Higher Education Reform Part II | The Cincinnatus Series Ep. 2 by The American Mind

coming up on this episode of the Roundtable if your full-time students doing four courses are not working 36 hours you're not compliant with what universities have promised US Department of Education now nowhere is that the case the average student four-year full-time student Works maybe with classes 18 to 20 hours a week right now which means institutions almost across the border committing fraud simply to keep their institutions from being legally Li legislators ought to hold oversight they ought to drag uh Deans and Provost and chancellors up in front they ought to have them explain what do they know about how much work students are doing they ought to show them the documentation they ought to show them the reporting on learning this ought to be a scandal that students are being allowed to slouch through with minimal time and effort while paying full Freight tuition and mostly amusing themselves on their phone [Music] welcome everyone to another special edition of The Claremont institutes and the American mines podcast we're calling the cincinnat series where we are spending the next five six weeks or so going through some policy ideas for state legislators as they try to uh write the ship uh while the feds are going at a break neck break neck speed as well uh I'm very happy to be joined by Rick Hess a senior fellow and Director of Education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and his colleague Beth akres also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in the economics of uh education policy among other things and then my colleague is joining us again Scott yenner our senior director for State coalitions at our center for the American way of life and also uh a senior fellow at The claremon Institute uh and his day job is at boy State University so don't hold it against him um we wanted to uh get into this is part two of a series on education policy and how the states ought to think about it and how state legislators ought to think about it um we uh we talked last week about a bunch of stuff for accreditation uh among other things but um Rick I was wondering uh I know you like to think a lot about systems and so I'm curious if there's anything you would recommend we can start very general and maybe descend to some specifics about what state legislators should be thinking about uh incentive wise or systemwide especially for higher education and how to reform higher education yeah um it's a great question uh you know it should be an interesting conversation look I think the place to start is to recognize that higher education uh has an important mission right we want higher education to educate Americans to be good citizens uh to uh you know Master important domains of knowledge to be prepared for the workforce uh to uphold kind of the Civic health of our communities it's not doing that and in fact it's doing what it is encouraged to do which is hire people who publish lots of papers that never get read uh to collect lots of research dollars out of Washington and then use the overhead to pay for bureaucrats um and to make sure that kids get a piece of paper um at the rate as best they can whether or not they've learned a darn thing so how do you start cleaning this up you start by encouraging institutions of higher education to focus on education which means you make it clear that faculty should teach that there's an expectation that they will teach in a way that is Meaningful and rigorous uh that that will be part of their evaluation that that will be part of how they are hired and promoted uh you make clear that students are expected to actually do work that students are expected to demonstrate Mastery of important knowledge uh that diplomas need to be earned uh and you need to make sure that the role of research especially at non-research institutions uh is complimentary um that public publishing a paper nobody ever reads is swell but that's actually not what we're hiring faculty for they're there to teach they're there to Mentor they're there to shape and that these responsibilities ought to be sacran rather than peripheral right now that's just not the case even at publicly supported publicly funded institutions and if we start by tackling those incentives the big stuff I think a lot of the other stuff uh you know people will have less time for Tom fullery they'll have less incentive to kind of use uh hot colleges as a platform for nonsense if they're actually busy doing the work for which they're hired yeah um what how should state legislators think about how active a hand they should take in intervening I I'm thinking you mentioned uh the importance of teaching and Scott and I have talked on the last episode but we wanted to expand it a little bit the qu this question of general education and I mean should should state legislators be basically setting the general education curriculum sure if they need to yeah sure I mean these are you know I mean especially at public institutions look yeah as you know as you guys know and most of the viewers probably know 75 80% of higher red in this country is provided by public institutions uh they are publicly funded they are publicly supported um they fact the folks who are paying the bills the representatives of the taxpayers and voters have every right to be clear about expectations about what constitutes a meaningful course of study in fact I'll go you one better um the idea of Faculty governance makes sense when we are talking about um input from faculty as far as curricula and pedagogi I I I I think there's an important role for faculty to play I don't understand why the folks who happen to work at a given institution should get for cart blanch to decide who their colleagues will be that's not how any responsible organization works I think legislators and governors absolutely have a have a right to create mechanisms where they will have input into who has hired as faculty at public institutions because these institutions are a public Mission