Ernest L. Boyer

Hope for Today's Universities

Todd C. Ream, John M. Braxton

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781438455662
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Having served as chancellor of the State University of New York, the United States commissioner of education, and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Ernest L. Boyer (1928–1995) was one of the most prominent leaders in the history of American higher education. Arguably more aware of the challenges facing colleges and universities than any of his peers, the administrative decisions and the writings he left behind provide a wealth of possibilities for subsequent generations of administrators and faculty members. In this book noted higher education scholars examine some of the most pressing crises in higher education today, pairing their thoughts with relevant selections from Boyer's important writings—some published here for the first time. The volume provides answers to questions perceived to be plaguing academe, while reintroducing readers to the optimistic and insightful wisdom of Ernest L. Boyer.

CHAPTER ONE

The Financial Crisis

John J. Cheslock

Unlike other contributors to this volume, I had not spent considerable time contemplating the thoughts of Ernest L. Boyer before starting this project. Like many scholars who study the economics of higher education, I had a basic understanding of Boyer’s ideas, but I had not considered them especially relevant to my area of study. After reflecting on Boyer’s most famous books and a number of his speeches, I have begun to see close connections between the policies proposed by Boyer to address the challenges of his context and the current economic challenges facing colleges and universities. These connections are often missing in many contemporary discussions of Boyer, and a primary goal of this introduction is to highlight how Boyer’s proposed policies—which are typically motivated by concerns about educational quality—could improve the financial situation facing many higher education institutions.

The higher education system in the United States needs such improvements. One of the major financial challenges facing colleges and universities is the erosion of their traditional funding base. State governments—which are one of the primary funding sources for many public higher education institutions—face unprecedented financial difficulties, most notably rising health care costs and unfunded pension liabilities (Hovey, 1999; Kane, Orszag, & Gunter, 2003; State Budget Crisis Task Force, 2012). State governments typically treat higher-education funding as a balance wheel, cutting during tough times and increasing during good times (Hovey, 1999). Funding from the federal government will likely also decline as partisan gridlock, growing health care costs, resistance to widespread tax increases, and high deficits will foster reductions in financial aid programs and research funding. For most higher education institutions, tuition is the primary revenue source used to replace lost governmental funding, but after decades of tuition growth, further price increases could lead to enrollment declines, higher student debts, and increased public antipathy toward colleges and universities (Cheslock & Gianneschi, 2008).

Compounding the problem is the tendency for expenditures to rise within colleges and universities. Past research has emphasized a number of forces promoting expenditure increases. Archibald and Feldman (2010) explain that higher education is a personnel-services industry that relies heavily on highly educated skilled labor and cannot easily reduce costs through technological progress. Because costs rise more rapidly over time in industries with these characteristics, we should expect above-average expenditure growth within higher education. Bowen (1980) and Ehrenberg (2000) emphasize how the endless goals of educational excellence, prestige, and influence promote an insatiable desire for resources within colleges and universities. Ehrenberg (2000), Martin (2011), and Zemsky, Wegner, and Massy (2006) highlight governance structures, budget processes, and governmental regulations that hinder efforts at cost control.

As revenues decline and spending pressures continue, higher education institutions will need to focus more intensely on those cost-effective practices that have the greatest societal benefit per dollar spent. As I further contemplated Boyer’s career, I realized many of the activities he most vigorously promoted as vital to society are those that are relatively inexpensive. In College: The Undergraduate Experience in America, Boyer called for greater emphasis on undergraduate education, an activity that is not as resource-intensive as graduate education or research. Undergraduate education occurs within relatively large classes and requires relatively little individualized advising by faculty. Scholarship Reconsidered called for greater recognition of forms of scholarship—integration, application, and teaching—that often require less expense than the scholarship of discovery. In many fields, the scholarship of discovery requires expensive laboratories and computing infrastructure and support.

My argument has implications both for those who study the economics of higher education and for those studying areas more traditionally associated with Boyer’s work. The former can further test the conventional wisdom presented in the previous paragraph and try to understand the financial implications of the path that Boyer promoted. Such tests are daunting, however, due to the nonlinear nature of educational costs and the difficulty in assigning costs to individual activities within institutions where undergraduate education, graduate education, public service, and various forms of research are produced jointly (Breneman, 2001). The latter type of scholars—those who primarily examine issues pertaining to educational quality—can include some consideration of financial implications when examining the policies promoted by Boyer. Given the funding pressures that colleges and universities face, arguments for specific policies are more likely to receive attention if they can include evidence of cost effectiveness.

Although Boyer’s major books did not devote extensive time examining financial issues, he did spend time seriously considering this topic. This chapter contains two speeches that reflect his thinking. These speeches are fascinating historical documents, because they contain Boyer’s recommendations and predictions for the future. Boyer proved prescient as he anticipated many of the problems and opportunities we face today.

