Category Archives: Education (higher ed)

… I don’t see no stinkin’ higher ed bubble.

So much for new fireworks between University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan and the Board of Visitors. It appears that the administration and board have come to an agreement on how much to raise tuition next year.

The good news: The administration has abandoned its proposal to jack up the tuition for third- and fourth-year students on top of regular tuition increases. The bad news: The University will hike fees for everyone more aggressively.

Under the original proposal, administrators had called for increases of 2.9% and 3.9% respectively for in-state and out-of-state students, plus an add-on fee for upperclassmen. Instead, the board settled for increases of 3.8% and 4.8% for in- and out-of-staters. After inflation, that’s an increase of 2% to 3% per year during a time when real wages for most Virginians are stagnant.

In its reporting, the Daily Progress provides no explanation for the decision, although it does quote board member William H. Goodwin as previously having said that the original proposal might constitute “double-talking” — hiding a tuition increase as a fee.

Score a small victory for transparency. Score another loss for affordability. UVa continues unabated its march toward higher prestige rankings by beefing the incredibly expensive scientific and technical disciplines and chasing R&D dollars.

In related news…. Virginia Commonwealth University’s administration has proposed an overall 4% increase in tuition that would be coupled with a shift to a charge per credit hour rather than per semester, reports the Times-Dispatch. The idea is to discourage students from signing up for the maximum 18 credit hours — blocking others from enrolling in a needed course — and then dropping out.

Given the current economic circumstances, the 4% increase amounts to predatory pricing. But, I must concede, the shift to charging by the credit-hour does make sense.

So continues academia’s plundering of middle America…

– JAB

by James A. Bacon

Let’s face it, as much as Americans love the Dalai Lama, there’s a probably a limited appetite in the United States for learning the Tibetan language. As long as the dude speaks English, that’s good enough for most of us. Not surprisingly, according to the Modern Language Association, only 109 students enrolled in Tibetan language courses in 2009 across the entire U.S.

Amazingly, though, a search of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition database – it’s unbelievable what you can find online, isn’t it? — shows that 20 different U.S. universities teach Tibetan at one level or another. And the University of Virginia is one of them.

It turns out that UVa’s Tibet Center, which integrates the study of Tibetan language and religion, is a pretty big player in the world of Tibetan studies, enrolling between 15 and 25 students at any point. Still, given the fact that the program offers three different language courses (Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced Tibetan), it’s pretty safe to assume that no more than a handful of students are enrolled per course.

Speaking from an economic perspective, that’s a major under-utilization of resources. One professor, only a handful of students. So, what’s a university to do? Cut the program? Not UVa. The answer is to expand the program by taking it online. Starting this fall, the University will offer Tibetan language courses to Duke University students in a new distance-learning venture “aimed at broadening the availability of low-visibility languages.” In return, UVa students will have the opportunity to enroll in a Duke class teaching Haitian Creole, according to a March 2013 article in Duke Today.

“Less commonly taught languages are no less important for being infrequently taught,” said Meredith Jung-En Woo, dean of UVa’s College of Arts & Sciences. “It is through new languages that we gain the entree to other cultures. Esoteric as some of these cultures may appear, in studying them we also learn new truths about our culture and ourselves.”

The partnership with Duke probably makes sense. It’s not clear from the article whether any money will change hands when one university’s students enroll in the other university’s courses. But, at a minimum, the arrangement increases the language options available to UVa students. Anyone who wants to study Haitian Creole will be able to do so via a Cisco TelePresence video conferencing system.

Through the window of this language partnership, we can see how the  University of Virginia intends to use online technology. The thrust is to increase the richness of the educational experience, not to cut costs or otherwise drive down the cost of a college education. That’s a wonderful thing if your ultimate goal is to create an elite university with a dazzling array of course offerings. It’s disappointing if your goal is to make high-quality education affordable for Virginia’s middle class.

Meredith Jung-En Woo

The University of Virginia faces a talent crisis, says Meredith Jung-En Woo, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. The college expects to lose about 100 faculty members through retirement in the near future and 40 for other reasons. To meet expanding enrollment, the college needs to hire another 60, plus 30 more to improve student-faculty ratios. That compares to 540 faculty who are tenured or on tenure track.

The solution? Pursue a $130 million fund-raising campaign for “faculty excellence.” The goal, Wood told a gathering of Richmond-area alumni yesterday at the Westin Hotel, is to add $100 million to the endowment and devote $30 million for near-term expenditure.

As an example of UVa’s march to excellence, Woo cited the recent recruitment of Alan Taylor, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his work, “William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.” He turned down Harvard to join UVa, said Woo. One reason was that his archives are located in Virginia. But another is the reputation of UVa’s history department for having one of the top programs in early American history. Taylor’s presence, she said, “will make us peerless.”

Woo cited other initiatives such as renewing the writer-in-residence program, which lapsed after William Faulkner’s stay at the university. The goal is to bring on board a Nobel Prize-caliber writer. The College also plans to create an artist-in-residence program and recruit a world-class China scholar.

The diminutive, Korean-born dean found a receptive audience among the Wahoo alumni, an overwhelmingly middle-aged and elderly crowd. Judging by my conservations with fellow Hoos during the cocktail reception and the questions asked after the presentations, Richmond alumni seem very comfortable with the priorities set by the university administration, led by President Teresa Sullivan. They are eager to see UVa build its reputation as a world-class university. Nary a word was spoken about unaffordable tuition hikes or existential threats posed by online learning.

– JAB