and that mission should not be defined by whichever faculty wind up kind of getting tenure there at a given moment but by the folks who are charged with representing the interests of the taxpayers and voters in that state so resting some control over hiring back from merely The Faculty has has any state done this well uh I don't think um Scott you might have a better idea than I I don't really know that anybody's tried this on a meaningful scale but there's certainly models if you think about how we do judge Judes for instance there are mechanisms to have Democratic accountability but within a framework where there's room for Meaningful input from folks who are familiar with the day-to-day work of the field yeah what about the professional schools uh I know Scott's thought a lot about it in the Florida context at on the law school side but I I think of medical schools as well what how should state legislators think about those sorts of things should they should they I mean should they be founding new law schools um making their current ones more prestigious taking more of an AC of hand in this sort of thing you know I mean Prestige is a funny word in this context uh Dom Brewer and his colleagues at ran did this great study on uh you know uh Prestige creep in higher ed 30 years ago and they pointed out that you know what all of the incentives were not to actually do your job well but to kind of migrate up to the next level of the Carnegie rankings and how do you get there you gener you bring in research funds so you can scrape overhead and you publish studies that nobody ever reads um so look um I don't think Prestige ought to be the goal um but I think making sure that you've got uh medical you know that you've got trained medical professionals in the state is absolutely a legitimate concern of legislator um what would that entail well let's think about this you know I just mentioned changing the incentives for Arts and Sciences colleges for instance right now when you are hiring you are trying to hire people with more Publications why because it's more prestigious and people who can get more grants why because that gets you more overhead that you know I think the the relationship between that and are they good Educators were they good mentors are they actually interested in the work of the mind is tenuous it best if not kind of an inverse relationship so I think that's the right question to ask about medical schools law schools State you know state legislators ought to be asking their medical schools to prepare General Practitioners they ought to be asking their medical schools to favor folks who actually want to practice in the state right um they ought to be seeking ways to make sure that they're delivering uh medical education in a way that is cost effective so that you're limiting the amount which you're weighing down your graduates in terms of debt and Loans taken um these are the same questions kind of as think across the board for professional schools these are absolutely legitimate concerns for legislators but rather than asking how do we get into the top 20 it ought to be how do we make sure that we're offering we're we're training enough people we're training more people we're training people in the skills that our that our fellow Citizens need and we're doing this in a cost-effective manner yeah one of the things Rick that I really like that you said earlier was kind of making a distinction between the research purpose purposes of a university and the education purposes of a university um you know when I was in graduate school it was all preparation for research and no preparation for teaching and when a state legislator looks at the University he's thinking all about the teaching the educational outcomes the trying to create scientific literacy and numeracy and appreciation for our civilization and Workforce education and professional education that's what they're thinking about but the the disjunction between the preparation of a PhD and the imagination of what PhD should be doing is like uh is it's it's very dissonant ultimately and uh I have been a faculty member for a long time and uh and how do how do I put this uh you know like a place like voy state has automatic um uh sabatical for faculty I mean if you apply you get it as long as you like have filled out all the forms there's never even just a like an evaluation of whether your research is worth doing you just have to be able to assert that it is worth doing and and this is like the standard of Excellence and um so so thinking about ways whereby to make the education outcomes if you want to think of it like that of these institutions Paramount in how State leg legislators evaluate those institutions seems to be the key and here accreditation is of no help because they just say well do you make a syllabus do you have your learning outcomes on it check check you're good do they do the students make some money after they leave oh they do you're good so you know I think we have to go back to one element of the pre-research university and that is something like an entrance and exit exam approach to actually showing that these institutions [Applause] add value on the educational goals that we have set up and uh or something akin to it um grades don't do it anymore because of the horrible grade inflation uh that exists all over the country so you know finding some way of elevating the importance of education and denigrating the importance of research especially in arts Sciences Humanities uh and social sciences I would even say is crucial to kind of reforming these uh uh these universities and I think that can only be done by like explicit action like you're going to teach a three3 load not a 44 load or not a two2 load excuse me um you're going to be evaluated 70% on education outcomes we're going to make you give post tests to your students to see what value you've added in this area and uh I think that would be kind of an accountability mechanism that states could uh begin to uh begin to embrace I'll interject and try to bring