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The Crisis in Public Higher Education: A New Perspective
By Richard J. Cebula* and James V. Koch**
ABSTRACT. Higher public education in the U.S. is as never before being challenged by
numerous realities that need to be addressed if the public college and university systems are to
survive and fulfill their ostensibly ultimate responsibilities to the American public. Overall
student enrollment at these institutions has been on a downward trend for a full decade. There
has been a discernable decline in the esteem with which the American public holds higher
education. There are numerous dimensions to this phenomenon; the interested reader is referred
to Koch and Cebula (2020) for an in-depth and substantive empirical analysis thereof. Of
necessity, in this brief paper, we focus on only three dimensions of the problem as it applies to
public institutions of higher education, namely: escalating college costs; mounting student debt;
and the failures of boards of trustees to act as fiduciaries representing the interests of students,
parents, and citizens. Once we address these issues broadly, we offer feasible solutions that are
potentially capable of helping to improve the circumstances surrounding public higher education
and that would enable it to chart a new course.
Introduction
These are challenging times for higher education in America. Headcount collegiate
enrollment has declined nine years in a row (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2020). Campuses
across the country have been depopulated by COVID-19. Students and their parents are restive
because they usually are still being asked to pay full price for collegiate experiences that very
well may not include any face-to-face live contact with faculty, but do involve ubiquitous Zoom
sessions, minimal or zero on-campus activities, and diminished prospects of graduates turning
their degrees into attractive, well-paying jobs.1 It is little wonder that there has been a discernable
decline in the esteem with which the American public holds higher public education.
All but a few campuses are experiencing financial strains unseen since the Great
Depression. Fewer students on most campuses has translated to lower tuition and fee collections,
while economic recession has diminished state financial support. Empty dormitories and deserted
*Corresponding author. Department of Economics and Center for the Study of Public Choice,
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030. Dr. Cebula is the author or co-author of 15
scholarly books in Economics and Finance and over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in
Economics, Finance, and Political Science.
**Dr. Koch is Board of Visitors Professor of Economics Emeritus, Old Dominion University and
author or co-author of more than 100 articles in Economics and 13 books in Economics and
Higher Education.
1
football stadiums are exerting severe financial pressure on institutions, especially those that
incurred significant bonded debt in order to build facilities that arguably would enable them to
“keep up with the Joneses” inside the academic hierarchy. In this harsh new world, some
institutions face the specter of defaulting on the bond indebtedness that enabled them to construct
facilities such as wellness facilities, upgraded residence halls and food services, lazy rivers, and
expanded stadiums. If institutions are unable to service their debts, then in some cases this may
cause bond holders to repossess what they funded and then either to close them or run them as
for-profit facilities. Moreover, these dire prospects for bond holders may impair the ability of
colleges and universities to undertake new bond issues in the future.
Given these circumstances, it should come as no surprise that the public’s faith in higher
education has been waning. This is part of long-term trend. Even a decade ago, public opinion
polls revealed declining citizen faith in the transformative power of the collegiate experience
(Kelderman, 2010) and the slide has continued (Jaschik 2018; Pew 2018; Marken 2019). Gallup
asserts that since 2015, the fall in confidence suffered by Americans in higher education has
exceeded that of any other major American institution (Marken, 2019).
It is beyond the scope of this study to probe all the reasons that have contributed to the
fall in esteem of the public for higher education. We refer readers to Koch and Cebula (2020)
for that broader discussion. Instead, we will focus in the present study on only three dimensions
of the problem as it applies to public institutions of higher education: escalating college costs;
mounting student debt; and the failures of boards of trustees to act as fiduciaries representing the
interests of students, parents, and citizens. Our focus here is on public sector, four-year
institutions because more data are available describing public institutions and the selection,
training, and duties of the members of public university governing boards. Such information is
usually prescribed by law and therefore more readily subject to greater inspection than in the
independent sector.
The Escalating Costs of Public Higher Education
There is widespread recognition among Americans that the cost of attending college has
increased significantly in recent years. Long gone are the days when an undergraduate student
could finance her college education from summer jobs and part-time employment during the
academic school year on a public university campus. Even so, the pricing data presented in
2
Figure 1 often come as a shock to many individuals. From 2000 to 2019, posted college tuition
and fees rose 161.5%, which contrasts sharply to the only 48.3% increase for the overall
Consumer Price Index over the same period.
