Possible benefits of the Oregon tuition plan

An idea that originated in Oregon concerning the payment of student tuition in the public institutions of higher learning is now being widely considered throughout the USA.

The idea, sometimes called the “Pay It Back” plan, is essentially this: There would be no tuition charged to students while they are enrolled in their studies. Upon graduation, however, the students would agree to pay their alma mater(s) about 3 percent of their salaries for about 25 years. The main driving force behind this plan is that the present system burdens too many of our young adults with a level of debt that severely limits the options they can afford to consider upon graduation.

I happen to like the Oregon Plan, not only for the reason described above but also for another that might be just as important. During my several decades of teaching everyone’s favorite subject (chemistry!) at several universities, I increasingly came to believe that the funding mechanism of our universities was fundamentally flawed and limited the quality of the services the universities provide to society. Let me explain.

Most public universities are now reimbursed for their expenses via the payment of tuition by the students and from state funds allotted to offset some of the students’ costs. The total amount the university then receives is determined primarily by a number called the “total student credit hours” provided by that institution. Another somewhat cynical term often used for this number is the “student body count.” Keeping that body count as high as possible along with the development of its research enterprises are the main mechanisms by which the university attempts to maximize its income.

Therefore, as a university instructor, I was constantly reminded by my upper administrations of the paramount importance of the retention of existing students (the recruitment of new students was primarily the responsibility of university outreach personnel). Of course, that retention message was always provided in a progressive and high-minded manner — that is, it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that all students “find themselves” within the range of programs offered by the university.

While advising students, however, it frequently occurred to me that many student might have been better off going home or somewhere in the public work force until they had gained a better view of how the programs of the university could help them. In the many large introductory courses I taught in general chemistry, one of my favorite subsets of students was the one I called the “senior citizens” of the class — a collection of 30-some-year-olds who had come back to the university after they saw more clearly where they needed advanced education.  

Universities are great “businesses,” and the people that run them are smart enough to adjust to whatever funding mechanism they are provided. If the game continues to be a simple “body count,” they will continue to play that game very well — while simultaneously presenting a public image that is progressive and high-minded.

In order to provide a better investment for the public dollar, however, I think that most American universities are in need of no less than a basic “heart transplant” with respect to the way they are paid for their services. Adoption of the Oregon Plan would provide such a change.

Under that plan, a major portion of total tuition payments to the university would be based on factors much more related to the overall quality and maturity of its graduates. While it would still be a “body count” of sorts, it would be one that would be heavily weighted by the collective abilities of each institution’s graduates to contribute to the society that paid for their educations.

Furthermore, I believe that the “retention at all costs” approach has contributed to several distinctly unfortunate outcomes within our public universities — including grade inflation, teaching to the test, dumbing-down of course content, and lowered expectations of student body performance.

In the process, it has been accompanied by the replacement of tenure-track and research-active faculty in the large entry level courses by part-time instructors. While most of the part-timers I knew were good-to-excellent teachers, they also knew very well that they had better have lots of happy students filling out those student evaluations forms at the completion of each course if they wanted to be retained the following year.

Thus, the part-timers could not, in general, be as demanding of student self-motivation and performance as a tenured faculty member could be. This division of teaching duties has isolated the mainline tenure-track and research-active faculty who comprise the epicenter of each academic department from the bulk of students entering our large universities. As a result, a great deal of talent goes undetected and underdeveloped.

Another outcome of our present emphasis on “retention at all costs” is a great expansion of administrative costs associated with the increasingly complex flow of students throughout ever-expanding sets of special programs. Thus, we now typically have a wide range of Vices, Assistant to the Vices, and Associates employed within each administrative office including those of the President, the Provost, the Deans, the Department Chairs and Student Services. Since the salaries associated with such positions are typically the highest within the university system, funds are thereby removed from student/teacher interactions where the quality of an institution’s graduates is determined.  

All funding mechanisms, including the Oregon Plan, will raise new problems and will have downsides. A very big one, for example, is how would a given state get an Oregon Plan off the ground when it would take several years before graduates were contributing to the system?

Nevertheless, I am sufficiently convinced of our present system’s deficiencies that I favor trying a plan that is totally different at its heart. Universities will continue to be successful businesses whatever financial game they are forced to play. However, it is also clear to me that these inevitable internal successes (everyone wants to go to the U, right?) could provide a much better return than they presently do for the enormous investments our state and country makes in higher education.

Grimsrud, of Liberty Lake, Wash., is a former Kalispell resident and an emeritus professor of chemisty at Montana State University.