it back to economics as as does um but you know it seems to me that there is this new renewed interest in accountability from all different dimensions on highered right now including the State Legislative perspective right you know we've got consumers becoming more skeptical of higher rad we've got I think State leadership like in a good way starting to put their eyes on what's Happening and these things about you know the way the faculty work the incentives for researchers is teaching I mean anybody who who takes a look at this model can see something's broken here or at least there's some sort of dissonance but I think what's happened is that H got a pass for a long time you know there was this sense that it was Untouchable that there was some sort of magic happening there and as long as the bottom line still worked for students I think that pass kept getting given but I think we're in a place now where they perception or a reality that for the individual at least the margins are thin enough now that we're starting to say what's what's happening here wait a minute what are the faculty incented to do and what should they be incented to do and you know where where can the state play a role and you know I think it's exciting I think it's a really exciting time that you know HED is getting more scrutiny from you know every interested party here who has the potential to hold them to some account I you know I love that and just to make kind of Scots kind of Point real concrete what can legislators do well for instance in order to be eligible for federal funding for higher ed so you know the whole mechanism that runs through they call Title four of the high Ed act colleges commit that a an instruct that a course of instruction is three hours in class and six hours out of class that means time this means if your St full-time students doing four courses are not working 36 hours you're not compliant with what universities have promised the US Department of Education now nowhere is that the case the average student fouryear full-time student Works maybe with classes 18 to 20 hours a week right now which means institutions almost across the border committing fraud simply to keep their institutions from being legally liable legislators ought to hold oversight they ought to drag uh Deans and Provost and chancellors up in front they ought to have them explain what do they know about how much work students are doing they ought to show them the documentation they ought to show them the reporting on learning this ought to be a scandal that students are being allowed to slouch through with minimal time and effort while paying full Freight tuition and mostly amusing themselves on their phones second real good example Scott mentioned the 33 piece look um you know most faculty tend to be on nine-month contracts that means they're contracted for 40 weeks a year they're you know they're paid they're functionally paid for their summer right median associate salaries 95,000 bucks which is a pretty decent Year's pay even though you're technically not working for those three months for the 40 weeks you're working it seems to me reasonable that the 26 weeks at least of fall and spring semester all to be primarily devoted to acts of teaching to instruction to mentoring to office hours call it 30 to 35 hours a week not not a real heavy work week for somebody who does manual labor that means a typical faculty member at least at a nonresearch institution ought to be teaching a four five Giver take four courses maybe five courses spring and fall let's make sure we're asking chancellors and provosts to come up and talk to us about how many hours of work or faculty actually doing on taxpayer dime what are they teaching what courses are they teaching why are these important courses I mean let's throw a whole lot of sunlight on stuff that has been kind of just left to self-governance because I think when Americans start to find out how little kids are working when they find out what faculty are actually doing all day they'll say my gosh we're rewarding insane behavior and in fact this isn't about vilifying individual students or faculty this is about a dysfunctional broken system of higher education which rewards all the wrong things and if we want faculty and students to rise to the challenge we've got to make sure we start rewarding the right things I I love what Rick said about shining a light on this because I think so much of what's happening in highered makes no sense to the general public if you were just to show them what's actually happening and so of course the legislators have you know this tool of bringing institutional leaders you know forward to hearings and saying what what the heck is happening on your campuses um there's another tool though that legislators have that's really being underutilized which is the choice of accrediting for public institutions so um this this responsibility of oversight looking into the campus seeing who's teaching what how hard are students working all of that I mean that's a big job and and the mechanism that's in place for that to be done is through the process of accreditation which is these third parties that look on campuses and say okay things look good by whatever standard they're using here and so they can have access to federal student aid but creditors are not all the same they all represent different sets of values there are potentially newer creditors in the coming years that will be emphasizing Financial returns more than you know colleges looking like traditional colleges which I think is a move in the right direction and state legislators can say you know to their public institutions hey look you need to be shopping around and or you need to go to this particular different accreditor because the values that are embodied by the accreditation process that you're currently using are inconsistent with what we hold as you know State leadership and so I think that's one place that's you know something that can happen really quickly and make a pretty big change in terms of affecting