IUP's Tuition Increase, Part 2

This post speculates about the possible effects of changes in tuition at IUP. Before reading it, please read Part 1.

You could argue that, were it not for the stealth tuition increase, charging students per credit is a good policy. It is fairer to students who for various reasons, such as needing to work part-time, can only take 12 credits per semester, since they will only be charged for courses they actually take. It also will discourage students from dropping courses. IUP allows students to withdraw from courses without penalty until two-thirds of the way through the semester. Students sometimes sign up for more courses than they expect to complete, knowing they can drop one or two of them if they are having difficulty or just don't like them. This is a poor use of the university's resources. However, assuming there is no refund for courses dropped late in the semester, students and their parents will come to see course withdrawals as a tangible waste of money.

On a less positive note, I can't help but wonder if accustoming students to paying by the credit and eroding the distinction between part- and full-time students isn't also intended to make it easier to shift courses out of the classroom and into what is optimistically called “distance learning.”

According to IUP spokesperson Michelle Fryling, they believe this package of changes will not harm enrollment or retention and could lead to more credit hours being taken. Until pigs master the art of flight, it's hard to see how these claims could possibly be true. In the real world, increasing the cost of an IUP degree by 25% seems almost certain to reduce enrollment.

He's pissed.

In addition, it would seem that charging students by the credit, while simultaneously increasing the cost per credit, will result in students taking fewer, not more, credits per semester. Students will only enroll in the number of courses they can afford. One of the consequences will be that it will take them longer to graduate. For IUP, this means that its four-year graduation rate—an important metric by which universities are compared and evaluated—will decline. For the student, a longer college career means higher room and board costs and lower lifetime earnings.

It is also likely that, when paying by the credit, more students will try to graduate with exactly the required 120 credits and no more. At present, many students finish with more than 120 credits for several reasons. They may change majors. The longer they wait to do this, the more additional credits they have to take. Students also accumulate excess credits if they try to improve their job prospects by taking a double major, or a single major and two minors. Finally, some students take more than 120 credits out of intellectual curiosity, since under the current system, they can take as many as 144 credits in eight semesters at no additional cost for tuition. The new system will make these deviations from the standard path more expensive.

Why are these drastic—and risky—changes being made right now? IUP faces a potential cumulative deficit of $12.2 million by 2015-16, $16.7 million by 2016-17, and $19.7 million by 2017-18. The official line is that enrollment is declining because fewer young people are graduating from western Pennsylvania high schools. This is true, although an “excellent” university might be able to overcome this handicap. However, there are two other problems.

When I came to IUP in 1971, faculty morale was high and there was considerable optimism about the future. We were led to believe that the mission of the state-owned universities was to bring higher education to middle and lower class young people who were usually the first generation in their family to attend college. To this end, the state paid approximately 70% of the cost of a student's education, with most of the remainder being covered by tuition.

In 2014-15, the State System of Higher Education (SSHE) received $412.8 million from the state, which covers only about 25% of its operating budget. Almost all the rest comes from tuition. The change has been gradual, with the exception of an 18% cut in state aid in 2011-12 after Tom Corbett was elected governor. Like the frog in the pan of water whose temperature is gradually increased, many of us failed to notice how these tuition increases were changing student demographics and causing the university to abandon the goal of reducing inequality. Most middle class students who attend IUP now graduate with crushing debt. Pennsylvania ranks 47th among the 50 states in support for higher education. Maybe our state's politicians and their corporate donors have concluded that it's not in their interest that Pennsylvania have an educated population.

The situation is complicated by financial mismanagement at IUP. The university owes $34 million that it borrowed in 2010 to complete the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex, which was built even though insufficient funds had been raised. This is one of several recent projects in which IUP, like some of the other SSHE universities, seemed to place a higher priority on student recreation and entertainment than on education.

Will there be any organized resistance to these changes? The president of the IUP faculty union, Mark Staszkiewicz, is actually a former member of the administration. His comment, “If the state doesn't do something, there's not many options we have,” seems to indicate passive acceptance and little empathy with students. It has also proven frustratingly difficult in the past to overcome student apathy. Of course, the various “discounts” and offers of financial aid are intended to minimize student outrage. 

