Letters from Academia

The 19th century American theologian and author James Freeman Clarke is credited with coining the phrase, “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” Although higher education in this country is currently embattled on many fronts, that should not distract us from looking years ahead to figure out how we can prepare for new generations of students.

One of those upcoming generations has been labeled “Generation Alpha,” a term crafted by Mark McCrindle, an Australian social researcher, demographer and futurist. Unlike “Generation Z,” born in the mid 1990s and who are today’s college students, generation alpha consists of those born after 2010 – and 2.5 million of them are born every week around the world. They may be toddlers and infants today, but this generation will be quite different from the traditional college students we are used to seeing.

What will make the generation alpha so different? To begin with, it will be a very diverse generation demographically, and one whose entire education leading to college will be largely driven by technology. Just to give you a hint of the things to come, this summer we saw the emergence of computer coding summer camps for kids as young as 6 at places like Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These students will be much more tech-savvy than their parents, the current millennials. Also, expect them to be more entrepreneurial, and more inclined to create their own jobs. Educating this generation will require an understanding of the world in which they will be raised.

Fortunately, a book has just been published that addresses this challenge. It is titled “Breakaway Learners” by Karen Gross. She was president of Southern Vermont College and is currently a Washington, D.C. based adviser and consultant to non-profit schools, organizations and governments. She focuses on strategies for vulnerable student success across the K-20 pipeline.

Gross argues that universities shouldn’t just be reacting to the new students as they come in, but to actively plan for them. And that can be a tall order for many reasons. To begin with, despite the fact that academia is usually accused of being “too liberal,” the fact of the matter is that faculty are largely very conservative when it comes to changes in the current structures and mindset of their institutions, and that includes pedagogical approaches As teachers, we tend to reflect ourselves on our students, believing that they think like we do, that they are some sort of a “Mini-Me” of ourselves and that they face the same challenges we faced.

We couldn’t be more wrong.

Therefore, the challenge we are facing is changing the culture of our institutions of higher education. And if institutional culture is something very difficult to change, even in the corporate world, imagine how difficult that can be in colleges and universities where the professorate, which is the center of gravity for the institution’s culture, feels exempt to change by principles of academic freedom and tenure.

And now is when the leadership of higher education needs to be proactive and show courage and vision to initiate the changes that are necessary to be prepared for the future. To begin with, we need to emphasize a more diverse group of faculty members, and not just for social justice, but because students need to reference more to people who look like them. When I interviewed for my current job as dean I asked a group of diverse students what they were expecting of the new dean and they all responded, “That you hire more people who look like us.”

We also need to create spaces on our campuses where conventional wisdom is challenged, where we are able to tolerate experimentation, even if some of those experiments fail. As scientists know very well, we can learn more from failed experiments than from successful ones.

The other step higher education leadership needs to take is to encourage innovation in pedagogy across the board. Although I have seen some amazing work by the youngest faculty members using social media and other technological advances, we should be incentivizing new approaches to teaching, approaches that will work for students who are radically different from us in terms of culture, education and expectations.

To that end, we need to make an effort to understand that new generation of students, their background, needs and desires. Even today, students do not want to come to college to memorize a textbook or to listen to faculty standing next to a blackboard repeating what is in the textbook. What they want is engagement and hands-on experiences. They know that what they memorize they’ll forget, but what they do and experience they will remember. Good students want to be challenged.

We also need to be better at opening their eyes to career paths different from ours. As I reported a few weeks ago in this column, there are a significant number of students who regret their choice of major in college. In the final analysis, it is up to us to mentor them in the right direction and to teach them those skills they need to succeed no matter what career path they choose: critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork and communication abilities.

We must start thinking about how to make our curriculums more flexible while keeping an eye on the culture of the newest generations. That means stop thinking about rankings or the latest fads in academia. Is it going to be hard? Of course it will. Is it going to unsettle many people in and out academia? For sure. But if we want to ensure that higher education will continue to be relevant in the years to come, we don’t have any other choice. Otherwise, we will become dinosaurs, incapable to adapt to the challenges of today and tomorrow.

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Colleges Need to Prepare for Generation Alpha

In 1943, the U.S. War Department produced a 17-minute educational short titled “Don’t Be a Sucker.” The film portrays the rise of Nazism in Germany and alerts Americans against repeating the mistakes of intolerance made by the Nazis. It stresses that Americans will lose their country if they let themselves be turned into “suckers” by fanaticism and hatred. The film was produced to make the case for the desegregation of the United States armed forces by revealing the connection between prejudice and fascism.

The film became “viral” on YouTube after the events at Charlottesville, Va., because it teaches how to recognize and reject the propaganda used by the Nazis to promote to bigotry and intimidation. It shows how prejudice can be used to divide a nation to gain power but how such tactics can be neutralized by friendly persuasion and that protection of liberty is a unifying and practical way to live peacefully.

That hate groups chose the college town for the University of Virginia for their marches last August 11 and 12, is not surprising. The statue of the Robert E. Lee -at the center of the controversy- (located in Emancipation Park originally known as Lee Park), was erected in 1924 when the park was for whites only. This has been a location traditionally used to demonstrate “confederate pride.” Further, in 1921, the KKK paid homage to the university that would go on to educate some of white supremacy’s modern leaders by making a gift of $1,000. But there is an even more important reason why hate groups are choosing state universities for their purposes: confrontation.