the incentives that institutional leaders are facing yeah Scott you mentioned last week um the possibility of States creating their own accrediting institutions in their own State yeah I mean I think right now the question of accreditation is one of these Wide Open Spaces um and the Trump Administration is very open to every kind of experimentation new accreditors States accrediting their own institions um this is a time to apply for those things uh States suing the Department of Education for sitting on their applications uh for a long time I mean I think all of that stuff is now open um I mean one of the really weird things about this is that when you look at K through 12 education states have a lot more freedom than they have in highered because of the accreditation process um there are no like outside accreditors overseeing your K through 12 things unless you choose them and whereas higher ed has these like uh an oligopoly of accreditors that almost all have very similar standards I think you can correct me if I'm wrong on that that's right that's right so so they're a homogenizing effect where States might have distinctive things that they'd like to get done in their law schools or even in their Normal University state universities uh they can't do it because of the accreditation kind of uh above them that constrains them uh and I think the other element of that is of course the federal money that pours into and sustains the universities and of course accreditation of the federal money are related to one another so uh so yeah uh I want to just go back to one thing that Rick was talking about uh just a couple other ideas on accountability measures um uh because I I do think that doing a grade inflation study of departments in your state universities would be an awesome way of holding them accountable it would it would be something that would be a scandal if it were done if you broke down by departments and asked what the average grade point average was you could actually see rigor and lack of rigor right there in your eyes and it's something is very easily understood I mean it's not critical race Theory it's not uh ideology like that it's just that they some elements of the University don't have intellectual standards and so 70% 80% of students will get a and like well why don't you challenge them more like what are you doing um when you have that like that question um like put certain disciplines I think on the hot seat and it would be good to get them on the hot seat um so that's just another uh you know I think uh lwh hanging fruit uh uh thing that State legisl education departments were were looking at you they're and to Scott's point I mean they're prone to embarrassing themselves uh Mike PGI who you guys probably know did a study uh a couple of schools I think University of Missouri was one of them you know years ago uh the average grade in University of Missouri school of education was a 4.0 and uh you know when he when asked for comment on this they explained well we're just really good at teaching everyone's above average yeah know that that just let you know when you tell you know when people see that like the only rationale it's like yeah you know we're just um it uh you know it is a way of stripping past a lot of uh the nonsense you know look you know one thing to keep in mind is how how ludicrous some of these conversations are so you know I when I say faculty ought to be teaching 30 35 hours a week during their semesters for instance people go well gosh that's a lot when when are they going to do their other work well if faculty are on a for or on a 9-month contract they're being paid for 15 to 1600 hours of work teaching 30 to 32 hours a week for 26 weeks is maybe half of that so even under this Draconian framework legislators would be saying to institutions we'd like our faculty to spend half the time our taxpayers are paying them to work actually doing stuff relating to teaching uh you know our college students the other half they can spend doing their research doing Publications um sitting on committees and that's not counting the 12 weeks in the summer which they're either like technically off the books or working on their own grants yeah I remember asking Harry jafa years and years ago uh about his first job which was at Ohio State in the 50s and he was teaching a 55 so uh you know things of it's what what actually do you guys know the history of that I mean when did we start to see this reversion to a 22 especially at the fancy colleges um re Really Scott you might you you might have a different take on the history I think it was really um you know it was a post kind of late 60s Reformation type thing in the 70s and 80s especially when you started to get the professorial hiring bubble right uh you started to compete by of course promising which faculty would teach less right uh and so what happened over time is prestigious institutions uh started to bid it down down to down to 3-2 and then down to 22 and then down to a 21 and in many cases now a one-1 in kind of high-profile disciplines and so then what happened was the second tier institution starting in the 90s and 2000s uh in order to be in the game then started to reduce uh their teaching loads to suit yeah I would uh I I began at Boise State had a 44 load in 2000 but I could appeal if I did research to get it reduced to a 43 load and uh then it moved to a three3 load a decade later and seven years later so 2017 it became a normal 22 load and um it's it's not 36 hours a week I want I and I like change my classes every term and uh and you know put a lot pour a lot into the classes well unlike my P my co-panelist I have never been on a teaching faculty so it's a bit harder for me to say well yes the faculty should be working much harder right they all have a better you know um like to stand on on that front but what I will say is you know some of the models that I like are actually the ones that let institutions come to that conclusion on their own I mean I I think it's right I think what we're saying is right that