Wake Up and Smell Scott Walker's Plans for UW-Madison

Biddy Martin is moving on to Amherst. Sadly, UW Madison is stuck with the Martin/Walker, Walker/Martin plan for public authority-- and Scott Walker still seems hell-bent on pushing for it.

Make no mistake about it, this fight ain't over. Rest up this summer, and while you're recuperating, please do some reading on what Walker and his ALEC cronies think is "best" for public higher education. That is, privatize the heck out of it.

That's the plan folks, mark my words. If you thought this was Biddy's bright idea, think again. In her effort to save us from financial disaster, she walked us right into the lion's den. That's the "hand we were dealt" of course, a "reality" handknit for us by the corporate elites determined to ensure that big business rules, no matter what the cost to the working people of Wisconsin.

Get ready. We have work to do. RECALL WALKER. Save Wisconsin public higher education.

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Is Our Students Learning?

Remarkably, one of the topic's of yesterday's blog post (and another I wrote two years ao)-- the limited learning taking place on many college campuses-- is the subject of a New York Times op-ed today. Titled, "Your So-Called Education," the piece argues that while 90% of graduates report being happy with their college experience, data suggests there's little to celebrate. I urge you read it and its companion op-ed "Major Delusions," which describes why college grads are delusional in their optimism about their future.

We don't regularly administer the Collegiate Learning Assessment at UW-Madison, the test that the authors of the first op-ed used to track changes in student learning over undergraduate careers. From talking with our vice provost for teaching and learning, Aaron Brower, I understand there are many good reasons for this. Among them are concerns that the test doesn't measure the learning we intend to transmit (for what it does measure, and how it measures it, see here), as well as concerns about the costs and heroics required to administer it well. In the meantime, Aaron is working on ways to introduce more high-impact learning practices, including freshmen interest groups and learning communities, and together with colleagues has written an assessment of students' self-reports of their learning (the Essential Learning Outcomes Questionnaire). We all have good reason to wish him well. For it's clear from what we do know about undergraduate learning on campus, we have work to do.

The reports contained in our most recent student engagement survey (the NSSE, administered in 2008) indicate the following:

1. Only 60% of seniors report that the quality of instruction in their lower division courses was good or excellent.

This is possibly linked to class size, since only 37% say that those classes are "ok" in size -- but (a) that isn't clear, since the % who says the classes are too large and the % that say they are too small are not reported, and (b) the question doesn't link class size to quality of instruction. As I've noted in prior posts, it's a popular proxy for quality but also one that is promoted by institutions since smaller classes equates with more resources (though high-quality instruction does not apparently equate with smaller classes nor high resources). There are other plausible explanations for the assessment of quality that the survey does not shed light on.

2. A substantial fraction of our students are not being asked to do the kind of challenging academic tasks associated with learning gains.

For example, 31% of seniors (and 40% of freshmen) report that they are not frequently asked to make "judgments about information, arguments, or methods, e.g., examining how others gathered/ interpreted data and assessing the soundness of their conclusions." (Sidebar-- interesting to think about how this has affected the debate over the NBP.) 28% of seniors say they are not frequently asked to synthesize and organize "ideas, information, or experiences into new, more complex interpretations and relationships." On the other hand, 63% of seniors and 76% of freshmen indicate that they are frequently asked to memorize facts and repeat them. And while there are some real positives-- such as the higher-than-average percent of students who feel the university emphasizes the need to spend time on academic work-- fully 45% of seniors surveyed did not agree that "most of the time, I have been challenged to do the very best I can."

3. As students get ready to graduate from Madison, many do not experience a rigorous academic year.

In their senior year, 55% of students did not write a paper or report of 20 pages or more, 75% read fewer than 5 books, 57% didn't make a class presentation, 51% didn't discuss their assignments or grades with their instructor, and 66% didn't discuss career plans with a faculty member or adviser. Nearly one-third admitted often coming to class unprepared. Less than one-third had a culminating experience such as a capstone course or thesis project.

4. The main benefit of being an undergraduate at a research university--getting to work on a professor's research project-- does not happen for the majority of students.

While 45% of freshmen say it is something they plan to do, only 32% of seniors say they've done it.