If both enrollment and the number of credits taken by each student decline, IUP could go into something resembling a death spiral. Program cuts and faculty layoffs could easily follow. Right now, IUP's future does not look particularly bright.   

You may also be interested in reading:

IUP's Tuition Increase, Part 1

Update (2/23/15)

A friend sent me this blog post on the same subject from Kevin Mahoney, a Kutztown University of Pennsylvania faculty member. Dr. Mahoney included the chart below, which I had looked for but couldn't locate, showing both the changes in SSHE's state appropriation and its tuition between 1983 and the present. You'll seldom find a more perfect negative correlation.

Update (4/19/13)

IUP has postponed its decision to charge for tuition by the credit, and the accompanying fee schedule, for one year.

Last week, the Board of Governors of the State System of Higher Education voted, 9-8, to freeze tuition at the 14 state-owned universities next year, provided they receive the $45.3 million (11%) increase in their state appropriation contained in Governor Tom Wolf's 2015 budget. The closeness of the vote reflects the fact that some board members objected to the way in which it seemed to enlist them, along with students and their parents, as supporters of the Governor's budget.

IUP's postponement is a tacit admission that the changes it had planned were a tuition increase, and therefore contrary to the board's new policy. Given the fact that Governor Wolf faces stiff opposition from the Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature, it seems unlikely that he will be able to deliver the full $45.3 million. However, by the time that outcome is known, it will probably be too late for IUP to change its plans again.

IUP's Tuition Increase, Part 1

I retired from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) in 2007 and I no longer live in Indiana. I haven't sought any inside information to help explain the recent changes in tuition at IUP or predict their effects. This is, for the present, an outsider's viewpoint.

IUP is making several changes at once, possibly in the hope of confusing students and the public about their actual effects:

1. The current flat fee of $6820 per year for all full-time students carrying between 12 and 18 semester hours of academic credit is being replaced by a fee of $284 per credit.
2. This amounts to a substantial tuition increase for most full-time students.
3. To ease the pain, IUP is offering tuition “discounts” of 7%, 4% and 1% during the first three years.
4. They also promise to increase financial aid by $2.5 million this Fall.

These changes are described as a “pilot program,” the effects of which will be evaluated after three years. It should also be noted that a second shoe is scheduled to drop this summer, when the State System of Higher Education (SSHE) announces the 2015-16 tuition at the state-owned universities. All the data in this article assume that there are no further increases in tuition, but this is unlikely. 

What is the purpose of these changes? The IUP administration anticipates that these tuition manipulations will bring in an additional $8.2 million next year. According to IUP's queen of doublespeak, Michelle Fryling, they are “part of a three-pronged approach to get to budget stability and to be able to offer the programs with excellence that we need to offer, that our students need and our students deserve.” The other two prongs are limiting campus budgets to the previous year's amount (that is, not adjusting them for inflation), and encouraging programs to increase their enrollments (without increasing their staff). It's not clear how any of these three actions will promote “excellence.”

Newspaper articles contain conflicting reports about the cost to students of the tuition increase. The figures differ depending on the academic year, the student's course load, and even on whether numbers are rounded up, down, or not at all. Let me try to clarify what is happening. A student needs at least 120 credits to graduate. Over four years, that amounts to 15 credits, or five 3-credit courses, per semester. Most students can't take exactly 15 credits each term, because most programs require some four-credit courses such as science labs. However, we can assume that 30 credits per year is the average load. Under the current system, tuition is $6820 per year. When the new system takes full effect in 2018-19, the cost for 30 credits will be $284 times 30, or $8520, an additional $1700 per year, or a 24.9% tuition increase.

Factoring in the “discounts,” the tuition increases should average 16.1% in 2015-16, 20.0% (over the current amount) in 2016-17, and 23.6% in 2017-18. These are the largest tuition hikes since there was a 15.4% increase in 1991. Of course, it's obvious that one purpose of the gradual phase-in of these increases is to discourage current students from protesting. By the time the full increase takes effect in 2018-19, those students will face a fait accompli.

