Funding not real root of higher ed problems

College students paying for an education in Pennsylvania are missing a key investment partner under the current budget: the government. Unfortunately for those students, their schools have plenty of alternatives in their pockets.

Public funding for education — specifically for state-related universities — is currently at the center of the Pennsylvania state budget debacle. Gov. Tom Wolf passed the current GOP budget to release emergency funds, but it does not give any state funding to Pitt or the other state-related universities, including Penn State and Temple University.

For years, administrators have told us that decreased state funding for education is the reason our tuition is so high. While this is a neat, logical narrative, it has one key flaw — it distorts the truth. More money from the state will not fix higher education’s problems, and only a reprioritized university system can bring true change.

Universities frame their case for funding increases by focusing on percentages. They emphasize the fact that public spending now constitutes a smaller proportion of the universities’ funding. This is misleading — a smaller “Public Funding” slice in a university budget’s pie chart does not correlate with a decrease in spending for education but an increase in outside financing.

Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote about the issue for The New York Times in April. According to Campos, blaming tuition increases on spending cuts is “a fairy tale in the worst sense, in that it is not merely false, but rather almost the inverse of the truth.”

Spending for education has escalated at a rate that outpaces other government spending, growing five times faster than the military budget has since 1960. During that glorified decade of education funding, public spending for education was $11 billion. Now it’s $81 billion.

Yet, in this same time period, student debt has ballooned. Students in the United States have accumulated a total of $1 trillion in student debt, up from $35 billion in 1985. According to the Project on Student Debt, the average Pitt student is nearly $35,000 in debt upon graduation — which is higher than the national average of $28,400.

But this doesn’t make any sense — how can a drastic hike in tuition parallel a rise in public subsidies for education? If universities have more money than ever, the problem cannot be lack of resources alone. The issues are systemic to higher education and we can see them in schools across the country.

The corporate tendencies of our universities have made this odd combination possible. As time has gone on, maximizing profit has become a top priority, often at the expense of professors and students.

We have put structures in place that leave universities nearly identical to corporate America. Schools have created invisible but ever-increasing bureaucracies that sap valuable funds. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the number of employees in higher education who manage people, programs and regulations increased 50 percent faster than the number of instructors between 2001 and 2011.

Administrators are often the top-paid members of the university. Last year at Pitt, the University gave up to 7 percent raises on already large salaries to administrators.

At the tip of administrative icebergs are university presidents and chancellors. As students have become consumers, administrators have become CEOs. In 2013, 42 college presidents made more than $1 million annually, and the median college president currently makes $436,429.

While traditionally, chancellors come from a background of academia, more and more university presidents now tout resumés from other fields. Take the appointment of Chancellor Patrick Gallagher, for example. He was a physicist who previously ran the National Institute of Standards and Technology and served as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce. Universities have placed a premium on management credentials and the ability to raise funds, rather than a record of commitment to intellectual growth.

While outside skills can be helpful, they are far from the most important qualification. Faculty around the country suspicious of outside administrators emphasize that a school should produce knowledge, not just profits.

Faculty worry that university presidents from outside of academia prioritize cutting costs without the years of experience that they argue it requires to form a full understanding of complex college culture, which values full participation of all faculty members and involves dealing with busted fraternity parties or student protests.

Additionally, though the Chancellor is set to make more than $1 million by 2019, Pitt faculty do not enjoy similarly comfortable salaries.

At Pitt, 66 percent of our professors are adjunct or non-tenured professors, which means that only a third of our professors are tenured. This is a drastic decrease since 1984, when 51 percent of our professors were tenured. The disappearance of tenure-track positions has negative effects on our faculty, as they face greater job insecurity and lower salaries. On average, adjunct professors make only $20,000 a year, according to a September analysis by The Atlantic.

Our universities are cutting costs by decreasing not only tenure-track positions but also full-time positions. Universities are hiring more and more professors as adjunct, or part-time, professors. Adjuncts now make up more than 70 percent of the total workforce in higher education, often making poverty wages. At Pitt, adjuncts receive an average of only $13 per hour if they are fortunate enough to find full-time work by juggling courses at multiple schools.

When the state budget finally passes and Pitt receives its cut of funding, it cannot continue to add only bureaucrats. That money must go toward improving the quality of the University. Changing the primary concern from management to education, not just adding money, public or otherwise, has to be a priority.

Students and professors are at the heart of the university. They are the ones who teach, and we are the ones who learn. We have invested in colleges with our tuition money, so it is time for them to truly start investing in us.

Alyssa primarily writes on social justice and political issues for The Pitt News.

Write to her at aal43@pitt.edu