To understand that we must realize what their tactics and how they mirror the ones by the Nazis. These tactics can be summarized as follows: First, stage a very showy act that leads to physical confrontation. That is what the Nazis did during their ascension to power when battling communists and others in the streets of Germany. That gave the impression that they were very powerful and big.

Second, look well-organized and disciplined. Although the hate groups that showed up at Charlottesville did not wear the brown shirts of the SA (Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party), they wore khaki pants (which are brown) and white Polo shirts. We need to remember that Hugo Boss made its fortune by manufacturing uniforms for the Nazis. From one brand name to another.

Third, use chants that will resonate with bigots. Members of these hate groups were chanting Blut und Boden (blood and soil), a nineteenth century German idealization of a racially defined national body (“blood”) united with a settlement area (“soil”). They were also chanting “Jews will not replace us.” The SA played the main role in the Kristallnacht or Night of the Broken Glass of 9-10 November 1938 when 91 Jews were murdered together with widespread destruction of synagogues, Jewish businesses, and buildings.

Also, the hate groups at Charlottesville marched during the night of August 11 carrying torches. SA used torches at their night marches for visual effect to intimidate their enemies. The hate groups in Virginia were carrying Tiki torches that because of being inspired by Polynesian culture it is hard to image having any connection with Aryan traditions. The manufacturer later stated “Tiki Brand is not associated in any way with the events that took place in Charlottesville and are deeply saddened and disappointed. We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way.”

Finally, generate violence. Not only it is a very intimidating act but also by having one of your own killed you can use that as a propaganda tool by portraying martyrdom. In 1930 Horst Wessel, a SA member, was killed by communists after which he became a major propaganda symbol and the lyrics he wrote for a song (later known as Horst-Wessel-Lied or “Horst Wessel Song”) became the official anthem for the Nazi party. Something similar was used by the Nazis after the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 when 16 Nazis were killed while trying the seize power in Munich after which Hitler was brought up to national attention. The Nazis later built a shrine in Munich to commemorate those “martyrs.”

But how about universities? These hate groups have tried to provoke violence by going to the places they consider as “liberal nests” (colleges and universities) to provoke physical clashes with people more likely to fall into the trap of engaging into street fights with hate groups. Also, they see universities as places where they can demonstrate their anti-intellectualism. When the Nazis took power they not only expelled Jews and non-conservative intellectuals from positions in academia, but also engaged in the burning of books of university libraries. As Joseph Goebbels harangued in 1933 during a radio broadcast from Berlin’s opera square, one of the places where book burning ceremonies took place, “The German man of the future shall not be a man of books, but a man of will.”

Hate groups today are following, step by step, the Nazi playbook in order to achieve notoriety and dreaming of conquering power. T hey felt emboldened after the elections of last November and their websites are reeling with joy on what they see as supporting statements from the president of the United States. After all, this is a man who, according to her former wife Ivana Trump, kept in a cabinet by his bed a copy of “My New Order,” Hitler’s collected speeches.

If you think all this should not concern you, remember the words of the Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (an early supporter of the Nazis who later spent years in a concentration camp because of his opposition to Hitler): “First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

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Why More Hate Groups Target College Campuses 

In 1982, seven people died in the Chicago metropolitan area after ingesting Extra Strength Tylenol that had been deliberately contaminated with potassium cyanide. Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer, responded by pulling 31 million bottles of tablets back from retailers, stopped all production and advertising of the product, got involved with the Chicago Police, FBI, and FDA in the search for the killer, and offered up to a $100,000 reward for information on the culprit, all while permanently discontinuing the capsules and developing tamper-resistant “gel caps.”

The crisis cost the company more than $100 million, but Tylenol eventually regained 100 percent of the market share it had before the crisis. The media appreciated the lengths the company went to and its concern for the public interest, so the company was portrayed generally in a good light. This is a textbook example of how to respond to a public relations crisis. Unfortunately, many in higher education have yet to learn from this case.

In July of this year the Los Angeles Times published a report that the dean of the medical school at the University of Southern California, Carmen A. Puliafito, had used illicit drugs and consorted with a prostitute before resigning from his administrative post in 2016. Video footage and pictures of him engaged in these activities in a hotel room supported the paper’s story.

The news was shocking for many reasons. Puliafito, age 66, was a renowned eye surgeon and is married with three grown children. He obtained his medical degree from Harvard University and had been the founding director of the New England Eye Center and chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at Tufts University in Massachusetts before becoming dean at USC. He had also been the director of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Miami’s medical school. The newspaper review of public records in the states where he had practiced showed no malpractice lawsuits or disciplinary actions against him. However, it was later revealed by The Chronicle of Higher Education that while in Miami Puliafito had settled an assault lawsuit and faced sexual harassment allegations.

At USC Puliafito oversaw hundreds of medical students, thousands of professors and clinicians, and research grants totaling more than $200 million. He was credited with raising more that $1 billion for the school and other causes. He was also a regular at star-studded USC fundraisers with the Hollywood elite. His yearly salary was $1.1 million.

