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Would You Buy a Used Car from a College President?
Richard Vedder
Once upon a time, college presidents were venerated as sage, benevolent folks who not only wisely and responsibly nurtured the best and brightest amongst our youth but also presided over welfare-enhancing expansions of human knowledge. Legendary mid-twentieth century college presidents like Clark Kerr at the University of California and Robert Maynard Hutchins at the University of Chicago have iconic status in American intellectual and cultural history. But, alas, the golden age of higher education is long past. Even among college faculty, how many today know who is the president at, say, Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford?
Moreover, rather than be considered Solomon-like in wisdom and Mother Teresa-like in virtue, college presidents these days are increasingly considered to be somewhat shifty individuals, the kind from whom you would be suspicious of buying a used car. Two former long-serving Big Ten university presidents, Graham Spanier at Penn State and Lou Ann Simon at Michigan State, faced possible jail time for allegedly maladroit actions while president (Simon still does). The University of Oklahoma is trying to deal with the embarrassing claim that long-term recent president (and former U.S. Senator) David Boren was sexually molesting male members of his staff. Baylor forced out famous attorney and former federal judge Kenneth Starr because he did not deal aggressively with inappropriate sexual adventures of prized university assets, namely its football players.
The job tenure of college presidents is becoming more precarious. In a single week recently, four college heads prematurely left their jobs in somewhat mysterious circumstances, at Bennett, Marist and Muhlenberg colleges and Auburn University. The average tenure of a university president was about seven years for a long time; now it is about five years. On top of everything else, the number of presidents losing their jobs because of college closures is mounting as well.
Given the greater risks and falling prestige of the job, it takes more dollars to get good university presidents, and their pay has soared. Probably the dean of American university presidents, Gordon Gee, who has served for well over 35 years as president of five schools, made news for becoming a million-dollar president at Ohio State about a decade ago; now there are dozens of college presidents earning in the seven digits, probably in part given the higher risks/lower job security and the need for the academic equivalent of combat pay. Presidents of major universities in the mid-1990s made perhaps $300,000 or $350,000 annually in today’s dollars; they routinely earn double that today.
The job of being a college president has always been tough and is getting tougher. Ideally, a president has good academic credentials, is respected by the scholarly community, is a tremendous fundraiser, is an articulate public spokesperson, is an excellent manager, has inexhaustible energy and political acumen, can bring together persons of wildly diverse perspectives, and mixes a tolerably good sense of humor with much scholarly gravitas. The subset of the American population possessing all of these qualities is somewhere between zero and a very small positive number. Moreover, higher education is no longer a growth industry getting bigger and better every year. Enrollments have been falling nationally for about eight years and public support for colleges has declined by most measures. Given all that, and the fact that the position increasingly has minimal job security, the need to pay higher salaries is understandable.
As the environment for universities worsens financially and in other ways, college presidents become increasingly desperate to put on a good public face, arguing their schools are adroitly fulfilling their academic mission, but needing more funding. This increasingly leads them to make Pollyanna-like statements, trying to hide the truth about, say, falling applications or a precarious financial condition. Hence, they appear akin to sellers of used cars that do not reveal that their vehicle has been in two big accidents, or the home seller failing to disclose that during heavy rainstorms the basement routinely floods. Probably, under the circumstances, we are somewhat too harsh on university presidents for their seemingly unprincipled obfuscation, but given their increasingly very comfortable compensation, perhaps they should expect and even deserve it.
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3 Challenges Resulting from Oregon’s Student Mental Health Law
More time to prepare for a tough presentation? Escape from an early morning alarm? While most of us only dream of those opportunities, Oregon is making them a reality for all K-12 students. This month, the state passed a law allowing students to take excused school absences for mental health. Students can take a total of 5 excused absences per three-month period—or about 10-15 days per year.
“I took on this cause for a personal reason first off because so many of my close friends in high school struggled with depression, and there were times when I saw them at school when they really shouldn’t have been there, would have been much better for them to take a day off,” Hailey Hardcastle, a recent high school graduate who lobbied for the new law, told Today.
