Upscaling the American College Community

Last year, on the corner of the busiest intersection in College Park, Maryland—home of the University of Maryland’s flagship campus—a small but significant change took place. After 30 years of business, a derelict pizza shop closed its doors and, in its place, a popular chain of Portuguese chicken restaurants opened. This seemingly innocuous change is significant, not because of the reduction of pizza slices per capita (there are some 13 pizza joints near the campus) or the loss of a neighborhood institution. It is significant because it represents a microcosm of shifts taking place in College Park and many other college communities: upscaling.

There was a time when college communities were known, among other things, for cheapness. Cheap pitchers of beer at grimy bars. Cheap apartments and houses for rent. And, yes, even cheap slices of pizza. Goods and services were cheap in response to the well-worn mantra of the broke college student. If you wanted to attract college students, you competed on price more than quality. To be sure, there are still vestiges within every college community of businesses seeking to attract poor college students with basement prices. However, in many college communities there is a perceptible movement away from cheapness as a guiding business strategy. Instead, entrepreneurs are actively pursuing a more affluent segment of the consumer market.

As a professor of higher education, I have had the privilege of visiting many college communities, and in almost every case, the trend of upscaling is evident. By now, we’ve repeatedly heard and/or read about manifestations of this trend, particularly related to student housing. College communities have witnessed the construction of luxury apartment buildings, many of which are mixed-use developments, combining residential and commercial spaces. What this means in the context of college communities is that restaurants and convenience stores line the first floor of large apartment buildings. Students only need to walk down the hall and take an elevator to buy a burrito.

There are signs of upscaling beyond food and housing. Coffee shops feature designer roasts and every imaginable combination of espresso, milk, and flavoring. Bars are becoming less grimy and more glamorous, with signature cocktails and craft beer. Well-known fashion and technology brands are vying to occupy locations that receive heavy student (and parent) foot traffic. Entertainment venues like movie theaters are rolling out more services that carry higher prices. Mirroring trends in college pricing, the net effect of upscaling is that virtually everything in college communities is becoming more expensive. No matter where they look, students see opportunities to spend.

In some college communities, upscaling has been part of a purposeful plan to attract wealthy students and encourage faculty, staff, and young professionals to live near campus. As The New York Times recently reported, college communities in Philadelphia, Nashville, and Raleigh are building luxury housing not just for students, but also for members of the “creative class” in an effort to cultivate a “trendy live-work enclave.” The most idealistic of city planners hope that marrying the intellectual vibrancy of colleges with high-end housing replete with amenities will pull in young professionals and spark innovation, business creation, and economic growth. Some college communities—such as those David Brooks labeled “latte towns” in his analysis of the new upper class—have long flourished thanks to synergies between colleges, capital, and creativity.

Yet one question that arises from the upscaling of college communities is what it truly means for students, faculty, and staff. On the one hand, few people complain when an ugly building is torn down and replaced by an exciting restaurant. Who doesn’t want another option for late-night delivery or weekly office lunch? Additionally, from a safety perspective, there is value in students living in newer apartment complexes that are completely up to code. In the interest of work-life balance and protecting the environment, creating a college community in which faculty, staff, and students live nearby campus and forego long commutes is certainly beneficial. In fact, some would call the changes afoot in college communities as “smart growth.”

On the other hand, there is reason to challenge the notion that students, faculty, and staff have become affluent enough to explain and justify upscaling. If anything, research and experience suggests that colleges are welcoming increasing numbers of low-income and financially precarious students. These students may be the first in their family to attend college, they may be working adults, or they may be returning to school after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Upscaling may price out those students who can’t pay to play, causing them to stop out or drop out, either due to financial pressures or a sense of marginalization.

The large proportion of students who rely on financial aid means that taxpayer money may be used to meet higher prices for goods and services. In this way, it is possible that the federal government subsidizes the “trendy live-work enclaves” developing within college communities. There are, of course, students from wealthy families attending college, perhaps enough to create a strong incentive to scale up. Still, the incongruence between mounting student loan debt and the transformation of college communities suggests to me a faulty assumption of affluence among students.

In addition to low-income students, international and graduate students may acutely feel the squeeze occasioned by upscaling. International students are generally not eligible for financial aid, and they may be shocked upon arrival at how far (or, more appropriately, not far) their money goes. We would be naïve to think that all or even a majority of international students come from wealthy families who can pay for what has become the quintessential American college experience. Much of the conversation around luxury housing in college communities has focused upon undergraduate students and young professionals. Graduate students, who may be attempting to support themselves and dependents on a paltry stipend, are seemingly excluded from the calculus of upscaling. As more and more luxury apartments are constructed, it becomes difficult for me to imagine how graduate students make ends meet.

Faculty and staff are perhaps better positioned to enjoy the fruits of upscaling in college communities because they earn a salary. It is true that if you want to convince faculty and staff to live near campus, you need more than cheap beer. Most faculty and staff desire decent housing options, reliable public transportation, good schools, and, if at all possible, places to exercise, relax, and enjoy a meal with family and friends. But this does not mean that faculty and staff seek luxury. Affordable housing and transportation remain paramount concerns, especially given that higher education continues to suffer through budget cuts that make the possibility of merit and cost-of-living pay increases a recurrent department meeting joke. Amidst the steady rise in the proportion of part-time instructional faculty at many colleges, the logic of upscaling is particularly twisted. In other words, while there are certainly benefits to changes underway in college communities, I’m left wondering who, precisely, constitutes the affluent segment of the consumer market.

College communities hold an important position in the American cultural imagination. We easily retrieve images of tree-lined streets, quaint pubs, funky shops, and red brick academic buildings. Having not visited every college community, I would guess that there are many places that still embody this description. However, I have seen enough to contend that our imagination is stuck in a version of college communities from thirty or even fifty years ago. Many of today’s college communities have dramatically changed in ways that require deep pockets to live comfortably. It is not at all coincidental that the college affordability crisis has emerged in tandem with the creation of college communities that are playgrounds for the affluent.

UNC Board's Review of Research Centers Is an Assault on Academic Freedom

The UNC Board of Governors recently convened a panel to review the system's 240 research institutes and centers. The stated goal of the panel was to find ways to divert state money away from these institutes and centers to other system priorities. On Wednesday, the panel released a draft of its final report, which recommends closely reviewing or terminating 16 institutes or centers. The three institutes or centers on the chopping block are:

East Carolina University's North Carolina Center for Biodiversity
North Carolina Central University's Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill's Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity

In addition to terminating these three institutes or centers, the report recommends banning university-backed political advocacy. To be fair, this recommendation simply extends to all employees of institutes and centers a pre-existing UNC system restriction on political activity while on duty. Moreover, some of the panel's recommendations, such as encouraging better coordination among similarly themed centers, strikes me as logical. But there are also political machinations at play in the panel's review process and recommendations. By now, it is clear to me that no change in North Carolina's education system is free from politicking. Setting aside momentarily the political motivations of the panel, the UNC Board of Governors's efforts to restrict the free inquiry of tenured faculty at colleges and universities is an unabashed assault on academic freedom.

Let's stop to consider the meaning of academic freedom. Robert O'Neill reminded us over a decade ago that the American Association of University Professors' 1940 "Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure" has undergone little change and, within the insular confines of higher education, "remains almost as nearly as inviolate as the U.S. Constitution." The Statement protects faculty in three areas: freedom in research and in the publication of results, freedom in the classroom when discussing course subject matter and expressing themselves as citizens, and freedom from institutional censorship and unwarranted sanction. This, of course, is more of a professional meaning than a legal meaning. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted in academic culture and has long been considered an essential feature of higher education. It refers not only to the rights of faculty, but also the rights of students to freely exchange ideas, regardless of how they affect administrators' or politicians' delicate sensibilities.

Because the UNC Board of Governors disagrees politically with several of the system's institutions and centers, it is using the review process and its increasingly interventionist approach to governance to censor faculty and students and subject them to unwarranted sanction. In particular, the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity has been frequently targeted by conservatives in the state. The director of the Center, law professor Gene Nichol, has been criticized by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, a conservative think tank with ties to Republican leadership in the state. Simply put, the Center is facing termination because conservative politicians and their allies on the Board of Governors find its work offensive. Although the panel claims the decisions are primarily financial, closing the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity would save the system no money--hence, the unwarranted sanction. The Center is privately funded. Indeed, the state has already slashed appropriations to institutes and centers by 40 percent since 2008. It is difficult for me to believe that such attention would be directed at a research center that receives no state funds were politics not part of the equation.

Academic freedom exists precisely to protect against silencing free inquiry because it is deemed offensive by those in power. Moreover, academic freedom is necessary in order to allow for healthy critique of government and its functionaries. In other words, we should encourage faculty at universities to engage in political activity and criticize the government. Without this protected voice, where else can we turn for social, political, and economic critics that can check the unbridled power of politicians? Of course, we should recognize that the institutes and centers being scrutinized by the Board of Governors were not founded for the purpose of critiquing the state's elected officials. Instead, they serve marginalized communities, promote the conservation of global biodiversity, and address injustices. I would argue that these institutes and centers are not politically targeting conservatives--they are the victims of political censorship. Nevertheless, the ability to engage in critique is essential and something we should want from higher education institutions in a democracy.

The UNC Board's assault on academic freedom is not limited to the centers and institutes under review. In many ways, it serves as a prior restraint on academic freedom. In my college, it has had a chilling effect on our aspirations to launch a collaborative, interdisciplinary research center. My colleagues and I had initially discussed launching a research center that promotes the excellence of public education at all levels in the state. The center would involve undergraduate and graduate students in research and might even produce regular policy updates for our community stakeholders, such as principals and other school leaders. We have abandoned this idea in light of the Board's hostility to institutes and centers that may in any way be labeled political. Instead, we are forming a research network, which at the moment has no stated goal or purpose. We are scared that anything we create will be scrutinized by the state, and administrators are hesitant to fund anything that will be dismantled or criticized at a time when we are already under the microscope.

In other words, the UNC Board's review may result in the termination of a few centers, but the effects could limit free inquiry at many institutions for the foreseeable future. There may not be an explicit policy of censorship in the UNC system, but my college is self-censoring out of fear.

The "All-Administrative" University: A Faculty Invention?

I recently read Benjamin Ginsberg's The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University. The rising number of administrative employees in higher education and increasing costs attributed to administration are hot topics. Many observers bemoan bloated mid-managerial ranks and obscene compensation for executives. They link excessive spending on administration to cuts in instructional expenditures, as evidenced by the now routine reliance upon contingent instructors. I've been knee-deep in these issues as part of two initially unrelated research projects on part-time faculty and administrative costs at public comprehensive institutions.

Ginsberg's claim is that in the 1960s and 70s, colleges and universities were directed by the work and concerns of faculty. Teaching and research were ends and institutions of higher learning existed to achieve these ends. By contrast, today's colleges and universities are dictated by a growing number of full-time professional administrators, who view management and institutional advancement as ends. Their primary objective is increasing the reaches of their authority and increasing the number of people they supervise. Shared governance is eroded as power concentrates in the hands of people who are far removed from classrooms, laboratories, and libraries.

The data that Ginsberg cites certainly raises questions:

• Over the past four decades, the number of full-time professors has increased about 50 percent, keeping pace with growth in student enrollments. During the same period, the number of administrators and administrative staffers increased by 85 percent and 240 percent.
• Between 1947 and 1995 total university spending increased 148 percent. Administrative spending, however, grew by 235 percent.

These figures are perhaps not surprising to anyone familiar with higher education. It is less clear why the number of administrative employees and why administrative costs are rising. Several explanations have been proffered, but few of them have been systematically researched. These include:

• Spending money to make money: in the wake of state budget cuts, universities have invested heavily in administrative units that generate revenues.
• Mission creep: colleges and universities strive to be like the most prestigious institutions, and the most prestigious institutions are research-oriented. Shifting to a research orientation requires different spending priorities.
• Administrative lattice: faculty focus on the things that advance their careers, meaning they increasingly abandon administrative tasks, requiring more administrative staff.
• Regulatory burdens: colleges and universities are now required to comply with a range of regulations and provide regular performance reports, all of which require staff and money.
• Growth in enrollments: there are more students to serve, and the services they require are more costly than in the past.

Ginsberg largely dismisses many of these explanations. He contends that the explosion of administration in higher education is internally-generated. He believes that administrators are motivated by the desire to self-replicate. In order to advance their careers, they must put all emphasis on image polishing, money making, and vision setting. The larger their fiefdoms become, the better their prospects for promotion up the ladder. In order to ascend the ladder, administrators must constantly chip away at the power of faculty members. They do this through a variety of strategies, including commissioning studies and task forces, invoking strategic priorities, employing managerial buzzwords, and favoring a demand-side view of curriculum development. The latter technique basically means making curriculum changes based upon what they perceive student-consumers want.

These ideas are persuasive on some level, as I saw the palpable conflict between administrators and faculty during my time working in a provost's office. The techniques of administrator power-hoarding were also evident to me. Yet there are two problems with Ginsberg's notion of a self-propagating administration at odds with the faculty. First, he doesn't actually provide evidence that this is happening. Aside from disproving, in his eyes, external sources of administrative growth, he does not show through data that administrators are simply interested in expanding their spheres of influence. Second, he does not adequately address the fact that the line between administration and faculty can be a fuzzy one.

Indeed, the managers he derides often come directly from the ranks of faculty. While it is true that some institutions are hiring outside academe for top-level positions, many--if not the majority--of vice presidents, vice provosts, deans, associate deans, and so on were once faculty. This means that the "all-administrative" university was not invented out of thin air by a group of management obsessed outsiders. It came from former faculty forced to make decisions in difficult times. Some of these individuals were interested in prestige and advancing their own careers. However, many of them simply wanted to do good work and return to their academic posts after serving institutions they love. 

The golden age of higher education, according to Ginsberg, was a time when there were more faculty than administrators, and administrators tended to be part-time (keeping one foot in their departments). Not coincidentally, this was also a time when institutions were expected to do a lot less, and higher education was far less accessible to vast swaths of the American population. To buy Ginsberg's argument, we need more evidence, which is precisely why a colleague and I are undertaking our research. Some of this research should tackle the administrator-faculty separation assumed in Ginsberg's book. For the "all-administrative" university to be a tenable concept, we need to see proof of a substantial shift in motivations and perspectives as faculty become managers--such a sizable shift, in fact, that they can no longer be identified as faculty. 

It's Not Just Institutions Driving the Amenities Arms Race: Meet American Campus Communities

Many higher education institutions have received critical scrutiny for building luxury resident halls, student centers, and recreational facilities. Some observers have argued that institutions compete with one another to attract students through these buildings and services in what higher education scholars call the "amenities arms race." A careful study of spending in higher education reveals that climbing walls and swimming pools are easy targets for critics looking to confirm widespread allegations that colleges and universities are wasteful and drive up prices that students and their families pay for higher education.

Some of this critique is warranted. However, in a common theme that runs throughout popular portrayals of education issues in America, a major player in the amenities boom is missing in the conversation: the private sector. A whole range of companies are cashing in on the college student market, with little regard for how their products encourage frivolous spending and increase the price of attending college. You may say these costs do not matter because they are outside the tuition that students must pay. I would counter this thinking by arguing that: 1) many of the services offered by institutions that are condemned for costliness do not factor into tuition; and 2) with this in mind, we should always think about the price of attending college in broad terms, encompassing tuition, as well as fees, books, as well as discretionary spending.

One of the companies that is a major force in the higher education landscape (physically and figuratively) is American Campus Communities (ACC). You may not have heard of ACC, but you've likely seen their products if you've spent any time on a college campus recently. Launched in 1996 by a former resident assistant, ACC has developed $4.2 billion in properties and $4.6 billion student housing assets. They own and operate their own buildings off campus, but also work with colleges in public-private partnerships to manage or develop specified housing facilities. In 2004, they became the first publicly traded student housing real estate and investment trust (REIT). Their buildings grace the campuses of the University of New Mexico, Princeton University, Portland State University, Arizona State University, and the University of South Florida, to name a few examples.

Vista del Sol Apartments in Tempe, AZ

ACC does not specialize in run-of-the-mill dormitories. You won't find cinder block rooms, rickety furniture, and communal, bleach soaked bathrooms in their Vista del Sol property or Casas del Rio property. These are luxury residence halls that cater to the consumer demands of the Millennial generation. In fact, it would be difficult at first glance to even determine that ACC buildings are, in fact, designed for college students. They look more like resorts, complete with swimming pools, high-end fitness centers, and movie theaters. Rather than being criticized for opulence, ACC is praised for its profitability and sustained, recession-proof growth. It has been regularly named a company to watch and its stock has several times been pinpointed as a smart investment. In other words, when a private company creates expensive amenities to compete in the lucrative college student market, they are viewed as forward-thinking and entrepreneurial, not symbols of a system spinning out of control as it strives for prestige.

The double standards are less concerning than the presence of companies like ACC (there are many others) on campuses and the influence they exert. As privately constructed buildings infiltrate a university space, public or quasi-publicly-funded and operated buildings must change to keep pace. The amenities arms race, in other words, is not just a product of institutions competing with one another. It is also a product of competition created by companies like ACC building on and around campuses nationwide. Before long, luxury student housing becomes normalized, such that students and parents feel like it is the most acceptable option. A family could certainly look into less expensive options, but they fail to capture the imagination, communicate a sense of comfort, and convey status quite like a resort-esque apartment complex. And if so many others can afford it, they reason, so can we. The normalization of spending in higher education is not something that has been systematically studied, but there is reason to further explore the ways in which companies like ACC do not simply respond to consumer demand--they create demand where it previously did not exist.

