Higher Education Meet Democratic Process

This is a re-post, trimmed and tweaked a bit from its original stream of consciousness version. The idea emerged as a free flow of thought about the merits and demerits of tax-exempt status in American institutions. It is also an adjunct to a future proposal about youth suffrage in general, with side tracks into twin proposals to repeal the child labor laws and the laws requiring forced school attendance.

For the original text, please see "Sam Brownback and So Much More" below. D-Blog



Columbia University has an endowment in the billions. They are the largest owner of real estate in Manhattan. They’re doing fine. Yet not one penny of their real estate is taxed, nor are the capital gains from their investments. So they have benefited enormously from non-profit status. Were they taxed like a normal company, their liability would likely be 100s of millions of dollars a year. But instead it’s nothing.

Like other schools, they get the bulk of their capital from two sources- tuition and public or private contributions.

There are a few problems with this. First of all, the existence of tuition makes attending Columbia University an impossibility for millions of intelligent Americans- not to speak of third world internationals whose education might even be considered more important for global peace and prosperity.

Next, the bulk of public contributors make donations for the same reason as for classical music- the prestige of donating to something somebody deems to be important. I will concede right away that there is an enormous amount of important research being conducted at universities. My point, though, is that it is not up to a democratic process to decide what makes these things important. That people deem one subject important causes them to donate more money. The more money donated to a subject the more important it seems, thus creating a spiral (virtuous or otherwise) of importance. Once entrenched, this spiral is very difficult to stop, and the subject itself becomes immune from democratic review, protected, as it were, by a monopoly of prestige.

(The same fate condemns political candidates with the capital of media coverage. The more coverage they get the more money they get, the more money they get the more coverage, etc. Many worthy candidates get sidelined through this kind of cycle of donation and exposure.)

Furthermore, any academic can tell you there are tremendous amounts of waste in the Uni way of doing things. Fun or not, those are dollars that could be spent in other, more productive ways. But they won’t be, because there’s not as much prestige in many of those other ways. This is a longer discussion that aims at core problems with research and the scientific method. For another day.


As for private donations, of the graduated who give back- and here let’s drop down a tier to a less prestigious College, say Sarah Lawrence- those graduate donors who are worth cultivating by the development office (and thus those who may have some influence in the school) will be only the most successful graduated, say 5 – 10 % of alums making significant contributions in the millions of dollars. So the monetary votes of those SLC grads working at Starbucks simply will not count- and the school, its curriculum, values, or methods will be none the wiser. Only the rich’s voice will be heard, and presumably their voice will favor that which is already in place (with some tweaks), because that is what brought them to their state of richness. The Starbucks barista might be angry and embittered, resenting the school that taught him nothing about life, but he would be in no position to do anything about it. Were he to bang on the door of the dean’s office, they would simply call security and have him escorted out. The people for whom the curriculum worked would have the red carpet rolled out with the credit card machine waiting at the other end.
[NB: this point could be argued extensively, but it is not central to my case, and so I will leave it as is- food for thought.]

In order to curb these disparities of clout, my first proposal would be to eliminate tax-exempt status from schools.

But then who would pay for education? Would only those institutions with legacy funds be able to continue operations? That would be unfair to say the least, and it would contribute to real academic stagnation. As it stands, the most prestigious schools are more concerned with cultivating donors than students. In fact, students are put in the helpless position of vying for entry into a school system over which they have no power, thus encouraging an attitude of subservience to institution that will not serve them in entrepreneurial life.

It is worth repeating what one author, James Herndon, said about institutions: An institution’s first, and usually unstated, goal is self-perpetuation. Whatever is in their mission statement comes after that one. All the lofty goals of improving society, educating the public, etc., come after paying the rent, the faculty, and the bureaucracy that runs it. Forgive the cynicism here (I’m quoting a cynical author), but few Americans can afford to work productively for an institution that has a sunset clause built into its mission. People have tended to want to keep their jobs as long as possible, at least if they are expected to commit real effort and energy to them. Thus any mission statement dedicated to the betterment of the students or public that runs counter to the interests of the school bureaucracy to maintain the status quo if bettering the students' lives would institute policies that changed the status quo too drastically would not be enacted. That was a long sentence, so bravo if you got it the first time around. The idea is that the students' and the institution's interests are not necessarily the same. And the institution, which will outlast the students, will always win. This is true even before enrollment, as students approach the school more as supplicants than applicants, and continues until graduation.