Yet overall, just as the Times reports, 91% of UW-Madison seniors say their "entire educational experience" was good or excellent.

Well-done. Now, let's do more.


Postscript: Since I've heard directly from readers seeking more resources on the topic of student learning, here are a few to get you started.

A new report just out indicates that college presidents are loathe to measure learning as a metric of college quality! Instead, they prefer to focus on labor market outcomes.

Measuring college learning responsibly: accountability in a new era by Richard J. Shavelson is a great companion to Academically Adrift. Shavelson was among the designers of the CLA and he responds to critics concerned with its value.

The Voluntary System of Accountability, embraced by public universities who hope to provide their own data rather than have a framework imposed on them. Here is Madison's report.

On the topic of students' own reports of their learning gains, Nick Bowman's research is particularly helpful. For example, in 2009 in the American Education Research Journal Bowman reported that that in a longitudinal study of 3,000 first year students, “across several cognitive and noncognitive outcomes, the correlations between self-reported and longitudinal gains are small or virtually zero, and regression analyses using these two forms of assessment yield divergent results.” In 2011, he reported in Educational Researcher that "although some significant differences by institutional type were identified, the findings do not support the use of self-reported gains as a proxy for longitudinal growth at any institution."

As for the NSSE data, such as what I cited above from UW-Madison, Ernie Pascarella and his colleagues report that these are decent at predicting educational outcomes. Specifically, “institution-level NSSE benchmark scores had a significant overall positive association with the seven liberal arts outcomes at the end of the first year of college, independent of differences across the 19 institutions in the average score of their entering student population on each outcome. The mean value of all the partial correlations…was .34, which had a very low probability (.001) of being due to chance."

Finally, you should also check out results from the Wabash study.

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What Are You Doing This Summer?

Want to work with a talented group of students and faculty, helping find ways to make Wisconsin public higher education more affordable? Then please consider joining the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study as an undergraduate or graduate intern this summer!

The WSLS is seeking students who will commit to at least 10 hours/week of work for summer and fall 2011. The ideal candidates are responsible, trustworthy, and detail-oriented. Those studying sociology, psychology, economics, or political science are especially needed.

Potential tasks include: (1) piloting a study of undergraduates using text-messaging, (2) interviewing students, (3) transcribing and coding interviews, and (4) Using STATA to clean, code, and analyze survey data. Interns will be included in regular biweekly staff meetings and social events.

We offer class credit and/or pay based on experience.

If you are interested, please email Alison Bowman at ambowman@wisc.edu by May 13. Include a resume and short description of your relevant skills and time availability.

Thanks!

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Have Courage-- Act Now

I have spent the last seven years afraid I'd become a cautionary tale. I have been repeatedly warned by older, wiser folks to reconsider my inclinations to do things that could threaten my chances of getting tenure: have a baby on the tenure-track (then have another), initiate a large-scale new data collection project, spend a lot of time grant-writing, write policy briefs and other non-academic papers, travel around the country for policy and practice speaking engagements, write a blog (and then two), and the list goes on and on. Of course, the most controversial decision I made was back in 2009 when I began to speak out loudly and frequently against the policies and actions of UW-Madison's Administration.

For the most part, my advisers are tenured friends who simply want me to succeed. I have a tendency to get in my own way-- by saying "yes" to too many opportunities, wanting to have it all right now, and sometimes by starting to speak before I've finished thinking. I realize that they weren't all saying I should never do the things I've done, but that perhaps I just shouldn't do them right now.

Having now stunned even myself by receiving two unanimous votes of support on my tenure-- from both my department and the UW-Madison Social Science Divisional Committee-- I have this to say. While I have some small regrets about how I've used my time during the last 7 years, I have absolutely no regrets about my decision to speak publicly and confidently about my opposition to the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates and the New Badger Partnership. Both policies threaten the great public university I've come to love as my home, and even more importantly, they threaten the key principles central to my research agenda: higher education access and affordability.

