University of Arkansas at Little Rock: Many college graduates today are not well educated. A survey by researchers at the Educational Testing Service in 1994 revealed that only 39 percent of the graduates of four-year colleges in their sample could effectively use a bus timetable, and only 35 percent of the graduates could write a letter to explain a billing error in a credit card account. In February of 1995, the New York Times cited a Census Bureau nation-wide survey of employers, who said that schools and colleges did not prepare their graduates well for the market place. The survey said that employers were much more interested in an applicant's work experience, behavior, and attitude than in grades.
What is going on? The answer can be summed up in two words: academic graft. Tenured professors and administrators abuse their power and positions to take advantage of lawmakers, taxpayers, and students. In many public universities -- especially the less-selective schools not ranked in the U.S. News & World Report's issue on America's best colleges -- education is a lower priority. The highest priority is separating the lawmakers, taxpayers, and students from their money.
Because every state university system operates by different rules, the tenured weasels in public universities exploit different loopholes from one state system to the next. But the five tricks of the trade below are common to many public universities in America. Because most of these tricks are devious and wasteful, public universities do not make data about them accessible. Thus I frequently rely on my experiences at several public universities and documents from my current school.
Laundering Time: Professors don't steal money. They steal time. To give their ill-gotten gains legitimacy, professors, like the Mafia, must create a variety of fronts to launder their stolen goods. But instead of laundering money, professors launder time.
The most common time laundering front is a Master's or Doctor's degree program. Many graduate programs at major universities exist for legitimate reasons and have well-known experts who attract graduate students from around the world. But even a less-selective public university with lower standards can offer a dozen or more Master's degrees and sometimes a doctorate or two. Professors in these academically weaker institutions profit from graduate programs because they earn releases from teaching courses. These professors argue that they need to teach fewer courses because they must work on their research, spend more time preparing for courses, and spend more time giving feedback to their advanced students.
Some faculty certainly do put more time into preparing graduate courses, but many do not. Faculty giving graduate courses in the humanities often teach the same books that they use in their advanced undergraduate classes. In fact, graduate courses are commonly cross listed as undergraduate classes. That is, both graduate and undergraduate students attend the class, but, in theory at least, the graduate students are supposed to do more work. Many faculty teaching graduate seminars also launder time by having students give lengthy presentations, which require no preparation for the professor.
Faculty can get away with these tricks because teaching is devalued at many public universities in favor of research or playing politics, and because there is little accountability for teaching. I once sat on a committee that evaluated the department's faculty for their annual merit raises. Though student evaluations were piled high on the conference table within easy reach, they never played a role in our discussions. For better or worse, faculty are given wide latitude in their teaching methods in universities. Some professors use this latitude to challenge and motivate students and to invent effective new teaching techniques. Tenured weasels, however, exploit their many freedoms and their lack of accountability to steal time from the public.
Inflating grades: Grade inflation is prevalent at all universities, public and private, selective and less-selective. At Rutgers University in the early 1950's, A's and B's made up 42% of the grades given to students. By the early 1990's, 67% of the grades at Rutgers were A's and B's. Twenty-five years ago at Harvard, the average grade was a B-. Today it is a B+. No one knows the rate of grade inflation at less-selective public universities, in part because many of them have not been around for very long.
But grade inflation at less-selective public universities is one "solution" to an important problem: how to encourage large numbers of unqualified students to stay in school? The longer each student stays in school, the more money the school earns. In July of 1994, I asked a high-ranking administrator at my university if he would ask faculty to cut back on the rampant grade inflation. He refused. Had he agreed, the school would have suffered economically. Many students are admitted to state universities on waivers because they cannot meet minimum academic standards. At my university, only 48 percent of the incoming freshmen in the Fall of 1994 were regular admits, and only 50.6 percent were regular admits in the Fall of 1995. If unqualified students do not have their grades inflated, then they will quickly flunk out or drop out, and universities will lose their tuition, their subsidies from the state, their parking fees, student activities fees, food service fees, book store fees, athletic fees, and lab fees.
