BY JOHN McNAY

Colleges and universities are being pummeled by the financial impact of the coronavirus. Every day brings more bad news: cuts to state support, large deficits, questionable fall enrollment, and questions as to what degree campuses will be open.

Yet, amid the human tragedy, we should see the crisis as an opportunity for reform. Most of the nation’s colleges and universities have engaged in serious mission creep for years by expanding into activities remote from their academic mission. Sadly, for too many of our universities, education and research almost seem to be peripheral activities. And, in the financial strain of the pandemic context, too many administrations are foolishly hacking away at the academic mission. Now is the time for change.

More than 90 percent of college athletic programs are financial black holes. In total last in 2018, the public universities in Ohio lost $192 million playing games. Even Ohio State University—the football powerhouse—lost money. The University of Cincinnati, where I teach history, lost about $30 million last year, about the same as Houston and Rutgers universities. UCLA lost $18.9 million last year, Memphis and Arizona State both lost over $20 million, Sacramento State lost $22 million, University of North Texas lost $25 million, Florida International lost $26 million, University of Massachusetts lost $37 million, University of Delaware lost $38 as did Georgia State, and the University of Connecticut’s annual deficit is over $40 million. The academic side of the institution—the side that actually makes money—is pillaged to cover these deficits. That is, taxpayer money and student tuition and fees cover the losses. It is a national debacle.

For data on sports deficits: https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/.

For years, university administrations everywhere have ignored complaints about this mismanagement. Instead, our universities have created a situation where coaches are the highest paid public employees in nearly every state. This has to stop now. If even $20 million from the annual athletic subsidy were redirected that money could be used to give over 400 students a tuition-free education at most public institutions for four years. This could be used to provide additional opportunity to minority and/or low income students who face obstacles to access. And our universities could do this every year! This does not mean the elimination of college sports. It only means that they reform to live within the revenue they produce. With the right changes, such as slashing grandiose salaries of coaches, colleges could provide even more support for student-athletes. A sweeping movement to Division III would be evidence that our universities actually want to reduce this financial burden.

Administrative bloat is another problem. Academic administration should not be the pathway to the one percent but the salaries have skyrocketed. And administrative staff who never see the inside of a classroom today outnumber full-time faculty. Note that I’m not talking about low level staffers. Even the conservative Goldwater Institute has pointed to bloat as a major reason for increased college costs. The Delta Cost Project found that in 1990, there were about twice as many full-time faculty members at public research institutions as administrators. In 2012, the two groups were nearly equal. At many universities, enrollments have grown and spending on instruction has declined.

“The two big cost drivers are bureaucrats and buildings — obviously neither of those are directly going to the classroom experience,” as Forbes reported in 2017. In the Wall Street Journal in 2019, Philip Hamburger recommended in a column — headlined “Stop Feeding Administrative Bloat” — that Congress should tie student loans to the ratio of administrators to full-time faculty. Obviously, that idea, and others, need to be carefully considered if our institutions won’t undertake reform on their own. In truth, the best way to serve students is to reduce the cost of higher education so that students actually have the time and money to finish their degree and don’t face decades of debt.

For more on bloat see: https://academeblog.org/2013/03/28/remarks-on-benjamin-ginsbergs-fall-of-the-faculty/ and https://tinyurl.com/ycgadggd.

In addition, universities have created private arms that largely operate secretly. For example, many university foundations can now hide from the public how money is handled, such as investments in venture capital firms and hedge funds. The financial staff managing these foundations command large salaries as though they were working on Wall Street. And this is despite the fact that there is a good argument that a few broad-based index funds would perform better at a much lower cost. Many universities have also created real estate arms because money can be made—and lost—in real estate ventures. This is clearly pretty far afield from the classroom.

For foundations, see https://www.forpurposelaw.com/public-universities-foundations-secretive and http://hedgeclippers.org/endangered-endowments/.

The transformation of the work of those who actually make the university possible—the faculty—provides the revenue for all this extravagant mission creep. Thirty years ago, the vast majority of faculty were full-time. Now the majority is part-time with no health insurance or retirement and a fraction of the pay of full-time faculty. Further, many of the full-time faculty are no longer tenure-track and that represents a threat to uncompromised research and teaching. The result of all this is that the only part of our institutions that generate real revenue is now powered by low-wage part-time workers. That is a national shame that needs to be reversed.

For more on exploiting adjuncts: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/adjunct-professors-higher-education-thea-hunter/586168/.

As we often tell students, you should ask where your money is going because a lot is not going for your education. Decisions are driven by the corporate model where athletics is about marketing, public/private partnerships are about draining public money to outside businesses and consultants, grandiose construction projects are about show and not necessity, and the classroom is where they end up reducing cost. Obviously, the corporate model has not generated the efficiency promised and instead has brought about costly gimmicks that take away money and focus from education and research.

The time for reform is now. If we want truly public education at a reasonable cost, the state and federal governments need to step up to help with funding and to insist on proper reforms to refocus our institutions on the academic mission. After this pandemic, our institutions need to have backed away from these destructive corporate-style approaches and to have restored focus on the academic mission. Instead of describing and accepting every academic loss as “the new normal,” our colleges and universities need to emphasize that higher education is a public good, not a private commodity. This means a return to investment in students, full-time faculty, research, and all aspects of the academic mission that have been overlooked for far too long.

As we move into the post-pandemic world, our institutions can provide the life-changing education that we’ve always offered but it should be an education that is more affordable and accessible. That would be a real service to our students and our communities.

(This article originally appeared in Daily Kos.)

Guest blogger John McNay is professor of history at University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash. For the past decade, he has served as the president of the Ohio Conference of AAUP.