Response to Kevin Carey's "Money-Sucking Flagship Universities"

Over at the Quick and the Ed, they don't allow comments, so I thought I would write my response to Kevin Carey's "Money Sucking Flagship Universities" here.

First, let me say I agree with Kevin a lot. In fact, I agree with him the vast majority of the time ... and I don't totally disagree with Kevin in this case either - I just want to point out some reactions. And, in the interest of full disclosure I am at a flagship state university now and I will move to a different one in the fall.

Okay, first, I don't pretend to be an economist but I have read enough economics to know that utility is the underlying concern, not return on public investment or any other metric necessarily associated with monetary return. Utility can be much larger than money and the positive feelings associated with a world-class flagship university certainly have some utility in an economic analysis. In fact, I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say it is possible that the utility of the pride in the flagship university outweighs the potential utility of sending more dollars to a non-flagship public university like Chicago State. So, we shouldn't lock economists into maximizing dollars and assume that having pride in the flagship is only a "gut-reaction."

Secondly, there are a lot of non-flagship public universities. Just off the top of my head in Illinois are my alma maters, SIUC (42%) and SIUE (46%) as well as ISU (64%), NIU (48%), WIU (56%), EIU (60%), UIC (51%), UIS (?), Governors State (?) and maybe one or two more I am forgetting. So, Chicago State is the outlier in Illinois. On top of that, UIUC's 6 year graduation rate is 82 percent, one of the highest in the country, but still 1 in 5 UIUC enrollees is not graduating either. So, this brings up a couple points. One, maybe it is just Chicago State and we should focus on what to do with that university in particular. Since it provides a resource for Chicago's black community, you don't want to close it ... but? Second, any money you take away from the flagship will have to be spread pretty thin. For every 10 dollars you take away from UIUC, only 1 is going to get to Chicago State since everyone is going to be begging. So how many dollars are you going to have to take away from the flagship to significantly increase enrollment at a single non-flagship institution? Is it better if every public university graduated only 55% of its graduates? Is that a superior outcome?

Third, I think Kevin is assuming that extra dollars for low performing schools like Chicago State can lead to direct improvements in graduation rates. I am no expert by any means and I sure Kevin knows more about it than I do, but that seems like a stretch to me. If a student is predisposed to not graduate, how much money will it take to get that student to stay? And could those same dollars get 2 additional graduates at the flagship school?

Fourth, I am not sure if Kevin is including all the non-monetary returns that Research I universities give back to the community, but that non-monetary return is substantial. All the research, service, library archives, professional organizations, meetings with state officials, interviews with the media ... all that has utility. UIUC's National Center for Supercomputing Applications is only possible because there is a critical mass of researchers, graduate students, well-known faculty members ... and dollars that you are not going to get at any other state university in Illinois. The NCSA created a little thing called a web browser and so every time you click into the Edjurist or the Quick and the Ed ... you owe a little bit to the Illinois Legislature who funded a research university capable of producing such breakthroughs.

Look, I am always going to be a Saluki at heart and I know the trouble that Southern has getting dollars from the legislature. SIU may have even chosen a plagiarizing president just to try and increase the legislative appropriation. But there is significant value in centralizing dollars in one or two flagship schools (I think SIU should be Illinois' second flagship!). There is no doubt the sub-20 percent 6 year graduation rate at Chicago State and other low performing public universities is of high concern and should be addressed. But it takes generations to build a high performing flagship university and those universities have a lot of utility. I just don't think blame should automatically be placed on the flagships when some other schools struggle.

Photocredits: lbj79us; jwinfred