Not all students take 15 credits each semester. The top chart from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shows how many credits per semester students actually take. The most frequent choices are 15 and 16 credits. The bottom chart is based on the 2015-16 tuition, with its 7% “discount.” It underestimates the eventual cost to students in 2018 and beyond. (Even though the Post-Gazette editorialized against the tuition increase, it failed to confront readers with its full effects.) For each number of credits, the chart indicates whether tuition will go up or down and by how much. The break-even point, at which students' costs remain the same as they are now, is 12.5 credits per semester. At that rate, it would take five years to graduate. The more credits students take between 12.5 and 18, the bigger the financial hit they will take.

As noted, IUP also announced an increase in financial aid in the Fall, equal to about 30% of what they hope to gain from the tuition increase. It's not clear whether these increases in aid will be permanent or whether they will be phased out like the “discounts.” There are two types of aid, based on need and performance. The rules for awarding this money are complicated enough that IUP's press release and an Indiana Gazette article based on it devoted more space to the financial aid package than to all the other changes. But the most most a student can hope to obtain in new financial aid is the cost equivalent of two credits. You can look up the details if you're interested, but I suspect that the very complexity of these rules is part of an administration strategy to distract our attention from the far more important—and probably permanent—changes in tuition.

This post is continued in Part 2.

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IUP's Tuition Increase, Part 2

TV Networks on Torture: “Just Do It!”

After the December 9 release of the Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, widely known as the torture report, it became the #1 story on the weekly television news programs. Since journalists seldom express opinions on such matters as whether “rectal hydration” constitutes torture or whether politicians who approved such methods should be prosecuted, the best measure of the corporate media's position on these issues is to examine the guests who are invited to their programs to express their views.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) surveyed the guests on nine TV news programs during the week of December 7 through 14: ABC's This Week, CBS's Face the Nation, CNN's State of the Union and Situation Room, Fox's Fox News Sunday and Special Report, MSNBC's Hardball, NBC's Meet the Press, and PBS's News Hour.

Of the 104 guests on these programs, 53 of them indicated whether they supported or opposed the “enhanced interrogation techniques” described in the report. Thirty-five of them (66%) supported the CIA's actions, while the remaining 18 (34%) were opposed. While some progressive critics worried that the networks would give equal time to torturers, they probably didn't anticipate that the “liberal” media would present more advocates of torture than opponents by a two-to-one margin. (Of course, most of those who supported the CIA's actions usually also claimed that they did not constitute “torture.”)

Sixty-five of the 104 guests were journalists, most of whom remained neutral. The second largest group was 35 current and former government officials. Nine CIA officers were among them, seven of whom defended their agency's practices. Of those who were political partisans, 19 were Republicans and 7 were Democrats. Four of the Democrats spoke against torture while the others had no opinion. Sixteen of the Republicans favored the CIA's actions and three opposed them. For more details on what was actually said, see this report.)

Of course, the most prominent Republican guest was former VP Dick Cheney, who said the report was “full of crap.” As Glenn Greenwald noted, Dick Cheney should be in prison rather than having his ass kissed by the Sabbath gasbags (my language, not his). So far, the only person to be jailed over the CIA torture program is John Kiriakou, a whistleblower who helped to expose it.

While the perpetrators of torture had many opportunities to defend themselves, torture victims were seldom heard from. Their only voice was indirect. Two lawyers representing torture victims, Joseph Margulies and Meg Satterthwaite, were invited to participate in the discussions.

Given this kind of media coverage, it's not surprising that in a Pew Research Center survey of 1001 Americans conducted December 11-14, 51% said the “CIA's interrogation methods” were justified, 29% said they were not justified, and 20% had no opinion. Were they effective in preventing terrorist attacks? The Senate Report concluded they were not, but 56% of respondents thought they were effective, 21% said they were not, and 16% didn't know. The public was almost evenly divided on whether the Senate Report should have been made public. Forty-three percent thought releasing the report was the wrong decision, 42% thought it was the right decision, and 15% had no opinion.