The rising costs of medical care have become a recurrent political issue, but tuition and
fees actually climbed 60% faster than medical care costs between 2000 and 2019. Nevertheless,
the costs of higher education seldom have become a political issue and no effective national
organization has emerged similar to the Consumer Union that advocates for students and parents,
Indeed, many students and their parents count themselves as fortunate if their student applicant is
admitted to a prestigious college, and therefore this presents them with the enviable opportunity
(the obligation) to pay the higher prices. Admission/attendance at some colleges has become a
prestige consumption good not unlike driving a Mercedes or wearing a Rolex watch. It sends a
message.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting that other sectors of the economy often exhibit very
different pricing behavior. Figure 1 discloses that computer equipment, which here includes
computers, PCs, peripherals, Internet services, and telephone hardware, has become dramatically
less expensive in recent years even while such items have become faster and more powerful.
Technological change and advances in efficiency have driven down prices in this arena. Higher
education, however, has witnessed relatively few significant increases in productivity and
(COVID-19 excepted) largely is utilizing the same general models of education and instruction
as it was a century years ago.2 In fact, increased emphasis upon faculty research and publication
has at a majority of institutions resulted in reduced faculty teaching loads and a decline in
student/faculty ratios. (Koch and Cebula 2020). Faculty may vote for Karl Marx or his
equivalent in the next election, but often are profoundly conservative or even reactionary where
their own workplaces are concerned and most defend vehemently the status quo in terms of how
higher education is delivered on their campus.
3
Figure 1
Comparing the Rise in Tuition and Fees to Changes
in Other Prices, 2000-2019
! "#$%&'$#
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (2020).
The tuition and fee price data presented in Figure 1 are de facto “sticker price” numbers,
that merely reflect institutions’ posted tuition and fee prices. The typical student does not pay
these full prices and receives a discount from sticker prices in the form of a scholarship or grant
that frequently comes from the institution itself. In 2018-19, The College Board (2020)
estimates the typical four-year public institution discounted 30% of the net total cost of
attendance for its in-state undergraduate by means of scholarships and grants. Figure 2 takes this
“price discounting” in account and illustrates what has happened to net, inflation-adjusted costs
between 1999-00 and 2019-20 at four-year public colleges. “Net” here means that scholarships
and grants have been deducted from the cost but not loans, which must be paid back. In context,
the term “inflation-adjusted” signifies that the data have been adjusted to reflect price increases
over this two-decade time period so that the data are comparable over these years. One can see
that the price-adjusted costs of tuition and fees plus room and board (on-campus) rose from
$9,070 in 1999-00 to $15,380 in 2019-20.
Lest the importance of Figure 2 be lost or underestimated, it should be observed that the
$9,070 to $15,380 upward surge in costs is in excess of increases in the Consumer Price Index.
4
This situation reflects a harsh reality for many students and parents. In other words, the net,
inflation-adjusted cost of public higher education moved upward by an annual average of 2.68%
faster than increases in the Consumer Price Index.
Figure 2
(
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Net, Inflation-Adjusted Tuition and Fees Plus Room and Board:
Four-Year Public Colleges, 1999-00 to 2019-20
Source: The College Board. (2019, Table 9).
Borrowing legal terminology, we stipulate that the cost of obtaining an undergraduate
education at a four-year public university in the United States has for some time been increasing
faster than the Consumer Price Index. Let us now investigate how this affects a typical working-
class family. Figure 3 reports the percent of the average income of a production worker in the
United States that has been required to pay average tuition and fees at one of the nation’s four-
year public universities. One can see that in 1999-2000, only 20.84% of a typical production
worker’s income was required to pay annual tuition and fees for one student at the typical four-
year public institution, but by 2019-2020, this outlay had risen to 30.97%. In practical terms,
this means that payment of tuition and fees took an additional 10.13% slice out of the production
worker’s annual income by the end of this period. Note that this does not include the additional
costs of room and board, books, incidentals, travel, and so forth, which would increase this
economic burden significantly.
5
Figure 3
*
*
*
+%,$-+./0!1++$+"2'$%31
$4$5$-++!$!2"+6
+%,1++$+"2'$
Sources: For the incomes of production workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020); for tuition and fees, The
College Board (2019, Table 9).
