Michael J. Sorrell: Colleges are deluding themselves
So why do so many university administrators insist on opening their doors next fall? One obvious answer is money. In recent years, rising tuition and fear of accruing debt have led to a decline in student numbers. Approximately 250,000 fewer college students enrolled in 2019 than in 2018. Administrators fear that a semester without tuition will accelerate this downward trend, and push many vulnerable colleges over the edge. That fear is justified: A recent survey concluded that roughly one-third of private, four-year American colleges are at risk of sinking within the year.
What is puzzling is that much of the rhetoric rationalizing the reopening of colleges emphasizes not these very real financial concerns, but the supposed duty of the academy to serve students and their needs with traditional coursework, often in a residential setting. Surely that duty ended with the pandemic, replaced by a duty to keep students, faculty, staff, and their families safe from the worst pandemic in living memory—and, perhaps, to prepare students for a year-long tour of duty in national service matched to their skills and interests.
Just last month, a group of lawmakers proposed the Pandemic Response and Opportunity Through National Service Act, which would offer major increases in funding for AmeriCorps and other service-related initiatives.
AmeriCorps typically offers 75,000 volunteers up to $6,195 toward student loans or a degree, a relative pittance that many colleges and universities voluntarily match, or even exceed. The new legislation proposes growing the number of service opportunities to 750,000 and more than tripling the education award, to $20,880, roughly twice the national average of in-state tuition and fees at public universities. This and other costs would require an estimated additional investment of $7 billion a year. “That’s not even a rounding error in the $4 trillion of new federal spending,” says Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, one of nine Democrats who introduced the bill, which has received bipartisan support. And costs would shrink significantly if student volunteers were encouraged to remain in their family home, thereby reducing the need for a cost-of-living stipend.
Coons told me that AmeriCorps could be “retooled for the pandemic” to allow students to front-load some part of their educational award to cover current tuition at participating colleges and universities. He likened this idea to another major federal intervention in higher education: the law that offers tuition to those who serve in the military. “The GI Bill was one of the most popular pieces of legislation in the nation’s history,” he said. “I’ve never met an American who even questioned it. This would be something similar, but for national service.”