Yet, he resigned under suspicious circumstances. Not only was he forgoing a very high salary and a very prestigious position, but also his resignation took place in March, in the middle of a semester, a rarity in higher education. The official explanation from his university was that he went on sabbatical.

The real explanation was that the video footage and photographs started to circulate in social media. In one videotaped scene Puliafito, wearing a tuxedo, shows an orange pill on his tongue. “Thought I’d take an Ecstasy before the ball,” he tells the camera, then swallows the pill. Ecstasy is a psychoactive drug. The newspaper reported that a 21-year-old woman who overdosed last year in his hotel room in Pasadena, Calif., Sarah Warren, met Puliafito in 2015, when she was working as a prostitute, and that they had become frequent companions. She told the newspaper that she had offered him methamphetamine, which he accepted. After her overdose, the police found the drug in the hotel room where the two of them were reportedly staying together, but no one was arrested, the newspaper said.

There was incredulity by journalists and over social media that USC officials could have been unaware of their dean’s extracurricular activities given the photos, videos, and other evidence that had been floating around. USC’s response to the Times story evolved rapidly. From a “no comment,” to minimal comment, to acknowledging that the university had received a number of complaints before Puliafito’s resignation last year.

The university response was unsurprising given the culture of many institutions of higher education that like to keep things under wraps until it is too late. Initially C.L. Max Nikias, the university’s president, stated in a public letter dated the same day the newspaper article was published that Dr. Puliafito was on leave and not seeing patients. The letter wished Dr. Puliafito a full recovery “if the article’s assertions are true,” and that “This specific issue is, of course, complicated by privacy rights.” Four days later the USC president released a statement saying “We are outraged and disgusted by this individual’s behavior,” and that the university had hired Debra Wong Yang, a former state judge and federal prosecutor, to “conduct a thorough investigation into the details of Carmen Puliafito’s conduct, the university’s response, as well as our existing policies and procedures.”

At the same time Michael Quick, the university provost, released his own statement, suggesting that the university received “first-hand” information about the former dean’s substance abuse and that USC had initiated a process of firing Puliafito and stripping him of tenure.

Interestingly enough, the Los Angeles Times published days later an article detailing the newspaper’s efforts over the course of 15 months to get university officials to comment on Puliafito, for which they received no response. Later the university president acknowledged that “over the course of his nearly 10 years as dean, we received various complaints about Dr. Puliafito’s behavior, which were addressed through university personnel procedures.”

That all this happened for so long and with someone taking illegal drugs who was responsible for patients’ well-being is beyond comprehension.

Apparently, the university leadership never understood that the best way to deal with scandals is to confront them head on, showing transparency, decisive action, and full recognition of errors made. But, instead, they retreated into secrecy and cover up in the false hope that their actions would protect a person whose fundraising abilities had brought so much money to the coffers of the institution.

At the end of the day the leaders of the institution were the ones who really looked bad by the way they managed the whole affair.

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When Secrecy Hurts Institutions of Higher Education

In 1969, President Richard Nixon formally declared a “war on drugs” that would be directed to combat the use of illicit drugs in the U.S. This and other “wars,” such as the “war on gangs” or “war on cancer” have come to signify major efforts by the federal government against something they perceive as a threat.

In past articles in this column I have written about concerted efforts by some groups and conservative media to diminish funding for higher education, defame college education as a passport to better standards of living, portray colleges and universities as “liberal nests” out of control, and promote anti-intellectualism. But now, in the last two weeks, we have seen signs of major efforts by the federal government to undermine some of the basic tenets of how colleges and universities, both private and public, operate.

In addition to efforts by state legislators in Iowa and Missouri to eliminate tenure in public institutions, now the federal government is working on weakening policies and practices against sexual violence and harassment on campuses and defying efforts by many colleges and universities to provide educational opportunities to people traditionally underrepresented in higher education.

Among the few things that were mentioned during the last presidential campaign about higher education policy from the Republican side was criticism of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Since virtually all colleges and universities in this country receive some kind of federal financial support, that means that this law applies to almost all of them.

Just two weeks ago The New York Times published a statement from Candice E. Jackson, acting assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education, in which she said that 90 percent of campus sexual-assault complaints “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk’,” or “‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.’” Jackson did not cite the source of the “90 percent” figure. She later retracted her statements after an overwhelming negative reaction in social media by victims of sexual assaults on campuses and from Title IX administrators at colleges around the country.

Then, last week, the same newspaper published the contents of an internal memo from the Justice Department indicating that it would begin redirecting resources from other efforts in order to investigate, and potentially sue, colleges and universities over admissions decisions that are perceived as discriminating against white applicants. The story reported that the department’s new effort was likely to be run out of its front office, which is staffed by political appointees rather than career department officials.

Again, the reaction was swift and intense from campus advocates and legal experts, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed colleges and universities to implement practices to increase ethnic diversity through admissions policies because it deemed that diversity on campuses has an educational value. It was also seen as an action aimed at scaling back the role the Justice Department has had traditionally in protecting civil rights. On the other hand, representatives from conservative groups welcomed the news because it fits into their long-held narrative that whites, males, and Christians are persecuted in this country.

A Justice Department official later sent The Chronicle of Higher Education – the main publication reporting on issues in higher education –a written statement saying that the memo was a “personnel posting” that did “not reflect a new policy or program or any changes to longstanding DOJ policy.” The statement added that “whenever there’s a credible allegation of discrimination on the basis of race, the department will look into it.”