Mountains of Student Debt and Implications Thereof
Confronted with the rising prices of higher education just noted, a representative student
coming from a typical family often finds herself unable to pay these prices without incurring
debt. In 2016-17, an estimated 70% of undergraduate students who received a bachelor’s degree
and 56.5% of all undergraduate students had some student debt (Urban Institute 2020). Student
Loan Hero (2020) estimates that the average amount of student debt for the Class of 2019 was
$29,900. Figure 4 reveals that student loan debt as of this writing exceeds $1.54 trillion, up from
only $0.24 trillion in 2001. This data reflects an 10.28% elevated average annual compound rate
of growth over the nearly two-decade period.
The New York Federal Reserve Bank’s Liberty Street Economics (2019) reported that of
all students who borrowed funds in 2009, 26% had defaulted at least once on the repayment of
their debt sometime during the following five years. Default rates were particularly high for
students who dropped out before earning a bachelor’s degree, those attending a for-profit
institution, African Americans, and those coming from lower income households. Default rates
6
were lowest for students who had attended flagship institutions and substantially higher at
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Figure 4
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78
78
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9:%;+%$+%<+=4%)%
>%+!,!?
+!,=!,%$+%=4%
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Center for Microeconomic Data (2019).
So what? This question may be viewed as a legitimate one to pose when confronted with
the student debt data shown in Figure 4 and the accompanying default rates. The answer is that
student debt constitutes a significant drag upon the American economy and adversely affects the
future life of the students facing this burden. Student debtors are: less likely to purchase a home
(Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2017); less likely to start a new business (Ambrose et al.
2015); more likely to be living with their parents (Fry 2015); less likely to be saving for their
retirement (Gale et al. 2019); and, more likely to have negative household wealth (Armantier et
al. 2016).
In addition, one should not ignore the fact that that student debt usually is not
dischargeable in a bankruptcy proceeding. This means unpaid student debt obligations follow a
bankrupted student debtor the remainder of her life. Indeed, they very well may preclude or at
least limit her ability to obtain a significant line of credit.
7
It will suffice for us to observe that the acquisition of debt often is a positive thing when
it is used to help individuals acquire homes, businesses, or significant assets. Unfortunately, this
is unlikely to be the case when students either acquire too much debt and subsequently default,
or their indebtedness does not lead them to productive employment. Witness the sad observation
of a highly indebted thirty-two-year old former college student who observed that “I kind of
ruined my life by going to college” (Consumer Reports 2016).
The Failure of Trustees to Act as Fiduciaries
Black’s Law Dictionary (Garner 2020) defines a “fiduciary” as “one who owes to another
the duties of good faith, trust, confidence, and candor.” One of the Latin roots of the word
fiduciary is fiducia, which is translated variously in English to words such as confidence, trust,
and assurance. Thus, a fiduciary is expected to exhibit loyalty to her clients or charges and to
look out for their best interests.
The problem is that many members of public university governing boards do not act as
proper fiduciaries per se. Practically speaking, this means that they do not acknowledge or are
seemingly even unaware that their primary fiduciary responsibilities ought to be to students,
parents, and citizens rather than to the institution’s president, its faculty, or even its football
team. There are multiple reasons underlying this phenomenon, but unavoidable is the reality that
duties and responsibilities of governing board members (most often called trustees or regents)
seldom are either well defined in the law or are otherwise effectively and clearly transmitted to
the parties involved. Consider the University of Virginia. The Virginia Constitution (2020) says
nothing more than “The General Assembly may provide for the establishment, maintenance and
operation of educational institutions which are desirable for the intellectual, cultural and
occupational development of the people of this Commonwealth.”
Credit Virginia because its constitution does expressly indicate that its universities should
be operated for the benefit of its citizens. Yet, neither that constitution nor subsequent statutes
provide critical guidance concerning clearly identified goals and values or define specifically the
duties, qualifications, training, and activities of the members of governing boards. Fiduciary
responsibility needs to be clarified.
8
Nationally, qualifications are seldom specified for the position of trustee. At four-year
public institutions, governors appoint almost 80% of all trustees, with these appointments
typically requiring legislative approval. In the remaining 20% of institutions, usually the
legislature elects board members or in a few cases (e.g., Michigan and Pennsylvania), board
members are elected in statewide contests (Koch and Cebula 2020). Whichever method is used
to populate a governing board, that membership tends to reflect political realities --- who has
given money to politicians in power, whose appointment would settle a political debt, whose
appointment would appeal to a particular political constituency, or friendships. The needs of the
board or institution in question often are secondary.
