January 15, 2010

Can You Afford Students?

Jan. 15, 2010 at 01:42 PM | By Todd Gibby | Comment Count

It’s no secret that powerful economic forces are having a profound impact on colleges, on families, and on the process of students gaining admission to institutions of higher education.

Recently, a number of news stories have examined issues around college quality, accessibility, and affordability. According to yesterday’s Inside Higher Education, the advocacy group Education Trust has issued a follow-up report to its “stinging 2006 report that underscored the underrepresentation of low income and minority students at flagship universities and contributed to the pressure on institutions to alter their financial aid and other policies to reach out more to such students.” According to the authors of the study, the results are not promising.

Unfortunately, according to Steven Brint, things may get worse on this front before they get better. Brint took a provocative look at this picture in last Sunday’s Washington Post, in which his byline asked rhetorically, “Can colleges afford you?” At the risk of grossly over-simplifying, the thrust of the story is this:

As colleges and universities face economic pressures, they are being forced to make very hard choices about how to offset budget shortfalls. In some cases, they are sacrificing costly efforts to subsidize and enroll low and mid-income students in favor of students who can afford to can pay more. These decisions have broad ramifications, which are being felt today and will reverberate far into the future.

A few different metaphors struck me while considering the implications of these highly complex issues:

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Among other things, Brint’s article highlights the growing practice by top public universities of enrolling larger numbers of out-of-state students. According to accepted policy, these students pay higher tuition, and, therefore, tend to be wealthier than their in-state counter-parts. This practice has led to a range of reactions among residents of college-towns to the influx of out-of-state students, with many of those impressions being negative ones. As Brint points out, some Iowans feel that student immigrants from Illinois have brought flashy cars and profligate ways to the staid Hawkeye state. Similarly, social tensions have swirled around “coasties” who have come to the mid-west to “waste money” at the prestigious University of Wisconsin.

This reminds me a bit of John Godfrey Saxe’s poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” about the famous Indian legend. When six blind men of Indostan went to see an elephant, each had a different perspective based on his experience. Depending on which part of the elephant each blind man touched, the animal is described in turn as resembling: a wall (due to its “sturdy side”), a spear (its tusk), a snake (its trunk), a tree (its knee), a fan (its ear), and a rope (its tail).

Similarly, each university community will have a unique perception of its particular out-of-state and out-of-country population. But just as the elephant as a whole is drastically different than the parts experienced by the men of Indostan, so too is the aggregate story of out-of-state students. In fact, as a general rule, out-of-state students are not rowdy under-achievers. Rather, they are held to higher academic standards than those applying in-state. According to Mr. Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars in a January 9th, 2010 interview on National Public Radio, “That has always been true and it remains true across the board. In-state applicants have better odds of being admitted to their respective state institutions. So what we are talking about is not so much that public institutions are going to now favor out-of-state applicants. It’s just that they will take larger numbers of them than they have historically.”

If the men of Indostan were to examine an out-of-state student, one certainly might perceive an undeserving rich kid who is stealing a slot at the U from a deserving local student. But another might describe a financial boon to the university whose full fare tuition helps subsidize the fees of as many as three needy in-state kids. And another may very well see a diverse member of the community whose strong academic record and performance actually serves to boost the averages of the school. It just depends on which part of the elephant one is touching.

Paying the Tourist Rate

It occurs to me that the de-facto premium charged to out-of-state (or out-of-country) students in some ways resembles the dynamic that occurs when one travels to a distant country for the first time.

As first-time visitors, we almost invariably end up paying some sort of a premium “Tourist Rate” for all manner of items, including, for instance, taxi-service from the airport. Unless price gouging is egregious, we don’t even tend to mind this all that much. In fact, we’re often quite happy to be delivered to our destination without incident, irrespective of the fare – “400 Rubles? Uhh…sounds great(?!)”

Of course, you could try to haggle or avoid paying extra, but is the potential downside of an errant drive through unknown terrain really worth it? In most cases, no…everyone seems to be generally at peace with this arrangement. Or are they? One material unintended consequence of all this is that some locals are inevitably left without a convenient and affordable ride while many cabbies busily chase fares from higher-paying tourists.

Perhaps this is a crude example, but also a fairly instructive one. In many places, there is a high demand among ride-seeking tourists, just as there is among out-of-staters who seek great educational opportunities outside their own borders. A pretty powerful external force will be required to change their willingness to pay extra fees, as well as to curb those willing to accept them. And, although the out-of-state student issue is obviously well regulated with mature policies in place, this seems like it will become an increasingly difficult one to try to manage or regulate too vigorously.

The Golden Mean is…well…Golden

It also occurs to me that, as with most things in life, the “Golden Mean” can be pretty instructive here. According to one Fullerton philosophy course site, “Aristotle’s golden mean refers to finding a middle ground or a compromise between two extreme points of view or actions.” Under this philosophy, “compromise and negotiation are actions aimed at finding a link between opposing viewpoints of two competing interests”, and “it teaches people to love your neighbor as yourself.”

In truth, all of these issues seem to represent a complex balancing act that institutions of higher education and families of students all face: They are challenged to find the balance among access, affordability, and quality. The balance between convenience and value. Between admitting in-state and out-of-state students. Between competition and collaboration among institutions. Between financial viability and fulfilling a public mission. Between pragmatism and noble ideals.

In addressing this quandary, compromise and an ability to understand your neighbor are, undoubtedly, absolutely necessary.

Distilling it Down

A colleague of mine is the former director of admissions and financial aid at a small liberal arts college; and I discussed this issue with him this week. As he has a tendency to do, he was able to capture the complexity and inherent dilemma of this issue by posing one seemingly very simple question:

Pretend you are the head of admissions at a cash-strapped school. You have one slot available and two identical applicants. But one can pay full tuition, and one can’t. Which one are you going admit?

It’s a tough one…and one that is playing out to varying degrees all around the world. It impacts individuals in the immediate term and all of us in the long-term. And, while it is far more complex than is indicated by the simple metaphors above, it does incorporate elements from each. When trying to answer this question, we’re all trying to choose wisely. We need to; there is a lot riding on it.