So it is not hard to see how this arrangement can easily conspire against the interests of the students, the ones whose interests the institution ostensibly serves. For example, the best teachers, are the ones who make themselves obsolete- they convey their information, they teach the students how to learn for themselves, and like so many male arachnids, their task completed, they simply expire. Since most professors don’t want to expire, there is a natural power struggle built into the teaching relationship in which there is an incentive in the teacher to prevent the student from achieving intellectual independence, as such independence would render the teacher obsolete=powerless=dead. Whether this is enacted overtly or more subtly, it is a fact of human nature that must be dealt with in a society.

A less psychologically disturbing example might simply be that of tenure. Once tenure is established, the incentive to improve and evolve one's teaching methods goes down. Obviously. What's worse is that before tenure, the teacher's incentive is primarily to do whatever it takes to get tenure which may or may not serve the students' interests either. That graduate assistants regularly teach undergraduate classes is also blatantly not in the students' interests if their interests are to have the best, most effective and inspiring professors. There are countless other examples having to do with curriculum, housing, clubs- to say nothing of post-university-life preparation, which I will leave to those who actually went to college to ponder.


So how do we generate a system of education that is genuinely student centered?

Easy. And no need for tax breaks, at least not for the schools.

Higher education (let’s start with that) would be absolutely free of charge to students.

But there would be a contract. Upon graduation, or shortly after, a small percentage (say ½ a percent) of the student’s annual income would go to back to the school until retirement, say 70 years of age

This system would inextricably link the life interests of the student with the financial interest of the schools.

In the current system, once the student forks over his tuition, the school is under no obligation to do much of anything. They can teach Ping-Pong for 4 years and call that an education (or Art History, perhaps). But under the new system, schools would have to think seriously about the entire life future of the student- starting with the basics: If the student drops dead at 35 by eating too many Big Macs, the school has just lost 35 years of income. Therefore basic life skills would factor heavily into the initial curriculum. 4 or 5 failed marriages can drain the coffers pretty quickly too and cause bankruptcy. How about general life skills about building relationships- and not just the fruity new age kinds. Schools would have to do research (on their own dime) to find ways of getting along that really work for people, and they would have to find ways to teach those ways effectively to their students.

And then the whole manner of teaching changes- how things are taught, what is deemed important is no longer ‘deemed’ but is discovered- if reading Chaucer adds enough to one’s quality of life that it allows for more productivity and more income, then Medieval English would be a good investment. Otherwise, not so much.* Also, if dull, mega-lectures conducted by graduate assistants really do further the students’ education after all, they would continue. If not, a better system would emerge.


A school that taught the students nothing useful would receive nothing useful in return and would fold. A school like Juilliard that graduates hundreds of Starbucks baristas would be entirely bankrupt, unable to function. If they wanted to raise money, they would have to demonstrate the worthiness of their mission- and do so without the tax-break incentive to donors. In either case they would have to openly admit to their students that they have little likelihood of earning a living wage, to say nothing of a comfortable wage, based on the skills they learn there.

The same would go for research institutions. Research is indeed valuable to society, and factored into that ought to be a certain amount of inefficiently spent time and money. But this money can be raised separately from the education funds. Generally student research is a form of slave labor, pardoned by the prestige and sophistication of the work they are doing and the institutions that permit it. So another system would need to be in place.

Most importantly, all schools would eventually be competing amongst themselves for the best students- young or old- much the way the virtually-for-profit football wing of the school already does.

Prospective students would also think seriously about whether or not college was a useful option for them. Could they learn as much on their own without being indentured to Harvard for the rest of their lives? Right now there is virtually no choice for a promising 18 year old than to spend $100,000 to be rammed through a standard, "balanced" curriculum for 4 years. Why not turn the tables and empower the student- on whose fortunes the collective depends far more than the institutions themselves.

Economic prejudice would therefore end with this system as less well-to-do families would have the same opportunities as wealthier families. This would also contribute positively to racial and cultural integration. Business works best when it is color blind, and this would indeed be a business relationship. Slowly a true meritocracy would begin to emerge.

A corollary to this would be that "legacy" students would become more rare as financial clout was shifted from wealthy alumni donors to the promise of the younger generations. The school would not stand to profit from some rich person's kid as much as it would from some brilliant son of immigrants, adn the student body would begin to reflect that.

As for these younger students, the focus of their teenage years would move away from "getting into college" or doing things that "would look good on their transcripts" (in the manner of our tenure-seeking professors) and move towards things that made them superior people in terms of independent thinking and real world life skills.


As an option, instead of a fixed percentage being given back to the school, other arrangements could be made: perhaps a Medical student could defer back payments until he was 35 but pay a slightly higher percentage. There could also be some sort of buy-out arrangement for the ultra rich. Presumably a four-year college education is not worth ½ a percent of a CEO pulling seven figures each year. Some sort of figure could be agreed on in advance to release the student from his obligation to the school.