LE state legislators should really be pushing in this direction right making faculty work harder encouraging students to work more hours right but I also like the models that you know kind of correct the incentives for the institution so that they can make these changes on their own so that you know we're not forcing of course any sort of inefficiencies and one place that we have seen that is in the state of Texas um they're the only state that has attached performance-based funding to their institutions so um this is of course based on employment outcomes which may or may not be the priority that you think we should be you know um focusing on but um when institutions succeed in having good employment outcomes for their student they get basically more access to state level aid and so you know I'd love to see and we will see in time if Texas ends up saying okay maybe we need to hire faculty with heavier teaching lows or we need to push people in that direction so you know so so I mean you know I almost always agree with Beth but in this case actually feel free to disagree Rick that's why well well first thing and I you know and I try to be real careful to say it's not about faculty working harder um because I know a lot of Faculty who teach like one ones and they always seem frantic when we're emailing back and forth now differently right I think yes so I think what they're spending a lot of time on is sitting on diversity committees and hiring committees and chasing grants doing all these things so they may feel really busy but you know and again if you're at especially at a private research one institution as long as we put a big warning sign up like a like a cigarette pack like this is not an institution where anybody should get educated um but as long as they're operating with that assump and that's not clear to people right now but as long as that we're clear then that but when particularly at publicly heavily publicly subsidized institutions institutions which present themselves as interested in teaching uh and in an educa in an educational formation um I think it's a huge problem that they're working on the wrong things yeah absolutely but then but then the second thing is actually I am definitely concerned about um thoughtful legislators who say well we got to defer uh to the institutions right now because the problem is I think the institutions have been captured by the claimant um you know part of the problem with being a Chancellor with sitting on these boards is your information flow mostly comes up from the faculty and so what happens is they are told how hard it is how they're going to lose prestigious hire like and so what we really need is coldblooded gimlet eyed independent actors we're seeing it right now in Washington uh state legislators and governors can play this role to come in reset kind of the norms and rhythms and expectations and then I would be more comfortable on the other side of this transformation kind here's an example of what I mean like when you'll I'll talk to folks who sit on state higher ed boards or who are you know on a Board of Regents and we're talking about this conversation and I say well how much are your faculty teaching how much are they publishing and they'll say I I don't know I'll go like you know they've got that they go they tell me they don't have that information I'm like they're lying to you I'm like they collect us for tenure promotion every year every department chair every Dean has all this information and they'll say well you know I asked but they told me they can't share it or it's confidential or they don't collect it so part of the reason we need legislators to kind of weigh in is because even like the reform-minded members of boards trustees are getting pushed around and bullied by their kind of colleagues in the institutions and we need somebody with enough independent leverage to step up and say you know guys like we've got to do business differently going forward yeah uh Beth I'm curious are there any um uh sort of economic incentives that wouldn't normally come to mind to for state legislators that they ought to pay more attention to than they are uh incentives for for state legislators uh well or really for their approach to reforming higher education I mean I'm always an advocate for generally paying more attention to what's happening to outcomes and in part that's because I was never a practitioner teaching on a college campus so I have a bit more hesitation to prescribe what I think should be happening and I like the idea of the market testing what it is that's happening on college campuses and the way that we do that is by looking at the labor market outcome that students have I mean there has been a movement in that direction on federal policy I think state legislators don't really have as much of a mechanism for oversight of those sorts of outcomes um but they could if they were to intervene particularly through the accreditation being the first mechanism and also um thinking about directing resources based on those sorts of outcomes so I think it's better for students better for taxpayers if we do shine a light on those sorts of outcomes and start designing policy in a way that in sense better outcomes um you know I think that's we are moving in that direction it seems like among Public public interest and as well as interest Al among lawmakers I think that's a good thing yeah what about the coming what what sort of effects will the coming enrollment Cliff have on a lot of this stuff I mean if you take that and for those that aren't well versed in this we have this dir of students coming up here pretty soon uh and it will not get any better uh absence some sort of revolutionary immigration policy or something like that which I don't see in the offing so they will uh how should state legislators think about that and if you couple that with I don't know what its fate in the courts will be but it it seems like the Trump Administration wants to cap overhead at 15% for federal grants in higher education it seems like a lot of