But while the law aims to address student health, it also poses potential challenges:
1. Less Learning Time.
Oregon’s new law doesn’t change the number of days students can take away from school, but it expands the reasons for which they can take days off. Previously, students could only take excused absences for parent-approved sick days, doctor’s appointments, emergencies, or by prior principal or teacher approval. With the new law, students can be excused for anything mental health related, including escaping a stressful exam or recovering from a late night. While more opportunities to take time off may sound appealing, its long-term effects could be troubling.
A University of Chicago study, for example, found that high school freshmen who miss more than two weeks of school flunk, on average, at least two classes. In addition, the study found that 37 percent of students who took 5-9 days off from school failed to graduate in four years. That number grew to 59 percent when students took 10-15 days off school.
Studies also show that students have a greater likelihood of dropping out of high school and lower chances of succeeding in college when they are chronically absent (miss 10 percent or more of their school year). Although Oregon’s excused absence law doesn’t amount to chronic absenteeism, it comes close. The state’s school year is only 165 days long on average, which means students who take 16.5 days off—only 1.5 days more than current policy allows—are chronically absent.
2. “Rest” Isn’t Always Best.
Advocates like Hailey Hardcastle suggest that Oregon’s new law will give stressed students much-needed rest. But some research suggests that these students may be better off in school.
Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, for example, found that student mental health is closely related to social media consumption. She noted that eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent and teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide.
But what do teens do in their days off from school? If their weekends are any indication, they’ll probably spend much of the day on media. The American Time Use Survey indicates that students spend much of their weekends watching TV, playing video and computer games, surfing the internet, texting friends, and on social media—the very screen-time related activities Twenge links to mental unhealth to begin with. In school, these activities would be kept to a minimum, with class-time and social interaction replacing lengthy media sessions.
3. Encourages Escape over Healthy Habit Building.
While an occasional day off from school offers students the chance to recover and prepare for the challenges they face, too much time off can become unhealthy.
“It’s important for kids to power through some discomfort (like going to school even when they’re afraid of giving a presentation or when they don’t have their math homework done),” writes psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin, “There’s a lot of value in showing them they’re stronger than they think.”
Overcoming academic challenges also develops skills students don’t have the opportunity to build otherwise.
“More so than in past generations, many teens today have their basic needs met, and they haven’t had much practice making mistakes,” writes Leah Shafer for Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
Therefore, Shafer writes, it’s especially important that students develop strategies to face their fears and thereby develop prioritization, focus, and mental flexibility skills students will use for the rest of their lives.
Before following Oregon’s example, other states should take a second look at the policy’s impact on student academic success, mental wellbeing, and skill development. And parents and schools should consider helping students to develop healthy habits to manage stress and anxiety in the long term. These could include limiting social media where possible, and encouraging exercise and sleep.
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Trump Moves Forward on Apprenticeships—But More Needs to Be Done
A quick scan of the news confirms that college students spend more on higher education than ever before, but they lack the necessary skills to succeed in the workplace. Apprenticeship programs could offer a promising college alternative, but establishing them can be difficult. That could change, however, as the Department of Labor (DOL) is making it easier for young people to become apprentices.
The Department wants to streamline the process for registering apprenticeships, but to make them an option for more students, the Trump administration needs to allow even more radical apprenticeship expansion.
In June, the DOL proposed its first steps toward reducing the regulatory burden limiting apprenticeship growth. The proposed changes would allow employers to establish their own apprenticeship curriculum for Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs) and set their own apprenticeship standards, a process that used to be more heavily controlled by state and federal governments.
But the proposal also introduces new challenges. Employers who want to establish IRAPs, for example, would have to prove to a DOL panel that they have the industry expertise to build a curriculum, show that they have support and input from industry leaders, and demonstrate that they have a plan to maintain their programs.
As if that wasn’t enough, apprenticeship creators (who can be private employers, community colleges, and other organizations) must also apply for re-approval every five years. Effectively, those rules slow down the creation of apprenticeships even as employers need the flexibility to create them easily and quickly.
