BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s recently released their updated outlooks for American higher education. The news is not good. Moody’s revised its 2018 outlook for higher education from stable to negative “as aggregate operating revenue moderates while expense growth increases.” Moody’s vice president, Susan E. Shaffer, elaborated: “the annual change in…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Those of you who follow this blog have probably noticed that last spring I suddenly became a much less frequent contributor to this blog. The reason for my absence has been fairly straightforward. We began negotiations on a new contract in January 2017, and we still don’t have a contract. Our…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about how disruption will play out in American higher education. My hopes – and concerns – reflect a bedrock belief that America’s colleges and universities operate on an unsustainable finance model that must adapt to new realities. It is impossible to predict how many…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Last month, Rick Seltzer reported in Inside Higher Education about a brewing controversy at Oberlin College, which is facing a significant financial shortfall. The College, including its prestigious Conservatory, faces a multi-million dollar deficit caused largely by lower-than-expected enrollment. A group of trustees charged with looking into Oberlin’s shortfall found that…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL In a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled “Baby Boomers Looking for Reinvention Try College — Again,” Douglas Belkin notes that “adult students have been a growing force at universities for more than a decade – mostly blue-collar workers or those pursuing advanced degrees focused on getting new skills.” Looking at…
BY UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE LECTURERS UNITED-AAUP Below is a press release issued today by the University of New Hampshire Lecturers United–AAUP. Contact: Catherine Moran Phone: 401-439-1067 Date: Jan 19, 2018 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Durham, NH— Some 160 years of teaching experience will be lost to the University of New Hampshire because of a round…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the author of several books and many articles on higher education, including most recently The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. He serves on the advisory board for Academe. The…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the abstract describing a report issued this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Do School Spending Cuts Matter? Evidence from the Great Recession,” by C. Kirabo Jackson, Cora Wigger, Heyu Xiong (bold face added): Audits of public school budgets routinely find evidence of waste. Also, recent evidence…
BY HANK REICHMAN Faculty members in other states may be excused for expressing some jealousy of California’s economic and political success since Jerry Brown was elected governor nearly eight years ago. While Republican-led states like Kansas, Iowa, or Wisconsin continue to suffer slow growth and calamitous budget shortfalls and cuts, under Brown and a Democratic…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Swirling around the debates over the high sticker price of higher education is a deeper conversation about the broken financial model that most colleges and universities continue to use to pay their bills. While the largest universities have more options based on the scale of their endowment, fundraising prowess, and research…