“A mix of access, affordability and quality vital for creating a world-class university”

CHENNAI, June 28, 2011.



Morton Schapiro speaks on trends in higher education institutions in U.S.



Combining access with affordability and ensuring high quality undergraduate education is vital for building a world-class university, according to Morton Schapiro, President, Northwestern University, U.S.



Professor Schapiro, who was recently in the country, spoke to The Hindu here on a host of issues related to funding, accessibility, affordability and quality in higher education.



"You cannot create a world class university overnight. Most of our institutions, though great research institutes with brilliant scientists and millions coming in for sponsored research, also do a pretty good job of [imparting] undergraduate education," he says on the pursuit of quality in higher education.



Pointing to certain trends in the U.S. universities, Professor Schapiro says the class size is small, and often capped at 20. Professors like him prefer an interactive approach to teaching, to lecturing.



"We go around the room, students write papers every week and we have discussions in class. It is this kind of educational model which tends to be pretty unusual in the world which usually has a professor lecturing to a large group of students sitting in front of him.



"The professors [in the U.S.] really get to know the students and work closely with them. I am not sure if that counts on the ranking [of the university] but that counts on the quality of education."



A model that enables a very high quality undergraduate experience means that the class size is small and that the expectations of the students, to have the faculty truly available whether they are writing a thesis or research projects or in labs, are met.



"Combined with access and affordability, that [quality] is more important than climbing the ladder from 225 to 150 in the ranking lists," observes Professor Schapiro, who is credited with achieving a substantial reduction in average class size at institutions he has served.



Crucial distinction

In the discourse on quality, the distinction between private, not-for-profit institutions such as Harvard and Yale and private, for-profit universities is crucial. Arguing in favour of a rigorous and careful process of accreditation for private for-profit universities in particular, he says: "In the case of non-profits, you want to make sure they are good given that they are not distributing the earnings. What is the incentive to be a really bad private not-for-profit? Not much, because you cannot distribute the revenues."



In the case of private for-profits, however, there is incentive to make a lot of money. "Your shareholders and owners do well, but students may not. So accreditation is particularly important for private for-profits. In order for India to meet its access goals, you might want to think about the private for-profits as well as private not-for-profits."



Professor Schapiro, who specialises in the economics of higher education, says for private not-for-profit universities such as Northwestern, much of the funding is taken care of by the endowments built over years, new gifts, money obtained through research and tuition fees. "We get almost no money from the State."



"Last year, at Northwestern we got $556 million to support research labs…that is about a third of our annual operating budget [$ 1.6 billion]. Most of it was from the Federal government, while some came from the State and some, from corporations. It does not really go into the endowment. It is given just to support research."



The university\'s chemistry and biomedical engineering departments are very famous for their research initiatives. "We got a grant of $10 million recently from the Federal government to do five years of research that we think is going to help the government and the country."



Endowments constitute a major portion of the funding to universities. Northwestern University, one of the most highly endowed institutions in the U.S., currently has endowments worth $ 7.5 billion. "It basically grows from new gifts [the University gets about $ 200 million every year]...you have $ 7.5 billion and then you have a good year, you make a billion dollars…that is how Harvard got to be so rich." Such endowments allow universities to provide better education, relying less heavily on tuition.



However, the public institutions such as the University of Illinois, which is a wonderful research university with great engineering, rely on State funding that forms a declining yet significant share of their revenues. Pointing to a "terrible budget problem" during the last three years, Professor Schapiro notes that the public universities in the U.S. have been very vulnerable to cutback in State revenue.



"I am hoping that if tax revenues rebound, once we fully recover from the great recession and the States have much more tax revenue, they can give it to the public colleges and universities. That has been the big story in the U.S. higher education over the last three years. They have had a terrible, terrible time."



The key to philanthropy in the U.S. is a combination of factors, ranging from tax deductions to loyalty to one\'s alma mater. "If you are a U.S. citizen paying taxes and if you make a gift to a not-for-profit institution like Northwestern, you get a tax deduction." Also, some alumni have great financial success and they say they want to share it with their alma mater.



Many public universities have a lot of students from low income groups, but the flagship public universities actually have richer students, he notes. "They are very hard to get into. Part of their mission is to serve low income kids, but most of their mission is to attract people with high test scores and high performance in high schools and they tend to be from more affluent families."



Ironically, it is the highly endowed private universities that are able to subsidise education for students from underprivileged sections. "It is institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, Williams and Amherst that have enormous endowments and can say fine, you are a brilliant kid, your parents can\'t afford, come for free."



Then, criteria for admissions become significant. "Many of us in the job recognise that if you come from a low income family, your SAT is not going to be high. You might have to work outside to supplement family income, or babysit younger siblings."



Elaborating on the need to pay attention to admission criteria, particularly while admitting students from lower economic groups, he says: "If you have someone from an affluent background and from a poor background, the scale is going to basically tilt towards the richer. So what we do is you put the thumb on the scale and push it down a little bit. If you are not going to do that you are not going to get a lot of low income kids to get into Harvard and Northwestern, simply because they are not competitive with the richer kids."



Observing that it would be nice to do in India what has been tried in the U.S., he adds that universities must also remember that it is unrealistic to expect the exact, same academic qualifications from someone from a low income family as that of a student from a rich family. "The difference will always be there."


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