The flip side would also need to be taken into account. There are many (and ought to be many) who pursue a career out of love for their field with the predetermination that they will live a modest life. I personally believe that this thinking is unnecessarily limiting, and that even someone who enjoys sea horse biology can still find a way to become wealthy given the right frame of mind.

There are many options for this. Traditional liberal arts universities in the English tradition could continue to exist focusing on less-profitable studies like history and philosophy. In general, however, these graduates feed back only into universities and thus have a static, circular effect which is not generally beneficial to the larger society. The best solution to this question, I believe, would be to begin studying these subjects in earnest after one has made one's fortune in something profitable. Or, as in England, these sorts of studies should be left to the rich who are exempt from the demands of regular life. (In another article I will talk about the value of repealing child-labor laws, allowing the likelihood of retirement by the early 40's, thus giving an individual the bulk of their productive adult life to learn things of his or her own choosing. Please suspend comment until you read the completed piece. . .) Alternately, a kind of "tax" on the graduate remittances could be levied to provide for less-profitable studies at the university if it would benefit student life to have those departments around.

Now you might be saying, "This sounds basically the same as the student loan program. It's like taking out a loan to go to trade school and then paying it back over years and years." The difference is that by paying a bank back a student loan, you are not having any effect on the institution itself. Your post-college payments are payable to a third party. As far as the school is concerned, unless you are going to donate millions of dollars, you are irrelevant as soon as you throw your cap in the air. Furthermore your remittances will vary with your income, so if you aren't making any money one year, you won't be saddled with debt payments. You will simply pay 1/2 a percent of your $2,000 income, and that would be that.


One question is: could the system be corrupted? The short answer is- very likely. Research on best teaching practices could be distorted to push students towards excessive financial achievement at the expense of personal happiness. Financial gain is hardly the only measure of life success, and there would need to be some system in place to assure that quality of life be valued appropriately. Again, in the long term, schools found to be abusing the education of their students would see a drastic drop in attendance (remember, they’re competing for students, not the other way around), and any temporary gain would not be worthwhile. A smart school would therefore set up effective checks on the power of its administrators.

I believe that the teachers’ salaries should be directly tied to the school’s annual financial gains so that each teacher receives a certain percentage of the school’s annual earnings. Better still, the teachers’ salaries could reflect the percentage of time they spent with each student during the college years. This would also set up some competition between teachers to attract the most/best students through innovative and effective teaching methods.

The difficulty with this is that teachers would not realize the rewards of their effort until for a few years after those efforts, so some alternate system would need to be put in place. Perhaps the teachers could be paid an estimated rate for the first few years as their students "get going" and be required to give a refund – not to go below a certain amount – or be given extra funds if their students turned out to be especially successful. This would be a little more complicated, but if there were certain guarantees, then it might work. Perhaps a better system could be worked out.

If this system seems too restrictive – in the sense that it views education as simply a means for making money in the narrow free-market view of the world – then perhaps some 20 % of the education would be required to be reserved for. . .Art History, Chaucer, whatever. The money to pay for it might even be able to be collected from the students themselves or through some kind of donation system. But a strict cap would have to be placed on what percentage of the budget could be used for school-reimbursed time, and this would have to be agreed upon by the students in advance.

The other non-academic aspects of College life could be outsourced so that the students participate as real workers in research facilities or as part of a volunteer book club, chess club, fencing team, etc. As stated above, the truth is only people with adequate money will be able to devote serious time to these other activities anyway. So it will be the rich who can afford them and the rich who would be able to send their kids to liberal arts college, where they would have done these activities otherwise, anyway. Those who make adequate money through the new system will be able, later in life, to pursue ‘extracurricular activities’ with more freedom, having become wealthy themselves.


That’s the start of the plan, anyway. There is no doubt much to be argued about, but this should get the ball rolling on a discussion.

In future, we shall look at the benefits of de-mandating so-called "primary" and high-school education. That young people act in such an immature way is partly due to society's constantly infantilizing them. Given a degree of power and real say over their lives, students will begin to accept basic self-responsibility earlier on and thus make the choices described above with greater care and intelligence. The value of work and de-schooling for younger children - both for themselves and for adult society - can not be overstated. I realize the public will largely be skeptical to such ideas, but I look forward to the opportunity to convince you of my proposals' merits. Please stay tuned. D




* Note: I am a firm believer in the value of leisure, reflection, and learning for learning’s sake. Presumably the proportional value of this would be factored in to a school’s calculus.