It seems that a lot of Americans are O. K. with torture. They just don't want to know about it.

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Zero Thirty Darkness

This Will Not Surprise You

Who Cares What THEY Think?

Safety First

OK, folks, raise your hands. Who's in favor of teenage pregnancy? How about teenage abortion? Childbirth?

Although the rate is declining, each year 600,000 American teenagers become pregnant; 30% will become pregnant at least once before the age of 20. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, in 2010, births by teenage mothers cost the country $9.4 billion in health care, public assistance and lost income due to reduced educational attainment, to say nothing of the long-term public health and social costs to teenage mothers and their children.

Dr. Gina Secura and her colleagues at the Contraceptive CHOICE Project in St. Louis have published a case study of the effects of offering free long-term contraceptives to teenage girls. The participants were 1404 adolescents between 14 and 19 who were enrolled in the program between 2007 and 2011. They were recruited via referral from clinics, community flyers and word of mouth. To participate in the study, they had to be sexually active or say they were planning to be, and not want to become pregnant.

All participants received a standard counseling session in which the risks and benefits of alternative contraceptive methods were reviewed and questions answered. After making a choice, participants were provided with their chosen contraceptive option free of charge. Followup interviews were conducted by telephone at three months, six months and every six months thereafter for the next two or three years (depending on when they enrolled). They received a $10 gift card for each completed survey. The one, two and three year followup rates were 92%, 82% and 75%. Rates of pregnancy, birth and abortion were compared both to their age cohort in the general population and their sexually active age cohort (since enrollment was limited to those who were or planned to be sexually active). Here are the data, reported as the number of pregnancies, births and abortions per 1000 in the population.

	CHOICE Project	U. S. Population	Sexually Active Teens
Pregnancy	34.0	57.4	158.5
Birth	19.4	34.4	94.0
Abortion	9.7	14.7	41.5

Comparing the CHOICE participants to sexually active teens in the general population—the more appropriate comparison group—shows that they became pregnant and gave birth at 21% the national average, and had abortions at 23% the national rate. The CHOICE Project reduced unwanted pregnancy more for older (18-19) than younger (14-17) girls, and more for African-American than White participants.

The project was effective primarily because the majority of participants—68.4% of the older and 77.5% of the younger girls—chose long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods, either the hormonal or non-hormonal IUD or the etonogestral implant, rather than birth control pills, rings, patches or injections. These methods don't require participants to remember to reuse them and have a close to zero failure rate. But fewer than 5% of teenagers in the general population use LARCs. The researchers report that most of their participants had never even heard of them.

The study doesn't separate the effects of counseling, the contraceptive method, or the fact that the contraceptives were free, and it's likely that all these factors played a role. Other limitations of the study include its less than 100% response rate, its reliance on self-report data about pregnancies, the possibility that the followups reminded some participants to use their contraceptives, and the requirement of parental consent for the 14 to 17-year-olds, who may have been at lower risk of pregnancy than those whose parents did not consent. These drawbacks may be balanced by the high percentage of African-American (60%) and poor teenagers in the CHOICE Project, who are at greater risk of unintended pregnancy than the general population.

Rarely do we have a chance to report a study that is so effective in solving an important social problem, and that provides such a vivid reminder of the superiority of prevention over remediation. The cost of these birth control methods varied, with the LARCs being more expensive—$400 to $1000 depending on the method and the individual. To this must be added the costs of recruitment, counseling and followup. All of this is a pittance compared to the medical and social costs of unwanted pregnancy. We have the technology; what we lack is the political will.

In theory, the Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to cover all forms of contraception with no co-pay, but there is no reason for insurance companies to publicize this option.  And there are other problems:

• Doctors probably don't follow as good a script as the CHOICE Project counselors, and are not as aggressive in recruitment and followup. In general, doctors get paid less for time spent talking to patients than other activities.
• Teenagers, who are usually covered by their parents' insurance, may not seek contraceptives because the visit will show up on their parents' statements.
• According to the National Health Interview Survey, 18.4% of Americans aged 18-64 were uninsured during the first three months of 2014. Girls from uninsured families are probably at greater risk of unwanted pregnancy than those whose families are insured.