In his 1972 speech titled Thinking About the Unthinkable: Tuition and Student Fees in Public Higher Education, Boyer presents three principles for higher-education finance that were mostly disregarded over the subsequent 40 years:

1.It is the right of every American to receive without any discrimination whatsoever, the education needed to achieve personal dignity and economic independence.

2.In order to assure full opportunity for all, any tuition schedule in a public institution must be accompanied by a financial aid program to remove all economic barriers for students who cannot pay.

3.We need to distinguish more precisely the various cost items currently lumped together as higher education and do some hard thinking about the proper student share in paying each of these various costs.

Specific proposals accompanied these three general principles.

To realize the first principle, Boyer recommended that American society treat the first two years of postsecondary education as essential and ensure that tuition during these first two years remain at 1972 levels. He felt that tuition charges could be allowed to rise for upper-division undergraduate students and graduate students. His recommendations were unheeded as undergraduate tuition and fees—which are rarely differentiated between lower-division and upper-division undergraduates in a major fashion—have grown rapidly since 1972, far above the rate of inflation (Baum & Ma, 2011).

When outlining specifics for the second principle, Boyer called for financial aid programs to be targeted at low-income students. He recommends generous loan programs for those studying at upper levels of training but argues that no students should be required to borrow heavily to pay for the first two years of postsecondary education. Again, these specific recommendations were not implemented. The tuition increases just described ensured that many lower-division undergraduates were required to absorb substantial levels of debt. A meaningful portion of the tuition and fee increases were offset by financial aid, but the rise of federal tax credits, state merit aid programs, and strategic enrollment management practices caused financial aid dollars to flow increasingly to students with lower levels of financial need.

When discussing the final principle, Boyer called attention to a range of services that higher education institutions provide alongside teaching and research. His list of services—housing, food services, medical and psychiatric care, placement centers, telephone services, and parking lots—differ from the list he would likely produce if he were writing today. Students are now provided with a rich array of entertainment options, services, and cocurricular educational opportunities. Qualitative enhancements have also occurred; student housing, food, exercise facilities, and other items are now of considerable quality at many schools. In his speech, Boyer notes how such offerings can promote the notion that students are a privileged class in America, and the public’s increasing acceptance of this viewpoint may partially explain why governmental officials are not pressured to prioritize higher education funding.

Can we reverse course and return to the principles promoted by Boyer in 1972? Although the enactment of his specific policies—such as returning tuition prices for the first two years of colleges to 1972 levels—is unrealistic, movement toward the goals espoused by Boyer is possible. Substantial challenges exist, however. Projected declines in governmental funding of higher education mean that tuition reductions via increased governmental support will not occur unless the status quo within politics in the United States is dramatically altered. Absent such changes, most higher-education institutions can only reduce tuition prices by reducing expenditures, but a wide array of internal and external pressures make cost reductions difficult. Expenditure restraint is unlikely to occur unless colleges and universities do the hard thinking promoted by Boyer in his third principle, with the thinking expanded to questions of which amenities and services should no longer be provided. Competition, prestige, and governance within higher education, however, cause most colleges and universities to avoid such hard thinking (Ehrenberg, 2000; Martin, 2011). But Herbert Stein’s law—If something cannot go on forever, it will stop—suggests that Boyer’s call for hard thinking will have to be heeded someday.

In his 1993 speech titled Financing Higher Education: Reshaping National Priorities, Boyer reflects on changes that have occurred since the early 1970s. The speech was designed to consider the proposals imbedded in the classic 1973 report on the financing of higher education produced by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Because the Carnegie report contained a number of suggestions that were similar to those outlined in Boyer’s 1972 speech, the two speeches presented here provide insights into how Boyer’s thinking evolved over time.

In the second section of the 1993 speech, Boyer examines and suggests modifications to specific recommendations made by the Carnegie Commission. He mentions a personal latter-day conversion on student loans and calls for a major redesign of student loan policy and the creation of a national student loan bank. This conversion was likely triggered by a belief that low tuition policies are unlikely to be implemented. Boyer continues to call for policies ensuring low tuition, but he appears pessimistic that his recommendations will be followed. He mentions a proposal to tie tuition increases to income, but then quickly notes the practical difficulty of developing a single formula that applies to all institutions. He calls for increased federal support for higher education, but in the last section of the speech, he notes the public’s wariness about further spending due to an increasing belief that higher education is a private benefit rather than a public good. A call for the reaffirmation of the centrality of service is presented as a method to alter public opinion, but his plan in this area is short on specifics.

The most hopeful and most interesting part of the speech lies in the third section, where Boyer outlines three strategies for renewal:

1.Place a high priority on undergraduate education;

2.Think creatively about the length of the undergraduate experience and the style of learning; and

3.Make new technologies a more efficient and effective tool in undergraduate institutions.

