Where’s the Diploma?

The Search for Value in Higher Education

State-supported schools may carry a lower initial price tag, but if you don’t have your diploma in four years, are they really better value?

by John A. Roush, President and Clarence R. Wyatt ’78,
Pottinger Associate Professor of History and Special
Assistant to the President

Over the past few weeks the news has been filled with reports examining the crisis in financing higher education in tones ranging from concern to the apocalyptic. The stagnant economy, with its resulting decline in state tax revenues, has hit public colleges and universities particularly hard, pushing them to increase tuition and to cut the academic program dramatically. These developments represent a serious threat to the two hallmarks of American higher education—quality and opportunity—at our public institutions. Fortunately, Centre has avoided these trends and, in the process, demonstrated that, for undergraduate education, the experience Centre offers represents a tremendous value.

The national scope of this double-whammy in college finance is revealed in a survey by the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. For example, the California State University system raised its 2003-04 tuition and fees 30 percent from the previous year in an effort to ease the impact of legislative-mandated cuts of more than $345 million, on top of midyear cuts in 2002-03 of $125 million. But even with this sharp tuition increase, the Cal State system is still cutting 2,300 faculty and staff positions, freezing any new positions, drastically scaling back academic and institutional support services, deferring maintenance, and significantly limiting the number of new students it will enroll.

And examples exist much closer to home, as well. Kentucky’s public institutions have not escaped these trends. The University of Kentucky, for example, increased its tuition 14 percent, and has frozen hiring and deferred maintenance in response to an $8.6 million cut in state funding. According to an article in the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, Western Kentucky University has accumulated some $65 million in deferred maintenance and has left 75 full-time faculty slots vacant.

The current financial situation threatens the quality of the educational experience and limits the opportunity of many students to gain a college education. Quality is certainly under pressure when, for example, cuts are made in the number of faculty.

Cuts in faculty result in larger classes. Take, for example, the political science class taught by Professor Ken Mayer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with an enrollment of 564 students. As Mayer said in USA Today, “There’s a real limit to the kinds of things you can do. I probably got to know 20 students by name, and they had to take the initiative to get to know me.”

Cuts in faculty also mean fewer courses or courses offered less frequently, which diminishes the richness of the curriculum, weakens the students’ preparation, and increases the length of time it takes to complete a degree. University of Kentucky English department chair Ellen Rosenman described the consequences of losing four tenured positions this past spring after the fall schedule had been published. “We really had to scramble for instructors,” Professor Rosenman said in the Herald-Leader, “and we still canceled a number of courses.”

“I’m not sure our majors will find enough upper-level courses to get through the major expeditiously,” she concluded.

Graduating in four years is already problematic at Kentucky’s public institutions; UK’s four-year rate, for example, is just 28 percent. Fewer courses and sections will only make this situation worse. In contrast, Centre’s four-year graduation rate is around 80 percent.

Reduction of full-time faculty slots means that more of those courses that survive cuts, even upper level courses, are being taught by part-time faculty or teaching assistants. For example, Western Kentucky University hired 452 part-time instructors last year. The reliance on part-time or temporary instructors clearly works against the kind of student-faculty relationships that are the foundation stones of effective undergraduate education.

Opportunity is also affected. Despite efforts by public institutions to cushion the impact of higher tuition through increases in financial aid, many lower-income students will opt out of college at just the time that additional education could make a life-changing difference. As Pat Callan, the president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education said, needy students will “hear about tuition going up another $500, and that’s just one more piece of evidence that college isn’t for them.”

While the consequences of these financial pressures on public institutions have received the most attention of late, private colleges, including Centre, have also felt the effects. The decline in the stock market caused the College’s endowment to decrease from a high of about $158 million in June 2000 to just over $123 million as of June 2003.

But for the most part Centre has managed to avoid the problems plaguing other public and private colleges. For example, Centre uses very few part-time or visiting instructors, in most cases simply as temporary replacements for permanent faculty on sabbatical leave. Ninety-seven percent of Centre’s faculty holds the appropriate terminal degree. At a time when most public institutions and many private colleges and universities have frozen new construction and deferred maintenance, the College has begun work on The College Centre, a $22-million renovation and expansion of Crounse Academic Center, which contains the Grace Doherty Library, and Sutcliffe Athletic Center, Centre’s main athletic and recreation facility.

Centre remains the greatest value among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. And while Centre’s tuition is higher than that at public institutions, the College’s commitment to opportunity is evidenced by the fact that more than 90 percent of its students receive some form of merit scholarship and/or financial aid.

Certainly, every student and every family need to decide what educational experience is best for them. But, especially now, students and their families need to ask tough questions about the value that they are receiving for their tuition dollars—because you usually get what you pay for.

Centrepiece
Centre College
600 West Walnut St.
Danville, KY 40422

Phone: (859) 238-5717
Fax: (859) 238-5723
E-mail: alumnews@centre.edu
or johnsond@centre.edu