A chilling deluge poured from black clouds above the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in mid January. The college is America’s second-oldest university, chartered in 1693 by King William III and Queen Mary II.
The mood indoors matched the weather. State appropriations for higher education, which depends on tax revenue, have plummeted — down 15 percent since October in the case of William and Mary — and interest from endowments has fallen even faster. With their parents suffering layoffs or business reversals, more students are likely to need financial aid. And donors, with their own investments drying up, have less to give.
“We really are a good case study for the perfect storm,” says the university’s president, Taylor Reveley, rain coursing down outside the windows of his office. “And we’re still early in feeling the full force.”
Although some seem to hope they can ride it out, the recession has now hit US universities. They have lined up behind banks and car manufacturers asking for money from the federal government, so far without response. They want billions of dollars for science and engineering staff, research into energy alternatives and infrastructure improvement. And they have started to cut spending. William and Mary has delayed the implementation of a 3 percent pay rise for all staff, for example, and has cancelled some journal subscriptions.
But the sector’s financial leaders warn that this downturn will affect higher education in ways that require far more drastic action than trimming at the margins or asking Washington for handouts. “The nature of this challenge is so much greater than any of us have seen in higher education,” says Stephen Golding, vice president for finance at Cornell University. “If we’re going to continue to teach, if we’re going to continue to do research, if we’re going to continue to provide students access to our institutions, we have to stop doing other things that don’t support the core mission.”
Golding and other leaders predict that American higher education will have to change its whole way of doing business — and many see that as an opportunity. “The phrase I hear people around here use is, don’t waste a crisis,” says Golding. “Let’s go after things we’ve known are among our inefficiencies and make them better.”
One way of doing this is to reduce duplication, be it in e-mail systems in different departments, facilities management or administrative offices. Learning to share resources among departments and even universities is another option. “You get into a group and go to Microsoft and say, what’s your best deal?” suggests Golding.
A national cull of support staff, whose numbers have swollen from three for every student in 1976 to more than six today, is also likely. “I expect to see some major paring in what you might call the bureaucratic armies,” says Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist who studies higher education. New construction is also threatened, with even Harvard announcing that it is “reconsidering the scale and pace” of a huge, already-begun campus expansion.
In addition, many institutions are rethinking their use of space and buildings. “The square footage of a typical university facility is probably occupied 40 or 50 percent of the time of a similar facility in the private sector,” says Vedder.
But it is students who are likely to feel the most pain as they face either increased fees or reduced services. More than two thirds of private universities plan to raise tuition fees, a survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has found. In half of those, as many as 10 percent of students are expected to withdraw because of financial hardship.
Whenever savings are made, William and Mary’s Dr. Reveley believes it will be painful. “Once we begin making those choices, we almost immediately hear: ‘There has been a reduction in this, that or the other thing that is important to me — why are you doing this?’” he says.
Dissident scholar ban challenged
In end January, a US court reversed one of a series of decisions by the US government to deny visas to international academics on ideological grounds. The ruling, which could establish a precedent, says that officials must give a specific reason for refusing a scholar the right to enter the US. It comes in the case of Adam Habib, a South African political scientist and critic of the war in Iraq, who was prevented from accepting invitations to speak before several American scholarly organisations.
Dr. Habib, a professor of political science and deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, lived for a time in the US while earning his doctorate from the City University of New York. But when he tried to return in 2006, he was detained at JFK International Airport and deported without being told why.
Invited again last summer to speak before the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, he was refused a visa by the US consulate in Johannesburg, which said he had “engaged in terrorist activities” but did not elaborate. Dr. Habib denies the allegation.
US organisations including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) sued the government on Dr. Habib’s behalf, saying that a more specific reason must be given when a visa is denied. They also said that their right to free speech had been violated because they weren’t allowed to hear and debate with him. A federal judge, George A.O’Toole Jr, agreed, rejecting the US government’s request that the case be dismissed out of hand, although he ruled that Dr. Habib be dropped as a plaintiff because as a non-citizen he is not protected by the free-speech provisions of the US constitution.
The lawsuit is now proceeding to the facts-gathering stage. Comments Melissa Goodman, an attorney for the ACLU: “It’s about whether the government can prevent prominent scholars who are critics of US policies from speaking to US audiences. We’re not saying that (it) has to let in everyone who’s invited to speak. We’re just saying that when you block scholarly exchange, you have to give a legitimate reason.”
Between 2001 and the end of 2007, the latest date for which figures are available, at least 249 international scholars were refused entry into the US on ideological grounds, according to the ACLU and other groups that track the data. “It is increasingly evident that scholars are being barred simply because the government disfavours their politics,” says Cary Nelson, president of the AAUP.
But the government argues that American scholars can just as easily hear international academics speak by video conference or other means, and the ruling suggests that it can still turn down visa requests simply by citing a reason.
Another judge in an earlier case had pronounced that the government had a right to deny a visa to Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, because it specifically alleged that he had given money to a group that was discovered to financially support the Palestinian Hamas movement. ACLU is appealing the decision.
“The fact that it has become so difficult for so many scholars to get visas has changed the way American organisations plan conferences. A number have considered having their international conferences outside the US. I don’t think (they) should have to go abroad to have a robust exchange of ideas,” says Ms. Goodman. “It damages our reputation when the US government acts like it’s afraid of ideas.”
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)