Jackson, the Department of Education official mentioned earlier, also told The Chronicle that the Trump Administration was not pursuing any social agenda. Jackson has expressed in the past that she herself had been the “victim” of racial discrimination for being white.

What are the tools that the federal government has to push its political agenda? For one thing, it can randomly choose colleges and universities to demand extensive data supporting their limited use of race in admissions. Although institutions of higher education are supposed to compile such evidence already, scrutiny and fear of litigation may create an additional burden on those institutions. The government could then use the data gathered to sue the college in question and to attempt to re-litigate the case against race-conscious admissions before the Supreme Court in order to get a more favorable outcome for their agenda. This scenario would likely become a reality if the Trump administration gets to appoint new justices to the Supreme Court.

An even scarier tool the government has is its ability to withhold federal funding to those institutions that “violate” its agenda, crippling them in areas such as student aid and support for scholarly activities.

If we put all this information in the context of the current political climate in this country, with the Justice Department already threatening p to hamper financial aid to cities that have declared themselves “sanctuaries” against federal government actions to massively deport undocumented immigrants; its plans to curtail legal immigration to those who, among others, already speak English; its incessant efforts to control women’s bodies through legislation and the belief that some women ask to be raped by the way they dress, then you can see what kind of political agenda is behind all this.

The question is, who will speak in favor of those colleges whose policies are aimed at being fairer toward women and minorities? Besides statements by some little-known experts, we don’t hear voices from the higher education community such as college presidents, partially because they are afraid that the federal government will retaliate against their institutions.

If the federal government war on higher education has begun, where are the leaders to defend colleges and universities from its abuse?

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The War on Higher Education is Now Underway

Politicians and many in the general public ask, “Why do university faculty need tenure?” One could give many reasons based on history or philosophy. But sometimes examples prove the most powerful explanations.

Two weeks ago, on July 18, one of the world’s academic heroes passed away. His name is not familiar to most, but thanks to his work we live in a healthier world. His name was Herbert Needleman. Born on Dec. 13, 1927, in Philadelphia, he came from a Jewish family of modest means. His father sold furniture, and his mother, whose family owned a pickle business, ran the household.

He graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Pennsylvania in 1952, specializing in pediatrics and psychiatry. He went on to be a faculty member at Temple University and Harvard Medical School. In 1981 he became of professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

After medical school and while working at a community psychiatric clinic in north Philadelphia, Needleman became intrigued by young patients who – while they appeared bright – showed symptoms of lead poisoning, including difficulty in speaking.

By the 1950s it was already known that high doses of lead caused mental problems, even permanent brain damage and death. But what was not known at that time was how low levels of lead could affect children’s mental development. At that time, with the rapid increase in the number of automobiles running on leaded gasoline, with virtually all paint in homes and other buildings being lead-based, and with lead pipes running water, lead was, quite literally, nearly everywhere. It was especially present in urban areas.

Needleman started to study the composition of teeth shed by children aged 6 and 7 in Philadelphia and Boston and found out that kids living in poor urban neighborhoods had lead levels five times higher, on average, than those of their peers in the suburbs.

In 1979, he published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, wherein he and his coauthors reported that children whose accumulated exposure to lead was at the highest level scored four points lower on an I.Q. test than youngsters whose exposure was at the lowest level.

Further, teachers of those kids reported them as having a host of issues, including attention deficit and behavioral problems. A follow-up study by Needleman showed a correlation between high lead levels and delayed reading abilities.

His studies and those of other colleagues encouraged stiffer regulation of lead in gas, tin cans, paint, household pipes and other products. Today the federal health authorities consider lead unsafe at any level for children.

Needleman’s findings caused the lead industry to mount an attack on his research and character. He was accused of scientific misconduct. He was cleared of those charges but not before his own home institution, the University of Pittsburgh, conducted its own investigation and locked him out of his own files, putting bars on his file cabinets.

Despite the professional and personal attacks he endured, he moved forward and was finally exonerated of all charges, and his research became the lighting rod in combating the effects of lead and other toxic chemicals in the environment.

Needleman also stood firm on many of his other convictions – many that rattled the political and corporate establishment. In the 1960s he went to jail for participating in campaigns against the Vietnam war and became the head of a group called the Committee of Responsibility to Save War-Burned and War-Injured Vietnamese Children, which brought injured youngsters to the United States for medical care. He brought one of those children to live at his home with his family.

When asked about how he was able to keep his job despite all these attacks he had a simple answer: tenure.

Tenure is one of the oldest and most significant traditions in academic life. Although some people today see it as a labor issue, the fact of the matter is that it is rooted in the idea that one cannot be fired from an academic institution just because of unpopular ideas or research findings. Today this is what we call “academic freedom.”

The notion of academic freedom was first developed in medieval times, but has undergone a metamorphosis. Initially, academic freedom referred to a scholar’s guaranteed right to travel freely from one place to another in the interest of education. At the time, there was a great demand for people who could teach. Travel between urban centers was frequent. Later, the idea of academic freedom developed into the freedom to teach or research anything in any manner.