The Secura study argues strongly for a single-payer health care system, not only to guarantee that everyone is covered, but also because government can prescribe a uniform set of procedures to be followed by doctors when discussing birth control with teenagers.

Newspaper articles about the Secura study mention anticipated resistance from conservatives who believe that providing teenagers with contraceptives encourages sexual activity. But these articles fail to mention that research doesn't support the claim that education about contraceptives encourages teenagers to have sex. (That would be rude.) In fact, the reverse is true. Comprehensive sex education is associated with delayed or reduced sexual activity.

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No Longer in Mourning

Freedom Of . . . /Freedom From . . .

Living Downstream

"Fetch!"

The Willie Horton ad used by George H. W. Bush in his 1988 presidential campaign is considered to be one of the most effective political ads in U.S. history. It's also the prototype for the use of symbolic racism in political campaigns. Brad Ashford is a Democrat running for Congress in Nebraska's 2nd District. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending $170,000 to run the following TV spot in support of his opponent, incumbent Lee Terry.

The ad is technically correct. Nikko Jenkins was released from prison under a Nebraska law that allows early release for good behavior, and went on to murder four people. Ashford supported this law while a member of the state legislature--as, presumably, a majority of Nebraska politicians did.

To call this an example of "dog whistle politics" may be to credit it with more subtlety than it actually shows.

By the way, the U.S. held 2.23 million people in prisons and jails in 2012, seven times the number in 1972, and by far the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. It will be difficult to reduce these numbers if politicians who vote for prison term reductions are held responsible for any recidivism that results.

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Dog Whistle Politics

Another Dog Whistle

Voter ID and Race, Part 2

In Part 1, I presented evidence that racially prejudiced individuals are more likely to support voter ID laws. Please read it before continuing.

Of course, public opinion does not automatically translate in social policy. In 2012, Bentele and O'Brien published a study in which they used multiple regression to examine what state-level variables were most strongly associated with both the proposal and passage of voter ID laws. The following variables predicted proposal and passage of restrictive legislation:

• Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature and the governorship. 83% of voting restrictions were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures.
• The state had become increasingly competitive in the last presidential election. Note that passage of voter ID laws required both increased competitiveness and Republican control. Those states that had become more competitive but had Democrats in control were less likely to pass voter ID laws.
• The state had a higher proprtion of African-American and Latino residents, and minority and low income turnout had increased in the last presidential election.
• There were more allegations of voter fraud. This variable had less impact than the other three. Note also that very few allegations of voter fraud have been substantiated.

Their study is entitled “Jim Crow 2.0.”

What about the individual legislators who vote for voter ID laws? Earlier this year, Mendez and Grose reported an experiment in which 1871 state legislators from 14 states with relatively high Latino populations received an e-mail from an apparent constituent asking whether a driver's license was required in order to vote. The legislators were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups. The e-mail either came from an Anglo (Jacob Smith) or a Latino (Santiago Rodriguez) man, and was written either in English or Spanish. The dependent measure was whether or not the legislator replied. Here are the results:

	Supports Voter ID	Does Not Support Voter ID
Anglo Name/English	45.0%	50.3%
Latino Name/English	27.5%	43.4%
Anglo Name/Spanish	10.1%	12.5%
Latino Name/Spanish	1.1%	11.7%

The results are clearest with the English-language e-mail. Those who supported voter ID were 17.5% more likely to respond to the Anglo constituent, while those who did not support voter ID were 6.9% more likely to respond to the Anglo constituent. Response rates were depressed considerably when the e-mail was in Spanish, but the same pattern was obtained. Supporters of voter ID were more likely to discriminate against Latino constituents.

Did the legislators themselves decide whether or not to answer the e-mail, or was it a staff member? It probably doesn't matter, since legislators hire like-minded staff members.

The authors claim that the experiment shows discriminatory intent on the part of legislators who supported voter ID. It could be argued that Republican legislators cast their vote for partisan reasons, and the fact that they also happened to be prejudiced was coincidental. However, not all Republicans supported voter ID, and further analysis showed that those Republicans who voted in favor of voter ID were more likely to discriminate against the Latino constituent than those Republicans who voted against it. (No Democrats in the entire sample supported voter ID laws.)

I'm not suggesting that prejudice and political partisanship are separate alternative explanations for support for voter suppression, either among legislators or the general public. It is likely that Republicans support these laws both because they harbor racial resentment and because the laws are advantageous to their party. In fact, in the last six years, attitudes toward a variety of political issues, such as health care, have become more strongly correlated with racial attitudes. The Republican Party has gradually evolved into an unabashedly racist party, much like the neo-Nazi parties of Europe.

I woke up yesterday morning to the following headline: “GOP calls for travel ban for West Africa over Ebola.” Will Republican Congresspeople be willing to support adequate financial aid for Ebola-stricken countries, or will they use fiscal austerity as an excuse to throw West African Black people under the bus?

You may also be interested in reading:

Voter ID and Race, Part 1

Don't Forget Not to Vote

Old-Fashioned Racism

Voter ID and Race, Part 1

With the election coming up in two weeks, voter ID laws are back in the news. The Supreme Court has accepted or rejected state voter suppression laws in a seemingly random pattern, without explaining their rationale. In news stories about voter ID, the corporate media typically demonstrate false balancing. They fail to examine Republican claims that voter impersonation is a problem. (It is not.) They report but don't evaluate the Democrats' argument that voter ID laws suppress turnout among key Democratic constituencies, such as the poor, minorities, and college students. (There is evidence to support this claim.) While the media sometimes imply that these laws are politically motivated, new evidence suggests that they may also be motivated by racial prejudice. These studies confirm every bad thing you suspected about voter ID laws.

In a new study, David Wilson and his colleagues at the University of Delaware's Center for Political Communication (CPC) used cognitive priming to test the prejudice hypothesis. Their experiment was embedded in the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, managed by computer by YouGov/Polimetrix. They had 1436 US adult respondents, 1100 of whom were White. The White participants were randomly assigned to one of three versions of a question asking them whether they favor or oppose voter ID laws. For one-third of the respondents, the question was accompanied by a photo of a White voter and poll worker. For another third, the voter and poll worker were African-American. The remainder of the participants were not shown any image. The photos and the wording of the question are shown in the results table below.

Support for voter ID laws was quite high. Most importantly, when given the Black prime, a reminder of the fact that African-Americans vote, the White respondents were more in favor of voter ID laws than when given the White prime or no prime at all. The fact that the race of the prime was manipulated in a true experiment suggests that race plays a causal role in attitudes toward voter ID.

These results are consistent with an earlier correlational study by Wilson and Brewer. This was a 2012 telephone survey of 906 adult Americans conducted by the CPC. Particpants were asked their party affiliation (Democrat, Republican or Independent) and their political ideology (liberal, moderate or conservative). White respondents were also given a three item measure of racial resentment similar to the Symbolic Racism Scale:

• I resent any special considerations that African Americans receive because it's unfair to other Americans.
• Special considerations for African Americans place me at an unfair disadvantage because I have done nothing to harm them.
• African Americans bring up race only when they need to make an excuse for their failure.

As indicated in the chart, Republicans and conservatives supported voter ID laws more than Democrats and liberals. There was also a significant correlation between racial resentment and support for voter ID. Racial resentment was higher among Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and liberals, with Independents and moderates in the middle. However, racial resentment still had a significant effect on attitudes toward voter ID laws even when controlling for political partisanship, ideology and several other demographic variables. Interestingly, racial resentment had a greater effect on the attitudes of Democrats and liberals, since Republicans and conservatives overwhelmingly support voter ID laws regardless of how much racial resentment they express.

Of course, public opinion does not automatically translate in social policy. Please see Part 2 of this post.

You may also be interested in reading:

Voter ID and Race, Part 2

Don't Forget Not to Vote

Old-Fashioned Racism