these institutions are going to have a uh a real uh uh some difficult meetings coming up talking about the bottom line yeah and then add to that we've got legislation um Coming potentially or even movement through reconciliation um hopefully that would put additional um penalties Financial penalties on institutions when they don't produce those good outcomes so I think the business model for these colleges public and private is going to be changing pretty radically in the years to come um I think the most likely outcome is that we get a lot of consolidation you know we're loathed to close colleges there's a lot of sentimental um thinking around whether or not that makes sense but we've had really an explosion of technology and Innovation that makes education available to people um in different regions online and so the idea that we need a you know a robust College in every Geographic you know community that has every single program I mean that's just not the model anymore um I think that this could push us towards consolidation towards the bigger campuses it'll be a boon for online Educators places like Western Governor's University um you know it's going to be sad when people lose their job and communities have to reorganize it's sad um but I think this is probably going to promote a change that was a little bit overdue um and I think legislators will need to be prepared both to withstand the fiscal challenges that are going to come facing their big institutions that will persist through this structural change and also be prepared to support communities as they deal with what it means to close these small college campuses yeah I would I would down on that this stuff is already happening uh there's lots of universities that are saying things like oh we have a $20 million deficit and we have to do program reviews I keep a list uh in a Google file uh of the ones that have recently done it including flagships like Penn State and West Virginia and University of Nebraska uh University of Minnesota they've all had to do this recently um because the confidence of the public has gone down there's the costs have gone up to run the places as inflation has gone up um so you know you see these universities having to cut 36 million dollars out of their budget and that usually means that they have to like start getting at some meat instead of just uh just the skin and uh and they all kind of approach it with the same uh econometric attitude which is that they look at the programs that have fewer students and uh lots of fact faculty they're not economical so they cut those uh programs even if they're really valuable to the mission of schools so uh to take one example University of West Virginia kept gender studies but got rid of petroleum engineering just go well all right uh even though basically the petroleum engineering was written into the mission statement of the university and uh so so these things are going to be happening and uh so I do believe that state legislators can shape these program reviews and um because it's prioritizing which programs belong on your University you may want to sacrifice some like uh you you may want to keep some low performing so-called uh departments even though um they are low performing they are really Central to the mission and you might want to get rid of some higher performing um uh Majors or programs because they're not Central to the mission either way you're saving something on the bottom line and and you're shaping the education that people are going to be receiving on the University uh to line up with the plan that you have for that University so it makes sense that as the demographic Cliff comes uh the answer is program review and it's already happening but it's happening with difference to the professionals on the campuses without any input from the legislators who are actually responsible for the oversight ad mission of the universities so uh those are the difficult discussions that are going to happen and it would be even more difficult if we put um alignment with the priorities of the University as a major component of program review you know this program review sort of triggers my mind to think about this notion of trade-offs which of course economists love to talk about Jason Ferman Obama administration Economist had a piece recently talking about like the broad scope of politics Democratic politics particularly during the excuse me the Biden Administration um not the Obama Administration um and he talked about this idea of you know sort of pretending that trade-offs don't exist or you know not recognizing that tradeoffs exist and I think that highered has long existed in that space you know you know the economic way of thinking do we need a Russian literature department on our campus is to say what are the benefits that it brings based on the values that our institution that our funders you know possess and then you you weigh it against the things that it costs that that's just not a calculus that has been happening on college campuses not amongst consumers of college but that's a different story altogether and I do think this you know era of scarcity that will be reigned in by you know greater accountability for colleges whether it's coming from federal or you know State lawmakers or even from the consumer I think it's going to demand you know this recognition of tradeoffs that's going to force things like program reviews which in the end is a good thing for this sector I mean this industry has really um been so incredibly defiant to Innovation um and and I think that it at some point will'll be forced to do it and of course it will be dollars and cents that that make it happen and I think I think we're on the precipice of that moment yeah I mean one thing that legislators one thing legislators reformers just need prepared for is the Washington Monument strategy here uh this was you know when Gingrich and Clinton faced off in the 90s uh and you had you know and they had to figure out how do you run the government you know famously Clinton told the Park Service