To professors at UW-Madison who share those values and principles and have not yet spoken publicly about your feelings on the NBP: please consider doing so now. To those not at UW-Madison but who recognize this is a national concern-- please also considering doing so. One of the current University of Wisconsin-Madison's greatest assets is its safeguards for academic freedom. As I celebrated last night, I became increasingly cognizant that at most of the nation's colleges and universities my tenure decision wouldn't feel nearly so certain at this point-- it has not yet been signed by my dean, provost, chancellor, or Board of Regents. They are all a critical part of the process, and my stating that I have earned tenure is not meant to disrespect or discount their role. Rather, what I know is that both my department and the divisional committee believe I have earned tenure -- and at the current UW-Madison with its shared governance structure that is what matters most.

Ours is not a top-down institution. Tenure is not decided mainly by the Administration, and this makes it possible for faculty to speak their minds without fear.

That is not how private institutions operate, and should the NBP transform UW-Madison into a public authority (what might also be called a private land-grant university) I expect that will change. While the new Chapter 37 includes the provisions of the current Chapter 36, it could be easily altered with a line-item veto to eliminate the faculty role in the tenure decision-- or simply to give much more decision-making authority to the new Board of Trustees and/or the Chancellor.

Is this an irrational fear? I don't think so. Chancellor Martin has articulated her theory of governance before and it is more a unitary model than a shared one. Moreover, she seems to have brought a strong sense of Cornell University with her. And the way in which power is allocated at Cornell seems remarkably similar to how power has been allocated under the Martin regime at UW-Madison.

As Ambrose Redmoon once wrote, "courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear." If you like the current tenure process at UW-Madison and the freedom it affords faculty to speak truth to power, now is the time to speak. Right now shared governance protects you. Soon, it may not exist.


SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE CHAIR JUDITH BURSTYN AT burstyn@chem.wisc.edu

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Guest Post: Why "New Badger Partnership" Means Loss of Independence for UW-Madison

The following is a guest posting from Harry Peterson, a UW-Madison administrator from 1978-1990, Chief of Staff to Chancellor Donna Shalala from 1988-1990. Harry is also President Emeritus, Western State College of Colorado, Gunnison, Colorado

The demand for Professor Bill Cronon’s emails by the Wisconsin Republican Party prompted the UW System Board of Regents to review its support for academic freedom throughout its history. At its April board meeting the Regents again was emphatic in its interest in continuing that tradition. This received virtually no notice in the media because it was not news. The Board of Regents has been supporting academic freedom throughout its history. It is one of its most important legacies. The board has done such a good job it is taken for granted.

We know in our personal lives and in public policy that decisions can have unintended and unanticipated consequences, sometimes with tragic results. Goals that are pursued sometimes have the opposite result. The proposal by Chancellor Martin and Governor Walker to create an independent authority for the UW-Madison, in the name of autonomy, will result in outcomes that are the opposite of the independence the Chancellor seeks.

There are several reasons why our autonomy at the UW-Madison will be decreased. This post addresses one of them.

On May 1 the terms of two members of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will expire and Governor Walker will nominate two people to serve seven year terms on the Board. (Also, two student Regents who will serve shorter terms.) Those individuals will appear before the Senate Education Committee. It will be an opportunity for Senators to ask these nominees about their understanding of higher education and support for academic freedom and tenure, research on climate change and evolution. They can also be asked about whether they support stem cell research, and if they believe that the UW Medical School should continue to train its students in abortion procedures. They will surely be asked their position on political parties soliciting emails from faculty members.

The Senate Education Committee will then make a recommendation to the full Senate about whether to confirm these individuals to serve as members of the Board of Regents.

These two new Regents will join a seasoned Board of Regents who have learned, through years of service, about the complexities of higher education and the traditions of public higher education in Wisconsin.

After July 1, if the Biddy Martin/Scott Walker proposal for the UW-Madison to leave the UW System becomes law, Governor Walker will appoint 11 members of the newly created board of trustees. This appointments will be made by the Governor knowing they will not be subject to a public hearing and subjected to the questions the Board of Regents members might have been asked. These individuals will immediately constitute a majority of the board.

