decline in both the total number of students and the share of all recent high school graduates who go to college. While demographic trends explain why there are fewer high school graduates, the shrinking share of graduates who chose to go to college is likely attributable to dwindling confidence in higher education. Analysts see this as evidence that college is “losing its shine” among the public.^[14]

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^[1] Delaney, J. A., & Doyle, W. R. (2018). Patterns and volatility in state funding for higher education, 1951–2006. Teachers College Record, 120(6), 1-42.

^[2] Umbach, P. D. (2007). How effective are they? Exploring the impact of contingent faculty on undergraduate education. The Review of Higher Education, 30(2), 91-123.

^[3] Archibald, R. N., & Feldman, D. H. (2017). The road ahead. Oxford University Press.

^[4] https://www.masu.org/policy-reports/masu-higher-education-public-policy-agenda/state-higher-education-appropriations

^[5] Webber, D. A. (2017). State divestment and tuition at public institutions. Economics of Education Review, 60, 1-4.

^[6] https://www.masu.org/policy-reports/masu-higher-education-public-policy-agenda/tuition-policy

^[7] https://sheeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SHEEO_ImpactAppropationsFinancialAid.pdf

^[8] Dynarski, S. (2002). The behavioral and distributional implications of aid for college. American Economic Review, 92(2), 279-285.

^[9] Salazar, K. G., Jaquette, O., & Han, C. (2021). Coming soon to a neighborhood near you? Off-campus recruiting by public research universities. American Educational Research Journal, 58(6), 1270-1314.

^[10] Taylor, Barrett J., and Brendan Cantwell. "Broad Access Institutions in Crisis? Institutional Vulnerability, State Divestment, and the Racial Graduation Gap." In Unlocking Opportunity through Broadly Accessible Institutions, pp. 213-227. Routledge, 2021.

^[11] Weisbrod, B. A., Ballou, J. P., & Asch, E. D. (2008). Mission and money: Understanding the university. Cambridge University Press.

^[12] Taylor, B. J., & Cantwell, B. (2019). Unequal higher education: Wealth, status, and student opportunity. Rutgers University Press.

^[13] See https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/08/19/the-growing-partisan-divide-in-views-of-higher-education-2/

^[14] https://hechingerreport.org/how-higher-education-lost-its-shine/

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