you know shut down the parks shut down the Washington Monument it was a great way of focusing kind of public attention on this in a way that helped Clinton kind of win the narrative war and one of the thing you one of the things I think colleges um have shown themselves prone to do for instance in the conversation over the NIH uh kind of indirect cost cap is not to say yeah yeah yeah you know we started collecting indirect costs at the beginning of the Cold War because the nation was building out a research infrastructure on our campuses and we needed to build labs and we needed to hire staff and yeah it's reasonable to think that those costs have come down from these insanely usurous rates over the last 80 years instead they said oh my God you know if we don't if we can't collect money to cross- subsidize gender studies and hire kind of our entire Dei staff on the stem budget um you know people will die of cancer tomorrow and you know this is going to be the rhetorical Tech this is going to be kind of how this plays out and so folks need to be prepared and they need therefore to Marshall kind of the specifics and that's why this kind of transparency and oversight could be powerful because when they start explaining how every dollar scraped out of their budget is a dollar that means a low-income student won't have access access to engineering opportunities uh it's real important to take a look at what have they protected what have they cut yeah people need to keep an eye out on state legislators included for this newish term or actually it's cro back up again maybe it's not that new uh as the Trump Administration tries to reform the bureaucracy of malicious compliance so keep an eye out for folks who are uh you know taking the letter of the law and using it to do the most political and PR damage to the legislature or or to the reformers so keep an eye out for that um I know Beth has to go in just a few minutes to catch a flight so I wanted to close on this Rick I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about school choice while I had you here um is there a state model that you love Above All Else what are states doing well what are they doing poorly how can it be improved yeah um I you know I think look the best approach to this is to think in terms of educ ational Choice rather than school choice because the goal here should be to make sure that families can get the can get their kids the education that makes sense um from 1990 from the launch of the Milwaukee vouter program in 1990 to about 2020 you saw really uh incremental and unimpressive growth in the expansion of choice partly because it was a very kind of peac meal solution was really Medicaid it was if you've got a low-income child trapped in an awful School we're going to help you maybe get that kid into a less awful school what we've now seen over the last five years is really a revolution in how legislators are approaching school choice which is wait a minute why are we just doing Medicaid why don't we think this is an opportunity to empower All Families wherever they live we all experience kind of schools not being there during the pandemic um if what your child want likes is they like their current neighborhood school but the math program is awful let's make sure they have resources that can get them a functional math program if you are looking for World Language options and all the school has is horrific kind of long-term substitute teachers Let's help you solve that if you've got a child with special needs in the school district accommodations are garbage Let's help you find a school that actually can take care of your kids so what model do I so you know for me the model that makes sense is education savings accounts because they give you that choice of school but they also give you a choice of non-school options um I think Arizona is probably furthest down this road though there's a number of states you can look at the folks that had Choice do terrific work um a as well as the American Federation for children it kind of breaking this down but you know if you're if you're a legislator you're saying what are the what are the musthaves the musthaves are try to make this available to all of your families not just some of your families try to make sure that families can use it for a range of options not just whole school options um make sure that you're taking fiduciary responsibility seriously I didn't like unemployment fra during the pandemic and I don't like it any better when folks are fraudulently ripping off taxpayers through education savings account programs um and make sure you're having a serious conversation about how do we make sure kids are learning that we're getting academic Mastery that doesn't necessarily mean dropping State mandates and state tests on non-traditional School options but it it certainly means having a serious sustained conversation about how are we getting evidence uh that students who are attending schools with the Public's funds are really benefiting from their educational experience yeah well very well said um we're going to end a little early today just so um Beth can catch your flight but I did want to tease for everyone uh thanks for joining this special series of the American mind and The claremon Institute uh this is our second we've had two on education policy we will take up IVF next week not controversial at all with Emma Waters from the Heritage Foundation iness statman will be will be back from Independent Women's forum and Natalie Dodson from the ethics and public policy Center but in the meantime just wanted to thank you Rick and Beth for joining us and thank you Scott and uh we will talk to you all next week as always if you want to find more about what we do at Claremont go to claremont.ca org for our latest out of the center for American way of life where Scott Works go check out the Claremont review books at clont review books.com and of course American mind.org as well for our daily digital publication thank you all for listening and we'll talk to you next week [Music]