Exaggerated Metaphor Alert

Bloomberg has an interesting article by Mark C. Taylor, claiming that competition is killing higher education in the US.  I think that, like the Roman soldier in Night at the Museum, he is speaking metaphorically.

There are some amusing points about the craze for buildings and programs of every conceivable variety.

"It’s about “keeping up with the Joneses,” an official at Wright State University said in a Dayton Daily News article last fall detailing why colleges in Ohio were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on student centers and other nonacademic attractions in a down economy. In Georgia, state legislators arereviewing questionable practices used to fund 173 projects to build student housing, parking garages, stadiums and recreation centers.
Private universities with large endowments often start the cycle. Schools such as Harvard University and New York University, for example, take on billion-dollar debts. In a trickle-down effect, less affluent schools also feel pressure to borrow and spend -- money they do not have.  "

Then he describes how some schools have been gaming the rankings by reclassifying tutorials in order to decrease class size or by creating superfluous and expensive doctoral programs.

'Second- and third-tier universities often create unneeded doctoral programs to become eligible for additional federal support and to increase their global profile. For example, the University of North Texas has 36,000 students and advertisesitself as “a student-focused public research university”offering “97 bachelor’s, 82 master’s and 35 doctoral degree programs.”
Even this is not enough. Although severe budget shortfallshave led to cuts of as much as 90 percent for some programs, the university is adding new doctoral programs in a quest for the elusive top-tier status. This makes no educational sense and violates basic market principles. If successful, the University of North Texas will join too many other schools that are spending large amounts for unneeded programs that turn out products -- doctoral graduates -- for which the supply far outweighs the demand. This is a national issue, as pointed out in an article this month in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps.” '