Unfortunately, there are some cases where the privilege of being tenured is abused by some faculty who, after obtaining it, significantly reduce their academic activity or use that protection to engage in conduct unbecoming to their institutions.

This is why the very notion of tenure is under attack. As recently as this year, legislation has been introduced in Iowa and Missouri to remove tenure from professors at state institutions.

One of the big lessons of Needleman’s life is very simple. Without tenure academics will be unprotected from political and special interest attacks just because their ideas are inconvenient to some. By the same token, faculty in colleges and universities need to make sure that such a privilege in granted only to individuals who can demonstrate that they are not only worthy of it but also that they are going to use that privilege responsibly.

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Tenure Carries Both Privileges and Responsibilities

One of the best ways to measure the accomplishment of colleges and universities is by assessing the percentage of their undergraduate students who graduate within six years of enrollment. Although most undergraduate degrees are designed to be completed in four years, the norm is to count graduation rates in six-year intervals because many students have to work (many of them full-time), while others do not have the adequate preparation from high school to succeed and need more time to overcome their academic shortcomings. There are many factors that can delay time to graduation.

Many states tie funding for their public institutions of higher education to improvements in graduation rates. That makes a lot of sense, not only in terms of academic achievements but also for humane reasons. Students who go into college and never graduate end up with student debt and without a degree that can improve their chances for a well-paid job.

Now a new study by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center is showing that graduation (also known as completion) rates affects different groups of students differently based on race and gender.

According to this research, only 54.8 percent of students who started at any type of college or university in the U.S. in Fall 2010 completed a degree or certificate within six years. In other words, barely more than half of students who started college six years ago were able to obtain a diploma. And when we look at the demographic details of those failing to graduate the results look even worse.

For example, among students who started at four-year public institutions, black students had the lowest six-year completion rate (45.9 percent), while the completion rate of Hispanic students was almost 10 percentage points higher at 55 percent. On the other hand, more than two-thirds of white and Asian students completed a degree within the same period (67.2 percent and 71.7 percent, respectively).

The study, titled “A National View of Student Attainment Rates by Race and Ethnicity,” and was published last April by the Lumina Foundation, a private institution whose mission is to expand student access to education beyond high school. This study was conducted among 2,823,678 students who entered college in the Fall of 2010.

When the study’s authors looked at all students – not only the ones that started at four-year college, but also those who began at two-year community colleges and later transferred to four-year schools – Asian and white students had a much higher completion rate (63.2 percent and 62 percent, respectively) than Hispanic and black students (45.8 percent and 38 percent, respectively).

This research also found that among students who started in four-year public institutions, black men had the lowest completion rate (40 percent) and the highest stop-out rates (41.1 percent). A “stop-out” is when a student temporarily drops out of college but later returns. Asian women had the highest completion rate (75.7 percent) and the lowest stop-out rate (11.2 percent).

In the case of students who started at two-year public institutions (community or technical colleges for the most part), the overall completion rate was higher for white and Asian students (45.1 percent and 43.8 percent, respectively) than for Hispanic and black students (33 percent and 25.8 percent, respectively). Students who enter community or technical colleges are usually first-generation, minority-represented groups that come from low-income families. Therefore, the inability of these two-year institutions to graduate students represents a failure of our higher education system.

As we know, one of the reasons why many students enter community colleges is to later transfer to four-year schools. They think that community colleges offer them a cheaper, and sometimes easier path into higher education. According to this study, the completion rate at four-year institutions for students who started at a community college (with or without receiving an associate’s degree first) was dramatically different for students of different racial and ethnic groups. “While almost one in four Asian students and one in five white students had completed this transfer pathway by the end of the six-year study period, just one in 10 Hispanic students and about one in 12 black students did,” according to the report.

Another interesting finding from this study was that the completion gaps between racial groups tend to shrink as students grow older. Among traditional-age students (under 25 years old), there was a 24-percentage point gap in the completion rates of black and white students (42.7 percent and 66.8 percent, respectively) and 17.5-percentage points gap between Hispanic and white students (49.3 percent and 66.8 percent, respectively). Among adult learners (those who started college at 25 or older), the gap was only 12.3 percentage points (42.0 percent and 29.7 percent, respectively) between black and white students and just 9.1 percentage points between Hispanic and white students (42.0 percent and 32.9 percent, respectively). This suggests that emotional maturity can also play a role in graduation rates.

There are several conclusions we can draw from this study. First is that many high schools do not seem to be preparing many students well for college, especially those with a large proportion of minorities. The other is that many colleges and universities are not taking good care of their own students when it comes to mentoring. And finally, that colleges and universities need to take particular care in aiding African-Americans and Hispanics to complete their degrees. To that end, they need to hire more faculty of color who are more sensitive to the needs of these students and who can also serve as role models.

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Race, Gender Play a Role in College Graduations

Until recently, higher education commanded a good standing in public opinion polls. According to a 2013 Gallup-Lumina Foundation survey, 72 percent of people in the U.S. thought that to have a college degree was “very important,” and 25 percent thought it was “somewhat important.”

However, that good image has been eroding rapidly. According to the results of a 2016 survey funded by the Kresge Foundation, Americans are increasingly uncertain about the necessity of college for success in the workforce. When asked the question, “Do you think that a college education is necessary for a person to be successful in today’s work world?” only 42 percent of Americans said that college is necessary for workforce success – a 13 percent drop from a similar survey in 2009. Fifty-seven percent of Americans said that there are many ways to succeed in today’s world without a college degree, 14 percent lower than in 2009.