Hence, when a new trustee joins a public university governing board, ordinarily she does
not have a legally defined lodestar to follow that informs her what she should and should not do.
Since many trustees predictably turn out to be alumni of the institution they now govern, they
often already are familiar with its favorite narrative --- which often is a Dr. Pangloss “best of all
possible worlds” story that showcases campus triumphs, usually ignores its deficiencies, and
enunciates glowingly how the campus wishes to be viewed. “State U’s program in basket
weaving is ranked #1 in the West.” With careful nurturing by the institution’s president and
senior administrators and some co-opting, most board members buy into the narrative and
emerge as proponents of the institution and its president (Koch and Cebula 2020).
A perusal of board meeting agendas reveals that topics such as student access,
affordability, the indebtedness of students, dropout rates, the subsequent employability of
graduates, and the extent to which they gain economic mobility, as well as measures of what
students actually learn are topics that struggle for attention (Koch and Cebula 2020). A few
trustees may actively pursue such issues, but most trustees give them only lip service. Thus,
when push comes to shove, boards spend far more time dealing with new building construction,
land acquisitions, admissions numbers, research activities, proposed new academic programs,
and budgets.
The upshot is that when proposals that would increase costs come before trustees, nearly
all members end up backing the administration and voting in favor of things made to appear vital
and necessary, if not inevitable. One study of 323 sitting trustees on 12 public university
9
governing boards in Virginia discovered a total of only three negative tuition and fee votes by
individual board members over a three-year period (Partners, 2020).
Ultimately, two primal forces constrain board behavior, even at elite institutions: (1) the
extent of the institution’s pricing power (which reflects its reputation and the strength of its
branding); and, (2) the possibility of adverse reactions from external parties such as the governor,
legislators, media, and on rare occasions, students. Nevertheless, elite flagship public
institutions such as UCLA, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Michigan
and the University of Virginia have considerable ability to charge elevated prices. For example,
UCLA (ranked #1 among public universities by U.S. News and World Report) received more
than 111,000 applications for undergraduate admission in Fall 2019 (College Navigator 2020).
Further, even though UCLA’s non-resident undergraduate tuition and fees were a lofty $42,994
in 2019-2020, the Bruins enrolled about 9,000 non-resident undergraduate students in Fall 2019
(College Navigator, 2020). It would be inaccurate to say UCLA and its elite brethren can charge
any price they wish, but it is not an exaggeration to opine that these universities need not worry
about whether they can fill the slots in their undergraduate student bodies unless their prices
were truly to skyrocket.
The pricing power of public universities may wax and wane pari passu with its rankings
and reputation. An institution’s rankings (and its attractiveness to students) may reflect factors
in addition to its academic programs and prowess. An institution’s location, the quality of its
facilities, the nature of student body, the achievements of its graduates, and even the success of
its athletics teams may influence where an individual wishes to attend school.
In any case, many/most public university governing boards adopt tuition and fee
ordinances without any input from students, parents, or the public. Approximately one-half of
all public university governing boards now have a student member, but only in less than one-half
of those instances can students vote. Nevertheless, when students do have the ability to vote, the
evidence is that this typically makes no difference in the outcome. Koch and Cebula (2020),
relying upon a sample of nearly 200 public institutions, have demonstrated that extending board
membership and voting rights to students, or faculty, or staff, or even to all three, had no
perceptible impact on the size of tuition and fee increases over a fifteen-year period (holding
other things constant, as do all of the estimation findings).
10
One of the factors that does make a difference in board receptivity to cost increases is the
size of the board membership. Larger boards are associated with higher cost increases than
smaller boards, presumably because larger boards diminish active participation and involvement.
Another factor that does make a difference is that in which a statewide board must approve a cost
increase in addition to an institution’s own board. Statewide approval means smaller cost
increases.
Further, institutions that are heavily involved in graduate work usually charge their
undergraduate students more to attend. Also, institutions that are more heavily involved in
educating STEM students charge higher prices (Koch and Cebula 2020). It is not clear whether
this reflects either an anticipated greater ability to pay on the part of STEM students, or instead,
reflects legitimately higher costs of education.
