Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia University, has concluded in a recent article in the New York Review of Books that "a great many gifted and motivated young people are excluded from college for no other reason than their inability to pay, and we have failed seriously to confront the problem.""the college-going rates of the highest-socioeconomic-status students with the lowest achievement levels is the same level as the poorest students with the highest achievement levels." Delbanco adds further weight to his forceful point by quoting Donald E. Heller, Penn State's director for the Center for the Study of Higher Education, that "the college-going rates of the highest-socioeconomic-status students with the lowest achievement levels is the same level as the poorest students with the highest achievement levels."
Delbanco explains: "Everyone knows about the competitive frenzy to get into a few highly ranked colleges, but in fact most of the 1,500 private colleges in the United States do not attract significantly more applicants than they can enroll. On the contrary, they struggle to meet enrollment targets, especially now that families in economic distress are turning to public institutions, which tend to be cheaper."
Delbanco also elaborates that: "he prevailing financial model at private colleges is one by which relatively affluent students pay more than needy students, although even those who pay full "sticker price" (roughly $50,000 per year at a top-tier school) meet less than two thirds of the full cost of their own education—calculated as a proportional fraction of faculty and staff salaries, dormitory accommodations, dining, library, health, and athletic services, as well as overhead costs such as keeping the lights on, the heat flowing, and the buildings in good repair. In other words, all students in America's private colleges—except for those at institutions run for profit, such as the University of Phoenix—are subsidized to one extent or another."
Delbanco points out a significant and growing problem: "Meanwhile, at public institutions, where tuition historically has been kept relatively low by means of a subsidy derived from tax revenue, the financial model is also at risk. These institutions—long before the current crisis—were seeing what Peter Sacks, in an indignant and informative book, Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education, calls "massive disinvestment" by the states. The University of Virginia now receives a mere 8 percent of its funding from the state of Virginia, down from nearly 30 percent a quarter-century ago. At the University of Wisconsin, in a state with a long progressive tradition, only about 19 percent comes from public funds—also down from around 30 percent just a decade ago. To make up for the decline in public money, tuition rates at public universities have been climbing even faster than at private institutions—a trend likely to accelerate, at least in the short run."
Delbanco discusses the problem facing post-secondary education in the United States today; they are in trouble: "For years, we have witnessed a growing gap between rich and poor colleges, the privatization of public universities, and aggressive if not reckless investment and spending practices at wealthy institutions, where the allure of gain appears to have overwhelmed the consciousness of risk. Now we are also witnessing drastic budget contraction at the most fragile and vulnerable institutions. Higher education has always been a mirror of American society—and, for the moment, at least, the image it reflects is not a pretty one."
Added to the many problems faced by American post-secondary institutions has been 'affirmative action for the rich': "Favoring the rich is hardly an attitude exclusive to private institutions. At public universities, especially the flagship campuses where children of the affluent are most likely to go, the financing system is also regressive. Qualifying for state-subsidized tuition at UCLA or Berkeley requires no means-testing for California residents—with the result that the child of a public school teacher is likely to pay nearly the same amount as the child of a trust and estate attorney. All these distortions suggest that something is wrong with our system of higher education—starting, but not ending, at the top."
Delbanco proposes that: "The fact is that America's colleges—with notable exceptions including community colleges, historically black colleges, and a few distinctive private institutions such as Berea College in Kentucky (Berea charges no tuition but requires campus work from its students, who all come from low-income backgrounds)—have lately been exacerbating more than ameliorating the widening disparity of wealth and opportunity in American society. Too many students are unable to continue their education beyond high school, and of those who do, too many find themselves in underfunded and overcrowded colleges. A report released in January by the Lumina Foundation, "Trends in College Spending," concludes that "higher education is becoming more stratified," with enrollment growing in the institutions with the least resources—the public community colleges—as more and more students are "pushed out of higher-priced institutions."
Delbanco tries to assign blame for the current situation: "No doubt, much of the relative decline in America's college-educated population can be attributed to poor preparation by K–12 schools, especially in inner-city and rural communities, and to social pathologies that leave young people—including, disproportionately, minorities—unready for, or uninterested in, higher education. But a great many gifted and motivated young people are excluded from college for no other reason than their inability to pay, and we have failed seriously to confront the problem."
When pondering remedies Delbanco proposes several: "One approach is radical cost-cutting—and anyone who has spent time in academic institutions can sympathize with the view that waste and inertia are among their salient features. Colleges may be known as places where liberalism is the dominant political point of view, but they are tenaciously conservative with respect to themselves: once a program or professorial position or new facility is established, it is very hard to get rid of it. The current financial shocks could be salutary if they provoke serious review of what really matters on each campus."
Delbanco also believes: "More promising than the three-year college idea are the enhancements of student aid contained in the final version of the "stimulus bill" that emerged from the compromise between the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Obama on February 17. The bill contains expanded tax credits for tuition payments as well as increased funding for the Pell grant program. Moreover, the President and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, are pushing to make Pell grants into a true entitlement—a program, that is, which Congress is compelled to sustain and adjust annually for inflation, on the model of Social Security and Medicare. The stimulus bill also contains substantial new funding for job-training programs that provide vouchers that community college students can use toward tuition."
Delbanco's most wide ranging proposal involves: "Perhaps the most substantive response to these problems to date is a report released last fall jointly by the Spencer and Lumina foundations and the College Board entitled "Fulfilling the Commitment: Recommendations for Reforming Federal Student Aid." Its authors call for elimination of FAFSA and for the IRS to report financial information directly to the Department of Education, thus cutting out entirely the requirement that families work through the maze of disclosure forms to determine their eligibility for federal support. Instead, every Pell-eligible family would automatically receive notification in the mail about how much the government would give toward college costs. The report also calls for changing loan programs so that debt incurred to pay the cost of education would be repaid on a graduated scale keyed to post-college income; and, perhaps most important, it calls for a federal program to establish education savings accounts for low-income families to be tapped at the time a child is ready for college."
Delbanco concludes by stressing his "painful sense of disjunction between rising hope and declining opportunity."He concludes by stating that "that we have in this country a highly stratified system of education in which "merit" is the ubiquitous slogan but disparity of opportunity is often the reality. Even with our best efforts, this fact is not likely to change fundamentally anytime soon. Indeed, the financial crisis has made it harder to change. But as we consider the future of the nation, which surely depends more than ever on an educated citizenry, it will be of great importance to keep in mind a point too little acted on during the boom years but now undeniable and urgent. John Adams put it succinctly some 225 years ago: "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expense of it.""
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