In outlining the first strategy, Boyer touches on the themes of College: The Undergraduate Experience in America and Scholarship Reconsidered and emphasizes educational quality and the priorities of the professoriate.

The latter two strategies anticipate prominent reform efforts occurring today. Boyer highlights innovative policies—a three-year baccalaureate degree and academic programs utilizing self-directed study—that he promoted during his time as the chancellor of the State University of New York System. He correctly identifies that such innovations must be accompanied by a shift in focus from credits to outcomes. His discussion of technology is brief but enjoyable, primarily because his reference to “marvelous new interactive CD disks” reminds us how quickly technology progresses. If Boyer were speaking today, discussions of the educational opportunities presented by new technologies would likely comprise a larger share of his speech.

I find his renewal strategies hopeful, because they are led by concerns for educational quality but grounded in financial considerations. If the pessimistic predictions for future governmental funding prove true, higher education institutions and the students they serve will undoubtedly suffer. The degree to which that occurs, however, will depend upon the ability of colleges and universities to adopt more efficient practices that are more effective pedagogically. In his career, Ernest L. Boyer promoted a number of cost-effective practices that higher education institutions often ignore in their race for prestige. We would be wise to reflect on his ideas as we plot the future.

Ernest L. Boyer

Thinking About the Unthinkable: Tuition and Student Fees in Public Higher Education

February 23, 1972

Few issues in public higher education today seem capable of generating so much heat and so little light as the question of who should pay the bill. How much of the cost should be borne by the student and his family, and how much by society as a whole? Whenever the subject is mentioned, people frequently retreat behind ideological Maginot Lines from which they fire salvos that are long on impassioned rhetoric but short on insight.

Behind one such line rally those for whom any tuition or fees are anathema, since their vision of public education is that all costs, from kindergarten through the MD or the PhD, should be paid by the state. While few are quite this categorical, many embrace this as the ultimate goal, and even consider a discussion of alternatives an unacceptable compromise.

In the opposition camp are the “hardheaded realists” who apply to public higher education a model drawn from private industry. They contend that the consumer—the student—should obviously pay in full for services rendered. For those who do not have the resources, loan programs are proposed.

At this time of heightened fiscal crisis, the debate threatens to become even more shrill, with those charged with responsibility for decisions caught in the middle as usual. Therefore, while fully aware of the risks of venturing into the no-man’s-land between the lines, I think the time has come to break this vexatious subject down in a way that would circumvent somewhat the rigid polarities of the debate and make it possible to reach decisions that are rooted in certain agreed-upon principles.

The central principle to be affirmed is the right of every American to receive, without any discrimination whatsoever, the education needed to achieve personal dignity and economic independence. Historically, and in practical terms, this means that public funds are used to provide a basic level of free schooling for the children of all citizens, believing that in this fashion each successive generation may make the maximum possible contribution to the common good.

Equally significant, in my view, is the fact that over the 300 years of our national history, the basic level of education judged to be essential for the coming generation has progressively risen. In the seventeenth century, “public education” meant teaching youngsters to read, write, and cipher. In 1647 Massachusetts passed an act requiring each town in the colony to provide that level of training for all its children.

In the 19th century, society felt obligated to provide each youth with five to eight years of schooling) and public grammar schools spread across the land. At that time education beyond these basic years was open only to those who could afford the expenses of the academies, the young ladies seminaries, and the like. But in the wake of these technological and social changes, grade twelve, rather than grade eight, came to be viewed as the minimum education level necessary and the public high school became freely available to all.

More recently, with the changes that have transformed 20th-century American society, even 12 years of formal instruction came to be viewed as insufficient. More and more parents accepted a period of post–high school training—either academic or technical—as appropriate for their children. Such opportunity, they argued, was for the many rather than the privileged few.

In response the doors of post–high school education opened more and more widely. The junior college and community college movement spread from coast to coast, and during the past decade a new two-year college has opened its doors in America every ten days. Increasingly two years of education beyond high school have come to be viewed by most of our citizens as essential. The implications of this massive shift in public attitude are enormous, and my own sense of the future compels me to suggest that tuition at the first two collegiate years—both at the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Shaping the Debate: A Reflection on Ernest L. Boyer’s Approach to Education Policy
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Facing Not So New Realities
• Chapter One: The Financial Crisis
• Chapter Two: General Education and the Quest for Purpose
• Chapter Three: Leading Academe
• Chapter Four: (Re)Defining Scholarship
• Chapter Five: Crisis in Student Community
• Chapter Six: Access to College Is About Equality of Opportunity
• Chapter Seven: Which Public to Serve
• Conclusion: Inspiring Hope
• Afterword: Education for the Common Good
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover