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IPFS News Link • Education: Colleges and Universities

The College Bureaucracy That Never Shrinks

• https://www.city-journal.org

A billionaire tech investor made headlines last week with his pledge to pay off the student loans held by Morehouse College's graduating Class of 2019. Unfortunately, Robert Smith's multimillion-dollar gift, however admirable philanthropically, is as irrelevant to the problem of student debt as the recent policy proposals from the Democratic presidential field. Whether it's Senator Elizabeth Warren's plan to use taxpayer dollars to cancel most outstanding student loans for the majority of borrowers, or Senator Bernie Sanders's promise of "free" (i.e., fully taxpayer-subsidized) tuition for public universities, all such proposals treat ballooning college costs as a naturally occurring phenomenon, outside the reach of human action. The discourse around student debt—which now stands at $1.5 trillion—holds colleges harmless in causing that debt. The sole focus of discussion is instead how best to underwrite rising tuitions with public or private money.

But college tuition is not an act of God, beyond human control. It is a result of decisions taken by colleges themselves—above all, decisions to bulk up their bureaucracies. Bureaucratic outlays rose at nearly twice the rate as teaching outlays from 1993 to 2007, according to the Goldwater Institute. From 1997 to 2012, colleges hired new administrators at twice the rate of any student-body increase, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found. Colleges inevitably claim that government mandates force this administrative bloat upon them. But the vast majority of administrative hires are voluntary: for every dollar in mandated bureaucratic spending from 1987 to 2011, public universities added an additional $2 in discretionary bureaucracy, and private universities added $3, according to economists Robert Martin and Carter Hill. Fiefdoms focused on diversity and student services grew at the fastest clip, in the name of fighting the campus oppression to which minority and female students are allegedly subjected.

Last month, Georgetown University provided a striking example of such unforced diversity accretion. President John DeGioia proudly announced a new diversity position: Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. No government mandate required this new vice presidency. Instead, it was an expressive choice that, in DeGioia's words, would demonstrate Georgetown's commitment to "racial justice" and "educational equity."

Naturally, the inaugural VP of DEI will be backed up by a new Associate VP of DEI. Support staffs of equity-research specialists are likely on the way.

Such self-initiated diversity expansions are by now routine. Two days ago, the University of Rochester announced the creation of a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion. Rochester's incoming VP for EI, poached from her position as Associate Vice Provost for Strategic Affairs and Diversity at Virginia Tech, said that she had been inspired by the "quality of work already being done at the University of Rochester in the diversity and inclusion space." In February 2019, Harvard announced that it was creating a new office and new Associate Deanship of Students for Inclusion and Belonging that would integrate the work of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations; the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; the Office of BGLTQ Student Life; the Office of Diversity Education and Support; Title IX; and the Harvard College Women's Center. In April, Yale's president Peter Salovey announced a new Deputy Secretary for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, along with a cadre of additional diversity "specialists."

The Georgetown expansion contains an interesting twist, however: the person chosen for the new VP of DEI role has been doing race-based diversity activities at the university since 1980. Rosemary Kilkenny started as a Special Assistant to the President for Affirmative Action Programs and became Georgetown's Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity in 2006. The school's spokesman did not respond to a request seeking an explanation of how the new Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion differs from the old Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity—beyond, one may safely assume, receiving a jump in salary.

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