Like most for-profit businesses, campuses size up the ability of their customers (primarily
students and their parents) to pay. Harvard’s Opportunity Insights Project (2020) revealed that
between 1999 and 2013, 69% of undergraduate students at the University of Michigan Ann
Arbor emanated from families where their parents’ incomes placed them in the top quintile of all
households nationally. Only 3% came from the bottom quintile. Contrast Michigan’s situation
to Mississippi Valley State University where only 4% of students came from families whose
incomes placed them in top quintile nationally, but 45% from the bottom income quintile.
Nor do institutions with large endowments dedicate significant portions of these funds to
reducing the costs of education. The University of Michigan (UM) enjoyed an endowment
valued at $12.7 billion as of June 30, 2019 (Morano and Coletti 2020). Let’s undertake a thought
experiment by supposing 4.0% of this endowment annually now is dedicated to reducing the
undergraduate tuition and fees of Michigan residents. In 2019, this would have generated $508
million, or slightly in excess of $30,000 per student. In essence, the UM administration could
theoretically have made it possible for every one of its estimated 16,700 Michigander, i.e., in-
state, undergraduates to attend for nothing. Of course, this is not about to happen, but the
exercise does underline the ability of elite institutions and their boards to make choices.3 Has this
choice (or anything even approaching it) ever in fact been presented to the Board of Regents at
UM or to any other institution of higher education in the United States? Has any individual
11
board member actually ever asked for such a calculation? If so, such instances have gone
unreported.
Not only do trustees on the typical governing board not vote against cost-increasing
proposals proffered by university presidents, but also they seldom are asked to consider ways to
constrain or even reduce costs on the campus. It is far more pleasant for board members to lunch
at board meetings with faculty members who have just received a multi-million-dollar research
grants, students who have just been appointed Rhodes Scholars, or the staff member who just
returned from a work session with Mother Teresa than it is to listen to single mothers struggling
to pay for their education.
Simply put, few board members view themselves as fiduciaries on behalf of students,
parents, and citizens. They carry other agendas, one consequence of which has been rapidly
rising student costs and a gradual, but perceptible fall in the esteem of the general public for
higher public education in America.
Solutions
The obvious starting place would seem to be gubernatorial offices and legislative halls
because it is these individuals who ultimately have the ability to change the governance
environment. New laws must be written that clearly specify that trustees should act as
fiduciaries on behalf of students, parents, and citizens and, in addition, stipulate general goals
and values (“provide high quality education at the lowest possible cost”). Newly written statutes
should clearly enunciate desired qualifications for trustees, specify how they should be trained
and retrained, and, when necessary, how they can be removed.
Once appointed, board members should pay attention to the missions of the institutions
they govern. Mission creep and board indifference can result in institutions’ supporting
programs and activities of marginal importance. Every dollar spent has an opportunity cost ---
the same funds could have been used for other meritorious, quite possibly more meritorious,
purposes. Administrative expenditures are no exception, and the faculty notion that the same
funds might been used to improve instruction and research is definitionally correct.
Board members are well advised to be measurement oriented and to seek information that
will better inform their decision making. How many students does the typical faculty member
teach per semester? To what extent are prized research grants subsidized by the institution?
12
How many hours per week is the typical classroom or laboratory used? What evidence is there
that the institution as a whole and the specific academic programs at that university have a
positive value-added, i.e., that students learn and progress at the institution? How much debt
does the typical student incur and what is the institution’s rate of student loan default? Not all
decisions made by board members depend upon data, but having reliable, pertinent data available
usually results in more enlightened board discussions and votes.
Boards should consider encouraging the circumspect pricing of scarce resources on
campus in order to promote more intelligent/efficient usage. Consider space in university
buildings, which is limited in supply and yet nearly always has alternative uses. When space is
provided for free, it tends to be misused and even hoarded. Placing prices on space will
stimulate more efficient use of buildings, just as placing prices on the use of university
automobiles and graduate assistants promotes wiser decisions with respect to their use.
Boards also should keep an eye on student costs other than tuition and fees. For instance,
room and board prices and the cost of textbooks deserve serious attention because on some
campuses they exceed tuition and fees. Official policies that strongly encourage faculty
promotion of e-textbooks would seem to be a path deserving of more common adoption.5
Boards that acknowledge a fiduciary duty toward students, parents, and the public must
recognize the need for transparency in their discussions, decision-making and budgets. Boards
are well advised to post university budgets, transactions, cost information, student debt, the
employment success of graduates, information on student employability in the various
disciplines in which majors are offered, and university productivity measures on easily accessed
web sites. Constituents will make better decisions when they are better informed, and paranoia
will decline.