Young people are clamoring for already-existing apprenticeships. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, Siemens USA receives more than 100 applications for its apprenticeship program each fall. The company reviews standardized test scores, school transcripts, and letters of recommendation, then invites select candidates to take an entrance exam and mechanical aptitude test. In the end, the international manufacturer only invites four to eight students to complete the program with 8,000 hours of training and a full-time job starting at $55,000.
Apprentices benefit, as do their companies.
“The folks [in Charlotte] are thriving,” Siemens USA Chief Barbara Humpton told Politico earlier this year. “We’ve expanded this now to other states…What we’re finding is that these students are really highly engaged and highly motivated to really drive success for themselves and, boy, a byproduct is real high productivity for us.”
The DOL should tear down barriers to creating more apprenticeships, not add more review and oversight requirements.
More apprentices also mean cost savings for state budgets—and taxpayers. The Department’s recent $183 million grant to create more than 85,000 apprenticeships translates to $2,100 per apprentice. That’s much less than the $7,642 that the average state spends per student in college. In North Carolina, the state spends $9,959 per student. Encouraging high school graduates to become apprentices instead of chasing a bachelor’s degree could make state spending more efficient, and leave students better off.
In 2016, the Department of Labor counted about 21,000 registered apprenticeship programs like Siemens’ that train 500,000 apprentices across the country. Moreover, the Department reported that the average wage for an apprentice-trained worker is $50,000 per year—nearly $4,500 more than the U.S. median individual income and $300,000 more than non-apprenticed workers earn over the course of their careers.
The construction, military, public administration, and manufacturing industries have the most apprentices, according to the Department of Labor. But overall apprenticeship availability and participation are growing rapidly, including in industries that generally lack apprentices, such as health care and information technology. The Department reports that U.S. apprenticeship programs have grown by 56 percent since 2013. In 2018, apprenticeship creators registered 3,227 new apprenticeship programs and 238,549 new apprentices—more on both fronts than any other year on record since the Department began keeping track in 2008.
While apprenticeship opportunities are growing, there aren’t enough opportunities to meet demand. The DOL should consider cutting more regulatory barriers to allow more companies to expand these programs.
Siemens, for example, turns away around 94 percent of applicants each year. In New York, the five-year apprenticeship program at Plumbers Local 1 faces similar challenges: The program offers 500 apprenticeships per year but routinely receives 2,000 applicants. Some candidates camp outside for days just to submit an application.
Deborah Kobes, associate director of the labor policy nonprofit Jobs for the Future, notes that these stories are the norm, not the exception. She finds that registered apprenticeships can be incredibly competitive, some with multi-year waitlists.
Creating more apprenticeships could ease waitlists and give more students a path to a lucrative career. But establishing new apprenticeship programs with industry-recognized credentials requires registering the program with state or federal governments, a complex process that means adopting government-approved industry standards for curriculum, classwork, pay, work scheduling, and more. So much bureaucratic red tape can discourage companies from trying to start a new program.
“While there are multiple paths into the industry,” wrote Stephen E. Sandherr, chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of America, “the fact is that it remains too difficult for many firms and their partners to establish apprenticeship programs for construction workers. Barriers for apprenticeship programs often include the excessive costs incurred during the rigid and inflexible registration process.”
The DOL should tear down barriers to creating more apprenticeships, not add more review and oversight requirements.
Its proposal also fails to address other key factors that limit the growth of apprenticeships and push students toward college. Some factors are social: The Aspen Institute and Skills for America’s Future found that most Americans believe students should pursue a degree over an apprenticeship if they can. Others are economic: Researchers at Harvard Business School found that employers demand degrees even for positions that don’t need them.
While those trends are changing—more young people view an apprenticeship as a path to a good job and employers are dropping degree requirements—for now, they will likely continue to discourage students from pursuing apprenticeships and employers from launching them.
Nonetheless, the DOL proposal is still a step forward. Even if it fails to foster new apprenticeship programs, at the very least it suggests that the administration sees the value apprenticeship programs offer. As the Trump administration puts more effort into apprenticeship programs, it should think big and empower industry leaders to make these opportunities a reality for more Americans.
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