Public funds could topple ivory towers - Insight Book of the Year, 'The Fall of the Ivory Tower,' by Hillsdale College president George Roche and the negative impact of public funding on higher education; includes profile of Roche's background and conservative philosophy - Special Report - Cover Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 23, 1994 | by Stephen Goode

Higher education is in dire straits, writes George Roche. The college president believes that public money is an opiate that has sedated and corrupted academia, leaving it virtually unable to support itself.

American higher education is galloping rapidly toward bankruptcy if it's not already there, says George Roche, president of Hillsdale College in Michigan. Colleges and universities are in the grip of the "most severe financial crisis they've faced since the Great Depression." And Roche has no doubts about its cause: "decades of runaway state and federal government spending" that tossed "ever increasing sums toward higher education, with promises of ever more:'

A free-market conservative, Roche is author of 12 books, one of them a biography of Frederic Bastiat, the 19th-century French advocate of free-market economics. His latest work, however, deals with a topic more controversial. In The Fall of the Ivory Tower, Roche argues that government funding has given American universities and colleges a false sense of economic security -- and worse, an illusory belief that the funding will never dry up. Writes Roche, "Subsidies have helped create this crisis because they have shielded colleges and universities from the normal forces of the marketplace."

Not only has government largesse shielded academia from errors and irresponsibilities that would have brought down most businesses, but it also has encouraged sloth among teachers and students alike, contends Roche. College professors rarely are required to teach more than two or three courses per semester. Students at even the most prestigious schools, including Harvard and Stanford, no longer fear failure because Fs no longer are awarded.

Against all this, Roche posits Hills-dale College, where he has been president since 19'71. Hillsdale receives no federal or state funds and "is free to be what it wants to be," he says. What it wants to be is a "traditional liberal arts college that offers a genuine alternative."

Every Hillsdale teacher must teach roughly four courses a semester, a charge almost without precedent today. During their first two years, all students must take the college's "great books" course and fulfill requirements in the natural and social sciences, a foreign language and American heritage. At Hillsdale, Fs are given. (Students may retake failed courses, with their progress closely monitored.)

There are no condom dispensers in Hillsdale dormitories -- a circumstance often labeled reactionary by Roche's critics. But it is a way of life readily accepted by most Hillsdale students (undoubtedly even more so by their parents), who choose the college because they believe in its values.

There is no doubt that the 1990s are a period of retrenchment, if not crisis, in American education. Sixty percent of all colleges and universities have cut their budgets in the last four years, and many of these institutions face uncertain futures despite efforts at economizing. Deferred maintenance has become routine, rendering campuses and their buildings shabby - even dangerous -- according to Roche. Faculty downsizing and staff cuts are common.

While Roche has described the system as near collapse, other observers put a less pessimistic spin on the situation. Caspa Harris, president of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, admits that "there is most definitely a temporary funding difficulty" but believes colleges and universities can bridge the gap "if they get their act together." He adds, "The easy money won't come back."

David Merkowitz, director of public relations for the American Council on Education, finds solace in the fact that no major universities and colleges have closed. "There continues to be a big demand for higher education and will be," he says, noting that some state systems are doing well indeed, with the nation's third largest, the University of Texas, increasing its budget by 7 percent last year. Moreover, 300 colleges shut their doors between 1960 and 1990, which was a better period for academia, so even a few closings need not signal impending doom. Nonetheless, Merkowitz, like Harris, is realistic. "There is a little fraying around the edges, the old going out of business," he says. "It is all part of the ecology of higher education."

But Roche doesn't mince words. Academia's "recipe for certain disaster," as he calls it, began in the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson, trying to shape the Great Society, turned over ever-larger sums of money to higher education for everything from student loans to research. too-comfortable relationship developed quickly between politicians and academics, administrators and faculty alike.

Today, public institutions of higher learning receive, on average, about 60 percent of their budgets from the government. Private colleges and universities get about 20 percent of their money from the same source, rendering them vulnerable as well in times of government frugality.

In Florida, for example, state legislators have cut back funding they long had provided to state universities. Florida is in its fourth year of budget cutbacks, according to Roberta Maddox, associate vice chancellor for budget and finance of the state university system. Student services have been sliced by one-fifth. Faculty salaries have fallen behind those of their peers outside the state. Meanwhile, Florida anticipates an increase of 80,000 students during the next decade.