Utopia U. vs. Utility U. The Unhealthy Divide in Higher Ed

Higher education has diverged in this country much like the wealth gap that divides rich from poor. The top colleges roughly equate to the 93 colleges and universities that have an endowment of at least $1 billion. Let’s call them Utopia U. If you are a serious or wealthy student, most likely you want to go to one of these colleges. The alumni network alone and the promise of future riches is reason enough. As the College Scoreboard shows, graduates from the top colleges, like MIT and Stanford, can expect to make far more than the average college graduate.

But Utility U. more accurately defines the vast majority of the 4,000-plus colleges and universities in the U.S. They take virtually all applicants, they have seen public funding (if they get any) stagnate, and net tuition hasn’t risen in years. In other words, they are being forced to try to do more with fewer resources. This is where most college students go.

Yet, in the popular conception of college in this country, every place is Harvard or Michigan, or the other selective universities. Everyone loves a winner, so each has long lines of applicants, most have huge research budgets, and all have endowments that only encourage more large donations. Professors want to work there, for the professional freedom they will enjoy and access to the nation’s brightest young minds. Administrators want to work there too for the prestige and the pay.

But is it good for higher education to have such a yawning gap between the haves and the have nots?

On the one hand it’s good. Those top universities have allowed the U.S. to gain its reputation for having the best system of higher education in the world.

On the other hand, those universities are like gated communities. Even at full capacity, the top 100 or so universities can accommodate well less than 10 percent of all college students. But they are not going to change that: a large part of their appeal is built on exclusivity and scarcity. This bifurcated system reinforces racial and cultural divides in America.

Even more dangerous, this divide causes higher education leaders to think almost as if they are in separate businesses.

While they breathe in their rarified air and dine on hubris, the leadership of Utopia U. says: “Let all the other colleges and universities be Utility U. Let them think the smaller thoughts, do the grinding work of educating students to be nurses and teachers and social workers. Let them squeeze a few more dollars by using classrooms more often, replacing tenured faculty with adjuncts, shunting students to recorded lectures and overcrowded study groups. We’ll keep making sure that those who already have everything get even more.”

How does it look from the other end of the spectrum?

If I am the president or a top administrator at Utility U., I am exhausted trying to stay ahead of the game. I am responding to the need for evening and weekend and online classes. I am trying to update my curriculum to offer degrees or certificates in newly-developing technologies and occupations. I am always trying to find qualified instructors with up-to-date credentials. If I work at a public institution, I am also responding to the whims of my board members or state legislators. When I have a spare minute, I try to raise money.

I take pride that I am close to the needs and wants of the majority of Americans. I see more success stories, where students came in with nothing and became something. But I have little time to savor them. And I seethe with envy of Utopia U.

Is this the way we want it to be? Is this the way it should be? I don’t think there is anything in the mission statement of Utopia U. that says it will only educate the wealthy, the privileged, and the lucky. Higher education is a non-profit industry formed to serve the public good. It will do us well to remember that as we face the future.

A great shaking out is on the horizon for higher education. We can see some early signs of class resentment that will soon transform into policy. The governor of Kentucky, for example, has suggested that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for majors in French literature. At least 32 states have in place systems that award funding for higher education, at least in part, on performance indicators like time to completion and producing graduates with degrees that are needed by the workforce.

There is a growing frustration with the aloofness of higher education. Universities have raised tuition year in and year out even as family incomes have not grown. The leaders of universities say they are engaged in the vital work of preparing the leaders of tomorrow. But ask the average person on the street what they think of universities, and the answer is likely to be some variation on: Too rich, too privileged, too disconnected from average Americans.

Judging by the debate in Kentucky and other states, the liberal arts are most under attack. Students who major in the liberal arts typically have lower salaries once they enter the workforce. Since students majoring in the humanities now make up only 6.1 percent of all Bachelor’s degrees, who’s to say those majors won’t be eliminated entirely on some campuses (even if individual classes in English, history and the other liberal arts remain)?

If you play this spending game to its natural conclusion, states are increasingly going to defund liberal arts programs that are seen as a luxury. The only way a student, therefore, can follow her dreams is to go to an expensive elite college or university.

Every college and university, no matter their status level, must realize that an attack on any university is an attack on all of higher education. Critics of higher education aren’t going to differentiate their targets -- they blame all colleges for the excesses of one.

Utility U. and Utopia U. need to work together to assure they are talking alike in justifying and measuring the value they are bringing to their students and the skills they have acquired, and defining other value, such as contributions to local economies. While Utopia U. has had every incentive until now to stay above the fray, it must engage in the loudening conversation, and help define why higher education is so important for everyone, not just the privileged.