BY JANE S. GABIN

Many have read the Chronicle of Higher Education’s latest survey of public university presidents’ salaries and are appropriately horrified: sixteen presidents make over $1 million a year. This underlines the overall problem with US higher education: too many people are making too much money.

Higher education in the United States has lost its way, and will implode for the following reasons:

1. Profit is considered above all else;
2. Institutions are administration-heavy;
3. Education is rapidly becoming too expensive, discouraging students; and
4. Instructors have long been considered an expendable commodity, discouraging teachers.

While some are still interested in bringing knowledge to many, others only seem interested in how much profit can be squeezed out of colleges and universities.

The numbers are even higher at private universities—twenty-six presidents each make more than $1.5 million (according to salary.com the average salary of a college president is between $238,000 and $436,000). These are just the salaries at the very top; administrative salaries are one reason college costs have risen sharply. In the Hechinger Report, Jon Marcus writes that administrative numbers at American colleges have more than doubled in two decades, “vastly outpacing the increase in enrollment”(https://hechingerreport.org/youve-seen-meme-actual-college-administrator-titles/). Add to presidential salaries those of vice-presidents, provosts, associate provosts, special assistants, et cetera. Another reason is the over-the-top cost of sports programs; sixteen college coaches make over $5 million each. British and Canadian universities do not have this huge expense.

Tuition has skyrocketed. According to US News the average in-state tuition + fees has gone up 211 percent in twenty years. The average for out-of-state went up 171 percent. And tuition and fees at private universities increased by 144 percent. , which has kept track of these costs, says that tuition across the board has been greatly outpacing inflation.

And where does the money for these huge salaries and high tuition come from? Mostly from students, whose educational debt has also skyrocketed. Wonderful that President Biden has forgiven $10,000 in Federal student loans to some; others say this is a “drop in the bucket” of student debt. Essentially, tuition payments subsidize those high and often unnecessary salaries.

One way of making a school more profitable: paying salaries (except to top administrators, of course) as low as possible. Why hire one professor for $50,000 when four adjuncts can teach the classes at $3,000 each? According to the AAUP, 75.5 percent of today’s college faculty are off the tenure track, with at least 50 percent part-time. Most adjuncts have low pay, no job security, few benefits, and “a lack of professional treatment and support.” It’s the “gig economy”; the pandemic has sped up the visibility of economic inequities, but it did not cause them. They already existed.

That the growing number of adjunct faculty has negative results for students is immaterial to administrators. Writing in Forbes in 2015, Dan Edmonds wrote that “underpaid, overworked and sometimes under- or differently-qualified instructors provide less-than-ideal instruction.” That was seven years ago. Nothing has changed, except tuition has gotten higher—and instructional pay has remained abysmally low.

Of 828 colleges and universities I surveyed, 214 had more part-time faculty members than full-time faculty members (the survey has not been published yet). Almost 30 percent of the schools listed have more adjuncts than full-time faculty. And a very high number of schools come very close, hiring just a few adjuncts below the number of full-time teachers. Do you think those schools’ recruiters—whose goal is as many applications as possible—admit their stats to prospective students?

Despite many reports about huge numbers of adjuncts working under poor conditions, little has actually changed. Even NACAC (the National Association of College Admissions Counselors), which communicates with both high school counselors and college admissions staff, will not touch this topic. NACAC does some wonderful work, its leaders good-intentioned people. But faculty working conditions, which the AAUP notes are students’ learning conditions, are “not a priority” for NACAC. This is very disappointing. NACAC’s thousands of members include the very schools employing those armies of adjuncts. Institutions spend considerable sums to join NACAC and attend its national conference, part of which is devoted to vendor sales, where booths pitch essay-writing guides, books on choosing schools, manuals on scoring higher, and freebies colleges can offer to prospective students. And the College Board, which also does fine work, offers its “Big Future” college fairs where high schoolers can meet admissions reps and take brochures (which omit much information) and those very freebies. Again, too many people are making too much money.

Thousands of schools are most concerned with meeting their enrollment needs—will they have enough paying customers to stay in business? So, they invest in recruitment, advertising (including websites), and information sessions to increase their appeal. Everything is designed to bring in more applications, and the higher the number of applications and the lower the number of acceptances, the stronger the school looks. “Higher education” is not involved.

One way the pandemic changed applications has to do with entrance examinations—with the SAT and the ACT optional at many schools, admissions stressed other criteria instead.

Many studies have already shown how these tests unfairly privilege those who already have advantages and pose difficulties for many, among them first-generation applicants, non-native English speakers, and those with disabling circumstances. But this will not continue. And the reason: too many people are making too much money from the tests: exam fees (not for everyone, but they have plenty of paying customers), study books, test-prep services such as Princeton Review, Kaplan, Khan Academy, and others, tutors, writing consultants.

Any wonder that students, faculty, and ordinary citizens can’t read about college presidents’ salaries without seething? “Higher education” cannot continue its costly trajectory. All administrators should return some of their high salaries in the name of economic equity. All colleges should forego inane extras in the name of economic equity. Colleges and universities should offer decent jobs at a living wage to all faculty.

When will people learn that “higher education” is unnecessary for all careers, that most of what passes for undergraduate studies is a huge scam perpetrated on the many by a relative few?

Jane S. Gabin received a PhD in English from UNC–Chapel Hill and has taught high school and college classes and published four books. A member of NACAC and SACAC, she worked for ten years in undergraduate admissions at UNC–Chapel Hill and for more than a decade in college counseling in the NYC metro area, most recently at the United Nations International School (UNIS).