The Varsity, an ACC property down the street from my house in College Park, MD

 The costs of living in these buildings adds to the rising tuition burden at many institutions. While it is true that institutions themselves have increased student fees to pay for services and facilities, and many have built their fair share of lazy rivers and Mongolian barbecues in partnership with companies, we should not ignore the private sector. Many, many companies are profiting as students fall further into debt. And while we can express outrage at institutions, at least the non-profit ones are investing the money they earn back into an enterprise ostensibly dedicated to further education. The same cannot be said of a company like ACC, where profits go shareholders.

The Relationship Between Colleges and Corrections--And Why You Should Care

A recent story in The Chronicle of Higher Education caught my eye. It described several programs in which college professors teach courses to prison inmates. Hello, publicly engaged scholars! Apparently, exposing the millions of incarcerated Americans to new ideas can be politically charged if the program receives state funding. In the article, Ted O'Brien, a state senator in New York, opposed a proposal to provide public money to teach college courses in ten prisons. He explained: "However well-intentioned, I cannot support a policy that would divert resources away from helping students in good standing and their families afford a quality education." Interestingly, states have routinely directed money from higher education institutions to prisons. It is one of many ways that colleges and corrections are related and one of many reasons anyone with a stake in higher education should care about our increasingly imprisoned nation.

One way of thinking about state higher education funding is through Hovey's (1999) concept of the "balance wheel." Effectively, in good economic times, higher education is generously funded. However, in poor economic times, higher education is one of the first areas to receive cuts. Hovey usefully suggested a few possible explanations for this. First, legislators argue that colleges and universities have their own reserves and can better absorb financial instability. Second, higher education institutions are believed to be better equipped to translate cuts into changes in employee pay than other state agencies, where there may be pre-established payscales and multi-year contracts subject to collective bargaining agreements. Third, legislators think colleges and universities can easily adjust spending by reducing seats or courses. Lastly, higher education institutions can pass more fees onto students, unless they are bound to maintain tuition and fees by state law. The general idea is that, in a difficult economic climate, other areas of state funding get their pieces of the taxpayer pie first. Higher education gets the chunks of crust stuck to the edge of the pie tin.

Prisons certainly work according to a different set of realities than universities. Laying off prison staff can have dire consequences, and we can't ask prisoners to pay for their own incarceration (though it should be noted that inmates are frequently expected to pay out-of-pocket for a range of basic necessities). As America continues to incarcerate more of its population, the tab picked up by state governments continues to escalate. There are now some 2.4 million people locked up in the United States. The state and federal government spends over $700 billion annually on corrections. In several states, spending on prisons now exceeds expenditures on higher education, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and California. A report by California Common Sense found that, between 1980 and 2011, state spending on higher education decreased by 13 percent in inflation adjusted dollars. Over the same period, spending on corrections jumped by 436 percent. The state forked over $8,667 per college student in 2011, compared to $50,000 per inmate. Every single state in the country spent more money per inmate than it did per primary or secondary student, according to CNN Money. Beyond a shadow of doubt, states are prioritizing spending on corrections.

In other words, policy decisions are surely diverting resources away from helping "students in good standing and their families" access a high-quality, affordable college education. When states wage a failed war on drugs, impose mandatory minimum sentences, and sign contracts with corporations obligating them to fill private prisons, more taxpayer dollars go to keeping people behind bars than behind desks. The reality is that spending public money on higher education, both within prisons walls and on ivied campuses, is a policy win-win. It makes higher education accessible and affordable, while also lowering crime and incarceration rates. Research shows that the recidivism rate of prisoners who even minimally participate in college courses is much lower than average. In addition to potentially creating a pathway for inmates to acquire skills and earn degrees, a lower recidivism rate means few people are incarcerated, potentially increasing the crumbs appropriated to higher education. Additionally, studies indicate that one of the positive externalities of higher education is lower crime and incarceration rates. Thus, if we want fewer people to return to jail, spending a small amount on the provision of college courses in prisons is smart. If we want fewer people in jail to begin with, and less money directed to corrections, we should stop thinking of higher education as the "balance wheel."

Once we realize that money once used to build a vigorous public higher education system is now being used to build prisons in small towns across America, we can see that the destinies of professors and prisoners are intricately bound. It is one thing to bemoan state budget cuts--it is quite another to follow the money trail and ask difficult questions. I urge everyone working in higher education to ask those difficult questions. Indeed, to advocate for prison reform and demand that "corrections" lives up to its name is to champion adequate funding for higher education.