Board members should respect the president, who benefits from having an unmatched
view of the entire institution, as well as senior administrators, and faculty. Nevertheless, as
Olson (1971) and others have demonstrated, one must recognize that the personal welfare of
these senior-level individuals may not be compatible either in whole or in part with the best
interests of the entire institution, especially its students and their families.4 Thus, wherever
possible, it is wise to evaluate and incentivize these key campus personnel in a fashion that
encourages them to give greater weight to the interests of students and the broader society.
13
Deferred compensation arrangements sometimes are helpful in this regard. This issue and the
topics identified above in are explored in considerable detail in Koch and Cebula (2020).
Alas, we are not sanguine about the prospects for improvements in this “higher education
is in some trouble” scenario unless overall economic conditions and especially those in higher
education deteriorate more than they have in recent years. This is certainly not a circumstance
that we would welcome, but an emergency may just be what is required in order to stimulate
meaningful departures from current behavioral models. Among the circumstances that qualify as
emergencies, however, are sharply declining enrollments. Increasingly, these are circumstances
faced by small, regional public institutions located in rural areas and so we might well expect to
see proportionately greater changes at these institutions in coming years than at the flagships.
Pennsylvania presents us with a mini-case study. Its State System Universities (a list
including fourteen institution, but not Penn State, Pittsburgh or Temple) enrolled 83,700 students
in Fall 2020, down from 120,000 a decade previous (Snyder, 2020). This is among the reasons
why the Commonwealth has been considering merging six of these one-time state teacher’s
colleges into two institutions. Extracting meaningful economies from such mergers, however,
will depend critically upon the institutions’ abilities to part ways with significant numbers of
faculty, an uncertain task given the faculty union contracts that exist at these institutions.
Further, achieving significant savings also will require that the programmatic mix of the
campuses be altered and increased sharing of faculty and programmatic majors among campuses.
Increased campus specialization and the narrowing of missions is a likely outcome.
Even if we assume changes such as these occur in Pennsylvania, it is not clear students
will see the benefits. Pennsylvania has a history of being a high-cost, low financial aid state. By
way of illustration, in 2018-2019, the average net price paid by an in-state undergraduate at
Pennsylvania’s Slippery Rock University was $18,144, but it was only $14,843 at California
State University-Chico and an even lower $14,631 at SUNY’s Fredonia campus (College
Navigator, 2020). The distance between cup and mouth often is frustratingly long when the
topic is lowering student costs. However this turns out, the Pennsylvania situation captures an
important aspect of the on-going crisis in American higher public education.
Let’s assume that the changes being contemplated in Pennsylvania do actually move
forward. Will this provide a viable model for action in other states? Perhaps. However, when
considering solutions, we also must keep in mind that one size seldom fits all in American higher
14
education because of the tremendous variety of existing institutions. The circumstances facing
the University of Central Florida (with roughly 69,400 students, a medical school, and more than
$204 million in funded research in 2019-2020) differ dramatically from those confronting
Vermont’s Castleton University with 2,399 students and no graduate programs (College
Navigator 2020).
American public higher education has demonstrated considerable resiliency and an ability
to adjust in previous crises such as the Great Depression. It presumably has the ability to do so
once again in the 2020’s. It remains to be seen if it will be equal to the task. Given the
complexities of COVID-19, including its continued apparent contagiousness, and given the
social and inevitable economic consequences (including reduced state financial support of public
higher education as well as comprised ability of families to foot the bill for a four-year degree),
now is the time to initiate constructive adaptations to be deliberated and implemented.
Notes
1. To some extent the value of a college degree is questioned due to the adverse
employability and income prospects associated with it; these are practical considerations that
long have differed widely according to major, e.g., a business degree or engineering degree
versus a degree in art or English (Cebula and Lopes 1982). Arguably, universities should avail
students, parents, and perhaps even audiences of information that will educate decision makers
deciding on which major and degree to pursue.
2. COVID-19 has prompted huge increases in online instruction and Zoomed courses. It
remains to be seen whether this alternative model will continue and if so on what scale once
COVID-19 ceases to be a dominant factor in American society’s way of life.
3. We acknowledge that significant portions of the UM endowment are earmarked for
specific purposes and therefore could not be used in the way described in the experiment we
hypothesize.
4. This circumstance is a de facto “agency problem.”
5. The environmental aspects of e-textbooks might even be found to appeal to many
students.
15
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