Jeb Bush has voiced concern about university building use and professor teaching loads driving tuition costs, but it’s not as major of an issue as he thinks.
“There are a lot of beautiful buildings being built on college campuses, but you can’t get a course on Friday afternoon. And a professor, tenured professor, may not be teaching many more courses than one per semester,” Bush said at a New Hampshire town hall, according to The Washington Post.
He added that, without financial accountability, colleges have an implicit incentive to keep students for five or six years instead of four.
He’s made “skin in the game” part of his higher education plan where he advocates financial penalties if graduation rates are low, for instance. Bush wants to spur colleges to find cost reductions to lower tuition and student loans.
Class scheduling is an issue, but Bush exaggerates the Friday afternoon class problem. Universities schedule to use space efficiently, though faculty and student pressure can dissuade non-traditional schedules. A shift toward online classes and more evening classes, though, could mean better use without Friday classes.
A greater concern is underutilization of university buildings in general. Colleges could see larger gains by operating year-round, instead of leaving campus buildings unused during the summer months. If students received discounted tuition for choosing summer classes, that could help them graduate early, or even in four years, as five or six years for degree completion becomes the norm.
For tenured professor teaching loads, Bush misses the alternatives as well. The Post noted that reducing a professor’s workload can be used as a “non-monetary reward” for retention. Workloads drop, but it saves money compared to a salary increase. For most tenured professors, however, they teach an average of four classes each semester.
Tenured professors don’t do the majority of teaching, anyway. Increasingly, colleges have switched to “contingent faculty” who are much cheaper. About 76 percent of instructional staff positions are non-tenure track. To be concerned about tenured teaching loads is to miss the reality of who teaches students in higher education.
The Bush campaign’s concerns about creating incentives for colleges to lower costs and become more efficient are well placed, but his chosen examples are weak.