Now another poll is giving us even worse news, and shows just how split this country is along party lines. According to a Pew Research Center poll released just last week, Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on the impact of several of the nation’s leading institutions, including the news media, colleges and universities and churches and religious organizations. And the gap in these views is significantly wider today than it was just a year ago.

According to the poll, while 55 percent of the American public think that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the nation, a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58 percent) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45 percent last year. Seventy-two percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic, on the other hand, say that colleges and universities have a positive effect, which is little changed from recent years.

What is particularly stunning about this poll is how rapidly Republicans and those who lean Republican have changed their opinion about colleges and universities. Just two years ago, most Republicans and Republican leaners held a positive view of the role of higher education (54 percent of Republicans said colleges and universities had a positive impact on the way things were going in the country, while 37 percent rated their impact negatively). Just a year later Republicans’ ratings of colleges and universities were mixed (43 percent positive and 45 percent negative). Now, for the first time, 58 percent say colleges and universities are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, with only 36 percent saying that they have a positive effect.

Opinions also differed within party affiliation. Sixty-five percent of conservative Republicans said that colleges are having a negative impact, compared with just 43 percent of moderate Republicans. On the other hand, liberal and moderate Democrats said college has a positive impact (79 and 67 percent respectively).

So why is public opinion about the value of higher education changing so fast, and why is it so separated along party lines? First of all, we need to remember that bad news about higher education has been front and center in all kinds of media outlets.

Whether it is their affordability, scandals, race relations, or issues of free speech, colleges and universities have been the recipients of very bad press. Some colleges and universities have seen their enrollments drop dramatically after being the focus of media attention.

Just a couple of weeks ago it was reported that the University of Missouri-Columbia showed a decrease in freshman enrollment of 35 percent over the past two years after the highly publicized racial incidents that took place there in 2015. Decreases in enrollment on other campus have also been tied to other incidents reported in the media.

Another factor that we must take into consideration is the fact that conservative media have become more assertive in reporting on these incidents and blaming them – correctly or not – on so-called “liberal” ideologies. Given that the American public is increasingly obtaining their news from media they feel most closely align with their ideology, it’s no wonder that this partisan rift in public opinion about colleges and universities is becoming wider and wider

This divide in opinion along party lines can have serious consequences. With private institutions totally, and public institutions increasingly dependent upon tuition to be able to survive, decreases in enrollment can be devastating. The other important factor is that the Trump Administration, which leans even further right that the Republican party as a whole, has shown less inclination to support colleges and universities.

But let’s face it. Many colleges and universities have brought this situation on themselves. As expressed in this column a few weeks ago, the leadership of these institutions has allowed incidents to occur that were totally unnecessary, such as banning speakers who do not conform with their ideology.

They have made themselves easy targets for the conservative media.

Another problem has been the way they have handled their marketing in general, emphasizing meaningless rankings or sports events over the benefits of a higher education for both individuals and society. It is time for the leadership of these institutions to realize that education cannot be sold using marketing techniques more appropriate for toothpaste or laundry detergent.

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Higher Education Opinions Divided Among Party Lines

If there is a statistic that all college administrators look at every year it is enrollments, the bread and butter of higher education for multiple reasons. First, all private colleges – and increasingly public ones – depend upon students enrolling in order to maintain the financial flow to their institutions. Second, many public institutions have their state budget tied to the number of students they enroll. Third, the attractiveness of an institution of higher education is partly based on its enrollment success. No wonder everybody looks at those numbers every year with apprehension.

Enrollment numbers for the spring semester of 2017 have just been released, and they are not good news in most cases. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which tracks 97 percent of students at federal aid-eligible institutions, found an overall national decline of 1.5 percent for this spring semester compared to a year ago. That means 272,000 fewer students were enrolled nationwide.

And this is not an isolated bump. The year when this country had the largest enrollment in degree-granting institutions of higher education was 2010 when the total enrollment was 21,019,438. Today the number is 18,071,004, a reduction of nearly 16 percent in seven years. Last year the decline was 1.3 percent and the year before that 1.9 percent. A closer look at the whole report gives us an indication of where the problems reside.

First, the decline is most pronounced among older undergraduates at for-profit institutions (10.1 percent decline) and community colleges (2.5 percent decline). In the case of the former the report showed a decrease of 244,000 students over the age of 24. That is actually good news. The for-profit sector of higher education is responsible for the greatest amount of student debt in this country, while the quality of the education is not comparable with that of either public or not-for-profit private institutions.

Changes for the other two major types of higher education institutions were minimal. In the case of four-year public institutions there was an increase of 0.2 percent, while enrollment at four-year private institutions went down by 0.2 percent.

When it comes to graduate students we have seen an increase in enrollment of 1.1 percent during the last year across the board with only the four-year, for-profit ones showing a decrease of 1.2 percent.

Across the board the greatest decrease has been seen for students over 24 years old. This may reflect the fact that the economy is doing well and the unemployment levels – the main driving force for non-traditional students to go back to school – is pushing fewer of them to go to college.

