A Penny for My Thoughts (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

Art Cullen is my new role model. He’s the editor of the Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly newspaper in northwest Iowa, and also a reporter and, as of last month, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer. I don’t expect to follow him to Pulitzer glory, but I can point to him for validation that, in small publications like his and ours, the same person can be a reporter in the morning and an opinion writer in the afternoon and keep the two roles straight.

I reported and wrote a story for last week’s issue on the myriad problems in higher education that have resulted in college costs inflating much faster than even health care costs. My article barely scratched the surface of what, now that I have my opinion-writer hat on, I would describe as a shameful abandonment of American values if I were convinced that American values still included concern about future generations.

After my story appeared, I got emails and phone calls. Arkansas Business readers have a median household income that is way above the state median, and even some of them are concerned about how they can afford to educate their kids. They appreciate that no consumer product can inflate far faster than wages without eventually hitting a wall, and the ballooning of student debt — which Senior Editor Mark Friedman explored in a companion article — may be that wall.

Among the usual suspects: highly paid college administrators. We’ve explored that topic in the past. In the fall of 2014, Friedman reported that the number of administrators being paid at least $100,000 by a public university or college in Arkansas had grown from 460 to 703 between fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2014. His report, complete with comparative tables, was based on the Arkansas Department of Higher Education’s annual survey of administrator compensation, and the number of names in that report has grown by approximately 20 in each of the two fiscal years since.

(A University of Arkansas trustee told me, confidentially, that the most valuable skill on any college campus these days is fundraising. Let that sink in.)

Other readers suggested that Arkansas has too many colleges. “Access” — meaning, in this context, geographic convenience — has been part of our state’s strategy. It’s why we have 10 public four-year universities (plus the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences) and spend more tax dollars on higher education, by almost any measure. The idea is appealing, but it hasn’t worked. Only Mississippi and West Virginia have fewer college degrees per capita, and Arkansas would have to improve its concentration of college graduates (now estimated at 21.1 percent) by almost 60 percent to reach the national average (33.4 percent).

“Iowa is about the same size as Arkansas both in population and square miles. Yet, Iowa has only 3 four-year public universities: University of Iowa, Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa,” a reader wrote in an email. “One would assume that Arkansas has many layers of administrators and deans that Iowa does not have.”

Although I didn’t include it in my story, Michael Moore, who runs the UA System’s new online eVersity, cited in our interview a prediction by Clayton Christensen, author of “The Innovative University” (and the better-known “The Innovator’s Dilemma”), that as many as half of the country’s colleges and universities will be out of business in a decade or two. Several factors led him to that conclusion, including the fact that the number of kids finishing high school each year is already flat and about to decline.

Arkansas’ higher education problems, as I wrote last week, are complicated by the fact that “Arkansans were less likely to go to college when it was cheaper, resulting in cultural and financial barriers to higher education now that it is dramatically more expensive.”

There’s also this complication, which I explored in a feature story last year: Amendment 33, which prevents elected officials from meddling in the operations of state universities and a few other agencies. It was adopted in 1942, after Gov. Homer Adkins stacked the UA board with trustees who obliged him by firing the president of the university, young J. William Fulbright. Essentially, the Legislature decides how much money to give each university but then has no input into how the money is spent.

The Legislature could shut down some schools. I won’t hold my breath.

Another reason to emulate Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times: He knows his audience.

“We strive to have a baby, a dog, a fire and a crash on every front page,” he told The Guardian, “so, yes, we do pander.”

It’s simpler at Arkansas Business. We just keep in mind that our readers’ No. 1 interest is OPM: Other People’s Money. Including, for instance, college administrators’.

Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. Email her at GMoritz@ABPG.com.