Three more bad ideas to reform higher ed
New Mexico’s higher education is, once again, on the minds of many of our elected officials during this year’s legislative session, and lots of ideas to improve our state’s higher education have echoed around the statehouse. Some ideas had merit. Some did not. Here are three bad ideas I recently heard:
Merge institutions
Some legislators and citizens seem to think that New Mexico has too many institutions of higher education and merging some of them would somehow result in savings and or improved performance. This has been tested across the nation, and the poster child for higher-ed mergers is the state of Georgia. A report assessing the cost reductions of mergers in that state yielded a systemwide savings of about 1 percent. All the hard feelings in the communities where those institutions were located; all the controversies; all the time, effort and energy to make the necessary changes — for a 1 percent savings?
Aside from savings, some believe that mergers will somehow result in improved outcomes like better retention and graduation rates. After mergers, some schools have seen improvements in those areas, but universities that work closely together in a coordinated manner have seen similar results without mergers. Coordinated efforts like common course numbering can improve outcomes, and Higher Education Department Secretary Barbara Damron is leading an effort to make that happen. Merge schools without very careful thought? A bad idea.
Bust unions
Another idea I heard during the legislative session was to take actions to reduce the power of unions on college campuses or eliminate them altogether. Again, this is a very bad idea and one I oppose. Unions of various types have played a major role in building an American middle class, bringing all members of organizations together to talk and plan, which often leads to improved performance. In the education sector, an organization’s performance is largely predicted by the commitment, the passion and the efforts of those who matter most in the organization. In the case of higher education, those individuals are faculty and staff members. Unions are not the only way to bring people together to make things better, but they have been effective in achieving that goal in the past and do so today. Bust unions in higher education? That’s a bad idea.
Accelerate college
Finally, another very popular but troublesome idea is the overall acceleration of the college experience. The thinking goes something like this: Enroll students in as many dual-credit classes as possible. Then, once they are at university, get them to declare a major or a meta major (a group of similar disciplines like health or science) as quickly as possible. Next, reduce all majors to no more than 120 hours and provide incentives to convince students to enroll in 15 semester hours of classes or more per term. Taking these steps will undoubtedly get students to graduation faster, and that is desirable in many ways. But, what is lost in this approach? Try a little experiment. Watch a great film on fast forward. Get through it as quickly as possible. Did the film have any impact on you? Or, speed read a beautiful poem. Or, perhaps more critically, allow yourself a minute or two — no more — to reflect on what it means to live a good life — to live a life of meaning and purpose.
My point is simply this: Many important outcomes of a higher education simply cannot be achieved quickly. If you think it is important to appreciate the aesthetic dimensions of life, to reflect on one’s own existence, and develop the tools to think critically, that cannot be done quickly. It just isn’t possible.
Higher education is incredibly important in New Mexico and in our nation. Everyone wants to improve the performance of our colleges and universities, but not all changes and not all new ideas are necessarily good. Let’s be smart about the changes we make. Merging institutions in our state, attempting to diminish the ability of faculty and staff to speak through union representation, and speeding up the college process will not make our schools stronger.
They are bad ideas.