When it comes to gender, most of the decrease is among males (2.1 percent). In fact, the U.S. shows a larger proportion of females than males in college (10,352,322 vs. 7,718,682).

When it comes to geography, the state with the largest growth was New Hampshire, with a 16.2 percent increase in enrollment. The state with the largest decline was Alaska, with a 5.8 percent decrease.

Regarding specific subjects, the largest increase for four-year institutions was in the liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities with a 6.9 percent increase. The biggest decrease for the same category of institutions was in foreign languages, literatures and linguistics, with a 6.7 percent decline.

So, what does all this mean?

First and foremost, many states, particularly in the Midwest, are showing a decrease in the number of high school graduates, the main pipeline for college. No wonder all those sates show a decline of enrollment between 1 and 4 percent. In the past these declines have been compensated by the aggressive recruitment of international students, but the jury is still out on whether the level of enrollments of people who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents will aid enrollments for the upcoming fall semester. The report does not include international students because this organization feels that they do not have robust enough data in that area.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, the good state of the economy hurts college enrollment. If people feel that they do not need further education in order to get a job, they will not spend time and money going to college.

However, there are other factors that we need to consider as having potential effects on decreased enrollments. One is student debt. So much has been made of this problem that many do not go to college just to avoid long-term financial debt, despite the fact that federal financial aid increased during the Obama administration and that many states have pushed forward the idea of tuition-free college.

Another factor could be the relentless bad press that higher education has been receiving in the last few years for being politically “too liberal”, or being “irrelevant” to get a good job, despite the fact that multiple studies have shown that a college degree increases significantly one’s lifetime income.

The other aspect we need to consider is that against conventional wisdom not all high school graduates go straight to college. According to figures for 2014 (the last year for which we have statistics in this regard) only 68.4 percent of high school graduates go straight to college.

Although there are no comprehensive studies analyzing the reasons for the gap between graduating from high school and entering directly into college, there is anecdotal evidence that seems to indicate some of the reasons. One is that for many women the only path after high school is college. That is not the case for men, who are usually benefited by gender biases when it comes to job attainment. That could also be the case for students that come from homes where their parents lack a college education. Finally, many complain that there is not good enough information about what to study in college. As pointed out in a previous article in this column, about one-third of college graduates and drop-outs say they would have chosen a different major if they had known then what they know now.

So, yes, colleges and universities need to do a better job informing high school students of their options and the benefit of having a higher education degree.

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College Enrollments Continue National Decline

Despite the fact that the leadership of colleges and universities in this country is in dire need of fresh ideas, a report released last week by the American Council on Education (ACE) shows that the people in these positions continue to be largely white, male – and getting older. And while women represent the majority of undergraduate and graduate students in this country and that the number of minorities attending colleges and universities keeps growing and will continue to grow in the years to come, by 2016 less than a third of college presidents were women and less than a fifth were members of any ethnic minority.

The ACE report found that the average president was 61.7 years old, up from 60.7 years old in 2011 and 59.9 years old in 2006. Also, there is an increasing proportion of leaders (nearly a fourth) who had already led other colleges and universities. This seems to indicate that the people in charge of selecting college presidents care more about experience than new ideas.

Further analysis of the results of this study shows other tendencies. For example, the kinds of institutions with the largest percentage of women are community colleges (36 percent) compared to 27.3 percent of private nonprofits. Also, almost all of the changes in the proportion of minorities came from an increase in AfricanAmerican leaders, growing from 5.9 percent in 2016 to 7.9 percent last year. This accounts for very little growth in diversity despite the fact that the number of colleges and universities that claim to be minority serving institutions (colleges with 25 percent of their undergraduate enrollment being minorities of a particular group), keeps increasing. And despite the fact that Spanish-speaking people constitute the fastest growing minority in the U.S., the increase in the proportion of Latino presidents grew from 3.8 percent five years ago to only 3.9 last year, while the percentage of Asian-American presidents grew slightly to 2.3 percent from 1.5 percent for the same period.

There is also a great disparity in minority representation based on the type of institution. According to the ACE study, 22.3 percent of public colleges and universities are being led by a minority president, while that is only the case at 10.6 percent of private, non-profit institutions. Once we exclude minority-serving institutions, that means that only 11 percent of college presidents are minorities.

What is really shocking is that fewer minority-serving institutions are being led by minority presidents. They constituted 53 percent in 2011, but only 36 percent last year.

Other data in the report are also of concern. For example, the percentage of Hispanic presidents who were women dropped significantly from 38.7 percent 2011 to 21.7 percent in 2016, while the proportion of African-American women being presidents remained identical for the same period of time.

When it comes to age, the pattern is also regressive. The proportion of presidents age 71 or older grew from 5 percent in 2011 to 11 percent in 2016, while the average tenure of a college president in their current job was 6.5 years in 2016, down from seven years in 2011 and 8.5 years in 2006.

Another interesting trend is the reduction in the proportion of presidents hired from outside the academy.

It was 13 percent in 2006, 20 percent in 2011, and now is only 15 percent. This may be due to the numerous incidents and even scandals that have occurred when presidents without experience in higher education have shown a gross lack of understanding of the nature of college and universities when compared with the corporate world or government.