Inflated grades also help lazy professors save time. Students who get high grades do not get angry at professors and insist that they spend time explaining a low grade. Professors who do not like to spend time marking and commenting on essays also like to inflate grades. If such professors give many A's, students are less likely to complain if there are no comments on the assignment.
Diluting degrees: Requiring students -- qualified or not -- to work less and less is another way to entice them to stay in public universities. When I was a junior in high school, I had to write a 20-page essay on Jack London. That was in high school. If I assigned a 20-page essay today in my undergraduate World Literature course, many of the students would drop immediately to shop for easier professors. A few semesters ago, one of my World Literature students openly illustrated the problem of students' low expectations about college work. One day, well into the term, he announced to the class that at the beginning of the semester he had dropped a different section of the course because the other professor made students read the entire Odyssey. I merely had students read 100 pages of Homer's Iliad in an anthology.
Too many students think that public universities are entitlements programs. They believe that if they pay their tuition, show up to class occasionally, and take a stab at their assignments, then they deserve -- at the very least -- a passing grade, course credit, and, in due time, a degree. Professors who do not fulfill these expectations -- and there are still many such professors -- are shunned by these bottom-feeding students. In many public universities, lazy students have little trouble finding easier pickings.
Many professors make life easy for themselves and their students by giving little work. Some literature professors require no take-home essays. Students write essay exams in class, which, out of necessity, means that the essays must be short. Professors also profit from in-class exams because each one usually takes up an entire class period, which means the professor has nothing to prepare and may even skip the class and have it proctored by a teaching assistant or department secretary. Professors who grade in-class essay exams can also justify spending little time marking up and commenting upon the essays. They can argue that writing many comments would mean that they could not return the exams promptly to students.
Professors have legitimate reasons for giving frequent in-class exams: they want to be sure that students are doing their own work, and they want students to have a store of facts in their heads so that they can defend their positions and participate effectively in the give and take of the workplace. But because teaching is so devalued at many public universities, tenured weasels can exploit their freedoms to dilute degrees.
Graduate degrees are also becoming diluted. When I got my Master's degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, I had to take fifteen courses, write three 5000-word essays or a thesis (I wrote the essays), pass a comprehensive written exam based on my coursework, and pass an oral exam based on a list of books written in three languages. Such standards may still exist at some first-rate public universities, but not at the less-selective schools. One Master's degree program that I know well has no comprehensive exam on the coursework and no final oral exam -- the "defense" of the thesis is considered by many faculty to be an oral project report. One professor in the program told me that a Master's project he approved consisted of 40 pages of memos and letters with a ten-page cover essay. In short, there is little to motivate the students to learn, to excel, and to master their subject.
Heaven help the professor at a university (or in a department) whose faculty or administrators unofficially encourage professors to dilute degrees. No professor or administrator will go on record to order dumbed down classes. Instead, faculty will receive nudging messages like this: "The watchword these days is STUDENT RETENTION. Often, we have no control over whether a student stays in our course or drops/withdraws from it. But if you notice, semester after semester, large numbers of students are disappearing, you might want to reconsider your pedagogical strategies." Faculty with high standards who teach in less-selective universities will notice that many students disappear from their classes.
Diluting degrees or dumbing down classes means less work and more free time for professors to spend on their research or on their freelancing jobs. It also means that many college graduates do not get a good education.
Churning students: If inflating grades and diluting degrees cannot entice unqualified students to stay in public universities, then administrators and faculty just throw in the towel and resort to churning students. In the stock market, an unethical broker "churns" a client's account by making many unprofitable selling and buying transactions, each of which earns the broker commissions from the client's account. Churning is illegal because stockbrokers are expected to make money for their clients, but not to impoverish their client accounts by making poor investments to enrich themselves from their commissions.
Some less-selective public universities practice their own version of churning, though it is legal and it is usually labeled a "low retention problem." These universities admit many unqualified students, pocket all of their money up front, and twiddle their thumbs when huge numbers of students drop out. At some public universities, graduation rates (freshmen who graduate in 6 years or less) of 20% or less are common. Many schools try to handle the problem of churning by unofficially encouraging, or at least failing to discourage, inflated grades. But even with inflated grades, some less-selective public universities have low retention rates.
Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker explained the damaging effects of churning in a speech in March of 1995.
"We should bear in mind that the investment in higher education for the vast majority of families in this state, and certainly for every low income family in this state, is a major decision by that family to divert its most precious financial resources to giving their children a chance to have a better life. If we lure these young people and those families into spending significant resources on the first year of college, knowing that our remediation program is inadequate to keep them there, or knowing that their skill levels are simply inadequate for them to have any type of reasonable opportunity to survive, we have not done a favor to these families. We may have wreaked economic havoc on the family."In Arkansas, the legislature has caught on to churning and has required public 4-year institutions to reduce their numbers of remedial classes. But admitting unqualified students is very profitable to public universities. Remedial programs are veritable cash cows because there are so many students who need them and because part-time faculty can be hired so cheaply. An administration report to the Faculty Senate at my university said that "In both 1992-93 and 1993-94, we generated $2.29 in revenue for each $1.00 of direct expenditures on remedial instruction." That is a huge return on the administration's investment, and it can be used however the administrators want.
Admitting unqualified students is also popular with the public. No taxpayer who applies for admission to a public university wants to be rejected. But few taxpayers know how much of their money is wasted and how badly students are educated.
Inflating degrees: Shrewd administrators can collect more money for their schools by exploiting legislative policies that give a university a larger slice of the higher education budget for granting graduate degrees, especially doctorates. Several Arkansas state universities have profited from creating more graduate degrees. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has documented one of the most aggressive approaches, which is being taken by the University of Central Arkansas.
The University of Central Arkansas is now suing the Arkansas State Board of Higher Education for the right to create two new Doctoral programs in school psychology and physical therapy. When the University of Central Arkansas asked to create the new programs in 1994, the Board of Higher Education turned down the request because they found that the state did not need physical therapy teachers with doctorates. Nationally, many doctoral programs in physical therapy are staffed by faculty with master's degrees or with doctorates in other medical fields. A doctorate in school psychology was unnecessary because Arkansas school districts could not afford school psychologists with Ph.D.'s.
But the two new doctorates would help the University of Central Arkansas define itself as a "research" university and obtain more money through the state's higher education funding formula. The attorney for the State Board of Higher Education said that if the University of Central Arkansas won its case, then it would receive a larger portion of the state allocations for higher education. That is exactly what the University of Central Arkansas wants.
The University of Central Arkansas has vowed to pursue its case against the Board of Higher Education, and the state senator from that district is pressing the legislature to leave the case alone. But the legislature should be more active. Past assumptions about the value of public universities are no longer true. Too many less-selective state universities are not public servants any more, but public predators.
A further casualty of inflated degrees is undergraduate education. As more advanced degrees are created, more professors devote less time to teaching and spend more time in administration or in publishing the trivial pursuit and vita filler which they call their "research." My university, for example, offers the only Master's degree in the state in non-literary writing (technical and expository writing). But our students' writing skills are weak compared to those at other public 4-year universities in the state. The rising junior exam administered statewide in the spring semester of 1995 showed that students at my university placed seventh out of the eight 4-year public universities taking the test. The students from Arkansas public 2-year colleges who took the same exam during the same semester scored higher on the writing skills part of the test than students at my university. This discrepancy is even more striking because my university has the highest tuition of all the 4-year public universities in the state, and it is several times costlier than tuition at 2-year public colleges. In short, less-selective state universities that offer graduate degrees do not necessarily offer undergraduates a better education, even in their areas of graduate specialty. Many graduate programs in state universities exist for the indulgence of faculty, not for the welfare of students.
Pressures: Administrators and faculty in less-selective public universities work hard to keep these five tricks of the academic graft off the record, so it is difficult to convey the tenacity and pervasiveness of the graft from quotations in university documents. If the graft is off the record, then faculty and administrators have deniability. That means that -- instead of educating students -- faculty and administrators can keep separating students, lawmakers, and the public from their paychecks. Some administrators will not flinch from intimidating faculty who complain about irresponsible practices. In a February 1995 segment of "60 Minutes," a University of Arizona professor, Jon Solomon, stated an academic truism: teaching well is not important for getting tenure at a public school like the University of Arizona. After the Provost at the University of Arizona heard Solomon's remarks, he called him in and made him explain his remarks. Solomon felt intimidated.