The Scott Walker board will likely support significant tuition increases, consistent with the conservative philosophy of smaller government, with an emphasis on individual responsibility to pay for benefits they receive. If the next governor is a Democrat the new governor will have a majority in his or her first term. That liberal board will undoubtedly focus on access to higher education, and will very likely oppose significant tuition increases. Long terms of service are designed to prevent this kind of abrupt policy reversal. That is why the UW System Board of Regents have seven year terms. Even if the number of years per term is increased, the current language reflects an alarming lack of understanding of public higher education by the people who proposed it.

The Scott Walker board members will not become part of a governing body that has a tradition of almost 40 years of supporting academic freedom. They will establish their own traditions and will do so in a climate of unprecedented mistrust and partisanship. The UW-Madison, in its quest for greater autonomy, will have left behind a board which has defended academic freedom for almost 40 years.

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited our country in the 1830s he marveled at the democratic traditions that had already been established here. He called them “habits of the heart.” Academic freedom is a “habit of the heart” for the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. They have done it so well we take it for granted. The new board will inherit the language from Chapter 36 of the Wisconsin Statutes, but none of the tradition of the people who served before them.

If the Biddy Martin/Scott Walker proposal becomes law, the UW-Madison will have become “independent” from the other UW System universities, its legislative allies, and will have also gained “independence” from a strong and supportive Board of Regents.

It will acquire a different kind of dependence. Because of the appointment of majority of board members by Scott Walker, without Senate review and confirmation, it will have become much closer to and dependent upon the current and future Governors.

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Someone's Not Listening...

I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old so I'm used to people who don't listen. I repeat myself, say it more firmly, and find new ways to express the same message.

So let's try this one more time--

Governor Walker and the Legislature:
The State of Wisconsin is doing a very poor job of securing the future of its citizens by investing so little in public education at all levels, including higher education. However, if it has such poor judgment so as to slash education at this critical time, it is in the best interest of the state to give the institutions some additional flexibilities as outlined in the Wisconsin Idea Partnership (WIP). It is, however, not in the state's best interests to allow UW-Madison to be swept from the UW System and placed under the direction of its own Board of Trustees.

Chancellor Martin:
First, what you have proposed in your new "compromise plan" is a scary version of the WIP. Why scary? Because now it's just even more painfully clear: You seek to privatize UW-Madison, period. Why else would you seek to ensure it keeps all of its own revenue and is governed by a new board that is led by Scott Walker and his appointees as of July 1? Under the WIP you could get a nice set of flexibilities minus those that directly threaten Madison's future as an accessible public institution: tuition-setting authority, full financial management, and the Board of Regents. In order to control tuition, keep all the cash, and install people appointed by Scott Walker, you are willing to divorce System. That's it, I'm done wondering whether this could be about money. This isn't about money nearly as much as it's about power.

Second, your campus community has made it abundantly clear that we want to know what's going on. Sending a letter proposing a compromise to other chancellors and the Legislature without bringing it to us first is not ok. Finding out in the newspaper--only after a reporter has to do some sleuthing --- NOT OK.

**********

Compromise is a good thing. The Board of Regents has shown a remarkable ability to compromise by proffering the Wisconsin Idea Partnership to everyone, including Madison, while not simultaneously demanding Biddy Martin's resignation. Can such a partnership be implemented with her present? I guess that depends on whether she starts following her own request for input and starts listening.


UPDATE: Biddy Martin tweeted this at me: "Not meant to be a compromise; a third option that adds, not subtracts."

Does anyone see any value-added in this? I sure don't.

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Tell Her About It

After more than two hours of sitting in small hard wooden chairs on this blustery Monday afternoon, Faculty Senate at UW-Madison finally got interesting. In the midst of a discussion led by (I kid you not) "Committee of the Whole Discussion of Fiscal Models for the Proposed Public Authority, and Institutional Governance and the Proposed Board of Trustees," Chancellor Biddy Martin appeared to have had enough.

She'd taken numerous questions from faculty who seemed uncertain about the implications of her proposed New Badger Partnership (including a series of questions proferred by yours truly), and seemed to have reached the end of her rope. Red-faced, she looked at the crowd of 100 or so, and said:

"I'm out there on my own on this one...Regents and chancellors are against it...If the faculty, staff, and students of UW-Madison aren't supportive [of the NBP] then it makes no sense for me to continue. I'm tired. I don't need to be out there on my own. You need to let me know if you aren't behind it."

