UD teachers union slams President Patrick Harker

The union representing teachers at the University of Delaware has harshly criticized the school president over his opinion column published Feb. 5 in a Philadelphia newspaper, saying his opinions that "smart students" are looking for higher education alternatives and that faculty members should lose some of their autonomy in course design are "an affront to the mission of university education and to core values of academic life."

"I've worked with other presidents and their administrations," said Gerry Turkel, a 38-year veteran of the university and a union executive council member. "And it's inconceivable to me that a president of the University of Delaware would put forth an alternative to the education that we offer, and be so dismissive of what he considers to be his faculty."

Patrick Harker, who has led the school since July 2007, argued in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the survival of the current higher education system depends on arresting the alarming increase in its cost, and that it can be stayed "by rethinking our mission and our methods."

High costs, Harker wrote, are forcing many parents "to choose between their own future and their children's."

Nearly all of UD's 4,200 incoming freshmen, Harker said, "are backed by parents who remain ready, if not eager, to shoulder the ever-rising cost" of college – now $12,300 for in-state students and $30,700 for out-of-state students at UD, he said.

"But there's a crisis coming," he wrote. "America's universities are pricing themselves out of the reach of the middle class." He laid the blame at declining state funding – but later in the piece, more subtly, said that greater reliance on technology and a more focused core curriculum "would also enable us to make better use of our costliest resource, faculty time."

As a result, Harker wrote that "smart students are going online to find innovative, less expensive degree paths," pointing to for-profit schools such as the startup Minerva schools, where he serves on the advisory board. Separately, Harker has touted UD's Associates in Arts Program, in which students who need additional financial or academic support take UD courses, taught by UD faculty, at Delaware Technical Community College, at a third of the cost.

In addition, university departments should develop a "smart common core" of basic courses all students must take, Harker said – a concept he called "value proposition" that would be familiar to anyone in the business world. "But the approach at UD," he said, "is informal at best, caught up in the wheeling and dealing of faculty tenure and preferences."

"The system is teacher-centric," Harker wrote. "We need to become learner-centric. ... "How can we deliver that learning in a way that suits the customer?"

In response, the Executive Council of the American Association of University Professors, UD Chapter, last week took issue with nearly every point in Harker's remarks.

"At a time when the University of Delaware is engaged in recruiting students and planning a capital campaign, it is puzzling why President Harker would write 'smart students are seeking innovative and less expensive degree paths,' " the statement reads. Harker's sense that universities should deliver learning that "suits the customer," they wrote, "is an affront to the mission of university education and to core values of academic life."

"A system of education that is rooted in for-profit and itinerant faculty who are not stable, and basically run by managers, rather than people who are fully engaged in the mission of higher education," said Turkel, who teaches sociology and legal studies, "is no substitute for face-to-face, fully developed relationships between faculty members who engaged in research and who have local and national reputations, and are working with students on a daily basis."

The council acknowledges the skyrocketing cost of a college education, saying that "the costs of higher education have been shifting from state governments to students and their families." But it said that for-profit schools are "contributing to current problems" and that "a scandalous portion" of the more than $1 trillion in U.S. student debt is paid to the schools.

And, the council added, "Expenditures on faculty are not the cause of increased costs to students and their families."

UD, the council pointed out, "is in excellent financial condition."

Harker said Wednesday that his stance shouldn't have come as a surprise. "I've long been concerned about the issues facing higher education, especially the effect of rising costs on our students and their families," he said, "and have written and spoken about these challenges many times over the past year, at UD and elsewhere.

"This conversation is happening on and off college campuses throughout the country, and it is important that we at the University of Delaware use our collective insights and wisdom to find solutions."

A Washington, D.C.-based higher education analyst agreed. "This exchange seems pretty typical for what's going on in a lot of universities across the country," said Matthew M. Chingos, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

"Administrators are feeling political pressure to confront rising costs, and they just can't keep increasing tuition like they've done in the past. ... Whereas faculty tend to be much more conservative in the sense of being nervous that change might change things to which they've grown accustomed, like their job security, or the deference they've gotten in the past in terms of research and teaching."

Generally, Chingos said, for-profit schools are competing with community colleges and technical universities. "Whereas Minerva is trying to be an innovator, and aim at the high end of the market – to compete with the Harvards of the world," he said. The concept is very new and, he said, "it's unclear whether it's going to work, and who it's going to serve, in the end.

"It's an interesting experiment," Chingos said, adding, "If I were a public university president, I'm not sure I'd be talking about it in an op-ed [opinion piece]."

Contact William H. McMichael at (302) 324-2812 or bmcmichael@delawareonline.com. On Twitter: @billmcmichael