I have experienced the same kind of pressure when I refused to look the other way at the academic graft. On one occasion I served on a master's degree program committee. Two of the committee members had low standards, and many graduate students asked them to serve on thesis committees because they were easy marks. The two professors began to feel overwhelmed with all of their thesis committee duties. Rather than say no to students or raise their standards, these committee members wanted to limit the enrollment in the program so they would have fewer thesis projects. In one meeting, the committee discussed limiting the program's enrollment but put off the vote for a week. The night before the vote, the committee chair called me up and angrily told me that if I did not support her position to reduce the graduate faculty workload, then she would say anything about me that she wanted (meaning that she would slander me). Since I had no witnesses to the phone call, she had deniability if I complained about her threat.
I did not want to be slandered, I did not want to lie and support the chair, and I did not want to be accused of being "uncollegial" years later when I went up for tenure. So I prepared myself to say nothing at the meeting the next day. The matter, thankfully, never came to a vote. But a week later, before a meeting with the Dean of the Graduate School, the committee chair called me again about the same issue (now being presented to the Dean) and told me to be careful about what I said. I did not obey her in the meeting with the Dean, and she carried out her earlier threat to defame me. However, since she was so obnoxious to the Dean in that meeting, I lost no credibility. But she got her message across: I had to participate in the academic graft -- or look the other way -- or I would be attacked.
Many public universities today are big soufflés: too many unqualified students, too many faculty with low standards, and too many overpaid administrators. Faculty and administrators complain aggressively about insufficient funding. But public universities do not need more money -- they need more integrity. They need to focus more on giving students a high quality education.
Some faculty have seen the light, and some saw it many years ago. But many other faculty do not, or will not, or cannot see the light. Faculty at public universities often have no clue about important problems. At my university, the former Chancellor, who departed office in December, 1992, left the school bankrupt after telling the faculty and his superiors for years that it was financially sound. Even today, with a new Chancellor, the faculty cannot figure out the financial statements of the university. In October, 1995 a faculty newsletter publicly pleaded to its audience as follows: "The budgeting and accounting systems at UALR continue to be a mystery to the UALR community." The editors then asked if any readers could supply information to help faculty discover how discretionary funds were being used.
The public is even more woefully informed about what goes on at state universities because of poor or nonexistent accountability systems, and because of their own indifference to the waste and low standards. The academic graft exists in part because of the ignorance and indifference of the people who use universities. Many students only want a degree. They care little about education, and they search out the easiest classes that they can find. I have had many students tell me, with a shrug, that they are in school only because it will help them get a promotion or a better job. One student said he was enrolling in a Ph.D. program so he could defer his college loans.
In short, the problems with worthless degrees and financial waste in public universities are not caused exclusively by tenured weasels. Many untenured weasels pressure administrators and faculty. For example, too many lawmakers ask administrators to lead, but will not lead themselves. Less-selective public universities need to be much smaller, which means more restrictive admissions standards. But lawmakers do not want to discuss restricting admissions to state universities, because voters will object. Stricter accountability should be enforced to be sure that students have learned something by the time that they get their degrees. But stricter accountability at less-selective universities could be devastating: many students will only pass if the tests are easy.
Conclusion: Many people are responsible for the poor quality of education at less-selective public universities. People who want to reduce the financial waste and increase the value of a college degree must take action. Taxpayers must insist on higher standards and more accountability at public universities, and they must vote out any legislator who will not go along. Legislators must stop using higher education appropriations to buy votes. Administrators and faculty must understand that the jig is up: more and more people are not fooled by their tricks. Students, finally, must focus on getting an education and not a degree: a fool with a college degree is still a fool.
[SFARTAS: These above five tricks are found at more selective institutions also.]
Society for a Return to Academic Standards
Last Updated: 14 November 1996
