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University economist's body floats to surface

Contributed by: Fran Miller on 1/27/2008

They say that if Molly Brown's body had gone down with the Titanic, it would eventually have floated to the surface due to oxygen generated by the process of decomposition. Therefore, the name, the Unsinkable Molly Brown. So, it was likewise that just as I thought I had purged from the depths of my mind all memories of Tucker Hart Adams, the economist, that she floated to the surface of my consciousness once again. You see, I have never thought highly of that woman after she participated as a Board member in the deregulation of the Montana electric industry, the destruction of Montana Power and the loss of pensions to thousands of my fellow Montanans.

Last week, the "Unsinkable" Tucker Hart Adams, hired by the University of Coloado system, (even though she is on the board of their Foundation--go figure that!!!) issued a report on the economic impact of University employment on Colorado's economy.

Now, the Denver Chamber of Commerce and the Universities routinely issue reports before the Legislature convenes to prove that Colorado taxpayers are failing to allocate enough of the State's budget to higher education. The reports always show how poorly Colorado compares to sharecropper states like Mississippi and how much the professorial class contribute to the State's economy.

I always find this melodrama quite entertaining, because the last I heard, the only way a university professor gets paid his $80,000 salary for working 9 months and retiring at 57 is by either by taxing the citizens of Colorado or by siphoning off money from students in the form of tuition. Of course, many feel that federal transfer payments that come to the State by way of research grants are manna from heaven and came from God, not the taxpayers through a circuitous path back to the State.

Colorado employers hire their talent from a national talent pool. Many Colorado students leave the state to work elsewhere after being subsidized. And the issue is not getting companies to relocate to Colorado but to stimulate new startups. Neither Bill Gates, Steven Jobs or Henry Ford needed a degree from either Harvard or the University of Colorado to create some of the biggest companies in America.

What astounds me the most, however, is that, if you round off the numbers for the purpose of our brief discussion here, it appears to take about 100,000 employees to educate 200,000 of Colorado's young adults before they are ready to emancipate and begin paying back their student loans. Now, while I believe everyone has a God-given right to a college education, just as they have a right to health care and the right to go skiing during peak periods for free, the issue is whether it should cost so gall-darned-much.

Just think about it! If a teacher taught four hours a day to a group of 20 students who were going to school full time, it should take about 5,000 professors. Give each professor a graduate teaching assistant to grade papers and teach part of the load, along with a Merry Maid to keep the classroom clean and you still have tens of thousands of people in the University system who are redundant. What do all those people do? Write economic studies on the contribution of University employment to the State's economy, I guess. No, we had to pay Tucker Hart Adams $10,000 to get that done.

Several years ago, I was a grant reviewer for the Federal government. I would fly to Washington, DC, stay in a four star hotel and read grants that had been submitted. The Universities would invariably plug in a factor for overhead: you know, administration, use of the copier, office space, all that. I never saw a University with less than a 100% factor for overhead. The American University system is still the last stronghold for having a large number of secretaries typing on IBM Selectric typewriters.

Most modern organizations have worked hard to cut overhead. The use of computers means fewer secretaries and clerks. Businesses rent office space and do not indulge in building $100 million dollar cathedrals. The private sector is rapidly transforming itself to embrace the 21st century. It now recognizes that you have to get corporate overhead down to 15% to 20% to compete. Read any SEC 10K filing and you will see a chasm exists between overhead in the private sector and the public sector.

In an ideal world, Hank Brown would have gone up to Boulder with pearl handled .45 revolvers strapped on his hips and done a true turnaround, cowboy style. He would have slashed through the deadwood and shot holes in the tenure system. But, as we have seen, he is just a caretaker who has smoothed over the ruffled feathers and now he is pimping for funding increases. The fact that they couldn't deal with the Ward Churchill matter was symbolic of the deeper, structural problems within the system. Former President Betsy Hoffman was sent down to the UC Denver campus to chill out and the Vice Chancellor was shipped over to the Health Sciences Center to live out his years until retiring. In the corporate world they both would have been escorted out the door by armed guards.

No other institution in the State of Colorado represents as much inefficiency as higher education. That we have 100,000 employees hanging around the fort and we are forcing 200,000 students to obtain student loans to fund annual increases for tuition and books that far outstrip inflation is immoral and borders on the criminal.

This issue does not get confronted because for the past 100 years, the percentage of people in society who obtain a college degree has been almost constant. Less than a third of high school graduates go on to complete college. And, we know that in some demographic niches, nearly half of all students do not even complete high school. Nearly 25% of our citizens are functionally illiterate. So, the vast majority of our citizens do not feel comfortable confronting the robed high priests of academia who are systematically dispossessing them and indebting their children.

That Bill Ritter has been seduced by the barony of a medieval system of castles is no surprise. Every politician wants a friendly relationship with higher education. After all, both Dick Lamm and Bill Owens are hanging out at DU writing public policy drafts. And, there's Hank Brown and David Skaggs and Gary Hart, all keeping close to the feeding trough.

They say the best way to get rid of a cancer is to cut off its blood supply. I no longer believe higher education can be reformed. The only way to deal with these people is to starve their budgets and eventually force them to operate where the immune system of the free market will whip them into shape. Give the money directly to students in the form of a voucher and you will see an invigoration the likes of which we have never witnessed.

Change is on the horizon in the form of online education and alternatives such as the University of Phoenix are gaining traction. The Internet has only just begun and if it weren't for the choke-hold that existing institutions have on accreditation they would be further down the road to reform. The arrival of highly disruptive instructional technologies will eventually wash over them like a tsunami and students will increasingly opt for places where they really get an education from teachers who like to teach, not prima donnas pursuing their federally funded research projects.

Publish or perish needs to be replaced with change or be outsourced.



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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Fran Miller

Parker , CO

Fran Miller has posted 106 stories and 14 comments since joining on 9/28/2007. Fran Miller 's average story rating is 4.78.
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