I almost--almost--felt bad for the lady. After all, she's just trying to do what she was hired to do. It's not her fault that she's been setup to dismantle a wonderful, public institution and to make it appear the dismantling is due to financial constraints rather than a power grab by conservatives.

But I didn't feel bad, and here's why. Her seemingly honest desire for the airing of objections is offset by her actions. This is a chancellor who excludes, at least as often as she includes. She convenes small groups of powerful folks, and keeps the vast majority on the outside. She has hired and promoted people who pledge allegiance to her for fear of doing otherwise. She has managed to make people support her agendas even when they feel incredibly uncomfortable doing so. We're in a financial crisis and they need their jobs-- and love this university.

My guess? People won't share their objections to NBP with Biddy Martin. Not because the campus agrees with this move, but because, quite frankly, people are scared of her.

I know this for a fact because over the last three months I have received several dozen emails, text messages, phone calls, and even drop-in office visits from university colleagues who have told me they feel as I do but are unable to attach their names to these sentiments. I notice the same at the public forums where the chancellor is present-- hands shake when questions are asked, no one pushes further when a question isn't directly addressed. This, more than anything else, is destroying our campus. Morale is low, and faculty and administrators are afraid to speak their minds and oppose a proposal to fundamentally alter how our state's flagship university does business.

In fact that says it all. Folks, the NBP isn't about money at all. It's about power.

The silence is deafening.

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Let's Develop Solutions

Tired of the rhetoric? Want to take a stab at cutting costs in Wisconsin public higher education yourself-- or even try increasing productivity?

The Lumina Foundation has supported the development of an amazing interactive tool that helps you do just that.

Here's one result I generated:

Let's say we need to close the 2025 budget gap for Wisconsin public research universities to maintain current spending per FTE student. We can do that by increasing student/faculty ratio from 13:1 to 17:1. Period. Gap closed. No increases in tuition or state & local revenues necessary. And research suggests that such an increase will come at no significant cost to degree completion rates. If you want to suggest it will hurt instructional quality, you'll need to provide hard causal evidence to support that case-- I'd love to see it--email it to me!

Better yet, let's first increase faculty salaries per FTE to the 75th percentile (which means an increase of about $1,000 from a starting point of about $6,300) and do the same for student support services too. Let's further commit to no tuition increases, and assume no increase in state or local revenues either. We can do ALL that and still have no budget gap if we increase student/faculty ratio from 13:1 to 19:1.

What is required to increase student/faculty ratio? Obviously we either enroll more students, retain more students, or reduce the size of the faculty. Here are the two main challenges:

(1) There is a widely held belief that student/faculty ratio is THE measure of quality in higher education, despite an overwhelming dearth of evidence to support that belief. It's no coincidence that rankings systems rely so heavily on that measure--and that all this talk of being competitive seems to set aside any possible changes to the student/faculty ratio. In fact, since the ratio is actually interpreted to mean "commitment to teaching" that effectively precludes any real re-consideration, lest we come across as not committed to education! But come on-- what evidence is there that the number of faculty allocated to students is the best indicator of commitment? How about the number of highly-trained faculty? The amount of professional development offered? The valuation of teaching in tenure decisions? This reeks of a system that responds to the needs of faculty more than students (for more, see my next point). There are alternative ways to measure quality.

(2) Faculty. Faculty at research universities tend to strive for as little student interaction as possible. Yep, I said it. There are some exceptions, but generally we spend our time vying for smaller classes and less advising. Could we learn to teach bigger classes and do it well? Could we be required to do so at least semi-regularly? Could the advising load for undergrads be spread across a wider range of faculty (including those in departments that don't teach undergrads)? Sure. But you'll face resistance.

So let's stop pretending that there's only one way to skin this cat. We don't have to break from UW System, hike tuition, and/or become semi-private in order to solve our fiscal crisis. We have to have tough conversations about the best ways to deliver higher education in the 21st Century. Sure, that's a tall order-- but it's one that the smart communities of Wisconsin's public universities can no doubt handle.

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