This study, titled “American College President Study” has been carried out periodically since 1986 and allows us to gain a historical perspective about the demographics of the leadership of higher education in the U.S. For this edition, they surveyed more than 1,500 colleges and universities.

Why it is important that we look at these numbers? The reasons are many. It is not just a matter of social justice, but a matter of dealing with the multiple challenges faced by colleges and universities these days. When it comes to issues such as lowering budgets, lack of innovation, and public image, what higher education needs are new and fresh ideas, not the same old same old. To that end, we need people who have backgrounds, skills, and experiences different from the typical presidents of the last few years. Also, more and more students of color are demanding to see more people both at the faculty and at the top administration levels who look like them, perhaps the key to lessen the racial issues that have hounded many campuses in the last few years. After all, 56 percent of presidents reported in this study that the racial climate on their campuses was more of a priority than it had been in the past three years.

Who has the responsibility for making significant changes in these areas? Basically, boards of trustees. They need to show more courage in selecting people other than older white males. If they want their institutions not only to survive but even to thrive in these difficult times for higher education, they need to look seriously into people who are different from themselves.

To pretend that the same kind of people will deal effectively with the growing problems at colleges and universities is just wishful thinking. You cannot get different results by doing the same thing again and again

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College Presidents Mostly White and Aging

For many of us in higher education, the staff that work at colleges and universities are unsung heroes. After all, most faculty are protected by tenure and academic freedom. Administrators also have a great deal of autonomy and job security. Yet, staff members –whether a department secretary or someone working out of the sight of most people – are usually badly paid, lack many opportunities for advancement and can oftentimes be dismissed rather easily.

Faculty, administrators, and students are all part of the public consciousness, but little is known about staff. Now a new report is shedding some light about these little known, but invaluable people.

A study titled “Staff in Higher Education Salary Report: Key Findings, Trends, and Comprehensive Tables for the 2016-17 Academic Year” published last May is providing some very interesting and sometimes surprising information.

Among the findings are that higher education staff have an annualized median pay of $35,000, hardly enough to sustain a family unless someone else in the household is also working. Among them, the skilled craft workers are the highest paid, and service/maintenance workers the lowest.

As expected, there is also a great deal of geographic variation when it comes to salaries, with schools in the Northeast paying the most and those in the South paying the least. Yet, once adjusted for cost of living the salaries come out to be about the same.

One surprising finding is that racial/ethnic minorities are underrepresented in college and university staffs in all but service/maintenance positions. Although women are well represented in all staff areas except skilled crafts, they are paid less than men in all areas except office/clerical work. When it comes to ethnicity, there is also a minority pay gap for all but office/ clerical positions.

Also, the gender pay gap is greater among older employees. The study found that experience – measured by number of years in a position – does not mitigate this imbalance, as the pay gap is also greater for those with more seniority. The authors of the report also found that there is a wide age range for staff positions, ranging from the early 20s to age 65 and beyond. The exception is in the area of skilled craft positions, where most are likely to be in their late 40s and early 50s.

The authors of this study were Jacqueline Bichsel and Jasper McChesney, who produced it for the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). They found that the overall median years in a position for higher education staff was four. The lowest turnover is among skilled craft workers in the Northeast, who have a median of 11 years in their position.

These authors surveyed 737 institutions, which provided data on 169,358 staff for the 149 position types studied. The colleges and universities they analyzed are well represented by type of institution classification (research-focused, comprehensive universities, community colleges, etc.), affiliation and region.

The survey findings are very comprehensive and included key demographic variables, including gender, race/ethnicity, birth year (estimated age), and years in position for all the positions surveyed. The survey was carried out online between November 2016 and February 2017, and is available here.

The question for us now is how to use the information provided by the study to improve higher education in this country. First of all, we have to remind ourselves of the role played by staff in higher education. And for that we can use a couple of examples. First, take department secretaries. They are the ones who represent the “face” of the university – departments and other academic and non-academic units – to students. They are the first ones to field questions about class schedules, availability of faculty, forms that need to be filled, etc. They are also the ones that make sure that facilities are in good order, and that all the equipment for common uses, such as photocopiers, are working properly. They have to order supplies, contact other offices to coordinate actions, etc. By now you get the picture: universities couldn’t operate without them.

Then, think about the work done by others in less visible but equally important roles, from the budget office, to admissions, to the library. All these people are responsible for keeping the institutional machinery working. They are the ones who provide data that administrators need continuously to make decisions about budget, student services, and to comply with a myriad of regulations whether they are internal, state, or federal ones.

Yet, when we ask staff what they need the most they do not ask for public credit. They ask for decent salaries and opportunities for keeping up to date with new techniques that will allow them to do their jobs better. But given the financial crisis that we are going through in higher education, that is the kind of support that gets eliminated first. If you combine a lack of economic resources with the lack of recognition that they also receive from their colleagues and the educational community in general, then what you have is a morale issue that sooner or later will affect their productivity, which, in turn, will make institutions less effective.

Interestingly, many staff people are oftentimes alumni of the very institutions where they work. They know what it means to be on the side of the students who need their services. They are the ones who grew up where their institutions are located and know their impact in the culture and economy of the regions they serve.

It is time for us to recognize the value of staff members if we really want to advance our colleges and universities

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College Staff Continue to be Unsung Heroes