Introduction

Federal policies have vastly increased the size of higher education administration in the last fifty years. Higher education administration spends huge sums on administrative expenses, student services, and academic support—much of which is really expenditures on diversity deans and other social justice activists. Such spending is often camouflaged as it is distributed into innocuous-sounding offices and expense categories. Colleges and universities simultaneously assign an increasing proportion of classes to adjuncts, who receive low wages and no benefits. They thereby increase their available funds for administrators by underpaying their instructors and reducing their instructional quality.

The federal government has directed a gusher of federal money to colleges and universities, especially by means of student loans and grants authorized by Title IV of the Higher Education Act. Students are responsible for repaying these loans; colleges and universities are not. The financial model of most of American higher education is to pay most of their operational costs from tuition revenue—with most of that revenue, in turn, coming in the form of receipts from students’ federal loans. As the ceiling on loans rises, colleges and universities simply increase their tuition to capture the extra dollars—and increase their staff. Colleges and universities, under the pretense that federal student aid enhances college “accessibility” and “affordability,” will continue to divert federal money to support administrative bloat unless Congress takes active steps to prevent that diversion.

Policy Recommendations

Link Title IV Eligibility to Administrative Reduction

Congress should require, as a condition for an institution to be eligible for Title IV funds, a reduction of the size of higher education administration and non-academic support staff.

Legislative Language: Add to 20 USC §1087c. (Selection of institutions for participation and origination) a subsection specifying that

1. an institution of higher education with a student body of more than 1,000 will be deemed ineligible if it fails to reduce its non-instructional expenditures by at least 50% from the amount it spent on September 1, 2019.
2. an institution of higher education with a student body of 1,000 or less will be deemed ineligible if it fails to reduce its non-instructional expenditures by at least 10% from the amount it spent on September 1, 2019.

Link Title IV Eligibility to Tuition Reduction

Congress should require, as a condition for an institution to be eligible for Title IV, a redirection of institutional resources toward lowering tuition.

Legislative Language: Add to 20 USC §1087c. (Selection of institutions for participation and origination) a subsection specifying that

1. an institution of higher education will be deemed ineligible if it fails to spend at least 2.5% of its endowment each year to lower tuition.

Limit Title IV Eligibility to Needy Colleges

Federal support for student education should be channeled to colleges that lack the resources of our wealthiest colleges. No Title IV funds should go to the 100 private colleges and universities with the largest endowments, each of which has an endowment of more than $600 million.

1. an institution of higher education will be deemed ineligible if it possesses an endowment of more than $600 million.

Limit Title IV Eligibility to Colleges That Reduce Dependence on Adjuncts

Congress should mandate that higher education institutions reveal transparently the extent of their dependence on part-time instructors and reduce their dependence on part time instructors.

Legislative Language: Amend 20 U.S.C. § 1015a(i) (Transparency in college tuition for consumers, Consumer information) to include a subsection requiring that higher education institutions make available on the College Navigator website:

1. The ratio of the number of course sections taught by part-time instructors to the number of course sections taught by full-time faculty, disaggregated by course sections intended primarily for undergraduate students and course sections intended primarily for graduate students; and
2. The mean and median years of employment for part-time instructors.

Legislative Language: Add to 20 USC §1087c. (Selection of institutions for participation and origination) a subsection specifying that

1. an institution of higher education will be deemed ineligible if it fails to reduce its ratio of the number of undergraduate course sections taught by part-time instructors to the number of undergraduate course sections taught by full-time faculty by at least 10% from its ratio on September 1, 2019.