Daniel Greenstein, the chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), declared at a recent Board of Governors’ meeting that if he and the PA Senate could not reconcile differences on budget, then he would recommend dissolving the system entirely.
Greenstein’s alarming comments notwithstanding, it points to a much larger issue at hand — the disaster state that higher education has come to and how capitalism is cannibalizing not just the cost of college, but the very access students have to its campuses.
The PASSHE system comprises 14 different universities that are primarily state-funded — West Chester being one of them. Through the years, the system has faced increasingly tough budget cuts. Currently, Pennsylvania ranks the sixth worst in the country in higher education funding, according to a report conducted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But instead of taking the steps to properly fund this vital system, deeper cuts are being proposed, as well as the consolidation for upwards of six PASSHE schools, all in the age of a pandemic where schools are hurting even worse than ever.
“Words matter, and the chancellor’s words about dissolving the State System were reckless and irresponsible,” said Jamie Martin, the president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties. “Despite the chancellor’s later insistence that he was not making a threat, we are incredulous that he would bring up such a radical, explosive possibility — and I am certain that many of our members perceived it as a threat.”
Across the board, Greenstein has proposed a 2.0% increase of about $9.5 million in funding, but now proposes a 5% increase of $25 million dollars this year alone for his supposed redesign project. This new proposal would seek to manage PASSHE under a neoliberal model, in which heavily-privatized forms of education would seek to eliminate unions and consolidate universities. Essentially, rather than fight for more money for the system to equitably distribute amongst struggling universities, this proposal would see them rely solely on market metrics to determine success — a path that we argue abandons the crucial principles of education.
“Efforts to bring about greater accountability, sustainability and system redesign will bring great [market] efficiency to our operations, increase access and save resources,” said Jack Wabby, president of the Pennsylvania Council of Trustees (PACT).
While the promise of market efficiency can seem tempting under such bleak circumstances, it is not a sustainable model of increased access or more abundant resources in higher education. In fact, despite the increasing reliance on this model, inflation-adjusted per-student state funding has declined in 41 states since 2008, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In PA alone, we have seen about a 40% reduction since the year 2000 in state funding across the board, even as universities continue to struggle and threaten to shut their doors.
Greenstein sent a memorandum to all PASSHE university presidents in February 2020, laying out his expectations for our universities to reach financial sustainability within five years — right as the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was announced. Despite the pervasive and crippling effects of the pandemic on higher education, Greenstein accelerated the time frame of financial self-reliance just a few months later. Through all of this, universities have faced further cuts, and 800 faculty members across the system have been strongly encouraged to go into early retirement in a hackneyed attempt to curb spending.
“PA students and their families have been paying for short-sighted education cuts since the last recession,” said Marc Stier, director of the PA Policy and Budget Center. “And despite some additional during Governor Wolf’s administration, Pennsylvania funds higher education at very low levels compared to other states. The outlook for students of color and those from families with low incomes is particularly concerning.”
What we have here is a case of disaster capitalism, where purveyors of the neoliberal model run a system into the ground in order to further advance the cause of a neoliberal agenda. The term was coined by author Dr. Naomi Klein. She used Hurricane Katrina as a particular example. “A tropical storm should never have broken through New Orleans’s flood defence,” Klein said in a 2017 article. “Katrina did break through, however, because the levees that protect the city did not hold. Why? We now know that despite repeated warnings about the risk, the army corps of engineers had allowed the levees to fall into a state of disrepair.”
We’ve seen this happen even more recently in Texas. Back in the 1930s, electricity was harbored under a centralized grid. Then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which let the government oversee interstate electricity sales. Balking at the idea of heavy regulation, companies worked with state lawmakers to shift all energy sales far from state lines. Flash forward to today and Texas now has a 95% deregulated system, and its isolated power grid is now unable to borrow from other states in times of crisis. This has given an enormous amount of power to the companies who are now able to charge miserly surge prices to customers who literally went without water and heat for days.
Now, PASSHE is facing the same crisis. And it is not just Greenstein that is to blame, but the entire ideology of neoliberalism and its weapons of disaster capitalism and privatization. One cannot expect a system to thrive when its budgets are continuously slashed and they are still expected to meet the same institutional goals. That would be like asking a starving person to find salvation in a singular piece of bread.
Remove Greenstein, and another person just as willing to dissolve the system will come in his place. We must end this reliance on heavily privatized and corporate-influenced systems in a place that is supposed to be about learning and educational experiences.
And the danger that looms is greater still. Because without proper state funding, to generate financial sustainability, states have no other recourse to cut. And when programs and services have been slashed to the bone, nothing remains but to then increase tuition rates. And given the already gargantuan student debt crisis, this is something that we literally cannot afford. The problem is not because we do not have the money to equitably fund education, it is that the dependence on this corporate-chic model of education does not allow for it to exist.
“I mean to your point it is a policy choice it just is…” Greenstein said. “And you’re right, the money is there, it’s always been there, it has always been there. These are choices, right, we are choosing to spend it here and not there. The fact, the money not being there is…just not a meaningful excuse.”
This paltry attempt at a concession only underscores our point even further. The money is there, but education, and students’ rights to it, has become de-emphasized and undervalued in favor of efficiency and market metrics.
“First, public goods of any kind are increasingly difficult to speak of or secure,” said Dr. Wendy Brown, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley. “The market metrics contouring every dimension of human conduct and institutions make it daily more difficult to explain why universities, libraries, parks and natural reserves, city services and elementary schools, even roads and sidewalks, are or should be publicly accessible and publicly provisioned.”
Sales and income tax revenue alone generated $500 million more than originally estimated since the start of the pandemic, according to a report by the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue. The money is there, but it is just a question of if we want to make education a priority or not. In today’s climate, education as a public good is more necessary than ever. Universities need to serve as places of democratic exploration and public goods — to educate and engage citizens so that they want to give back to their communities in an equally equitable manner. We have been conditioned to think that market metrics are the only determinant of success, but proper and sustainable funding could see to it that education can remain a free and compassionate public good.
If you are interested in pursuing a fully funded higher education system, we highly encourage you to reach out to your elected representatives, your university administration and Chancellor Greenstein’s office. If you are interested in being more involved, please email us at passhedefenders@gmail.com and we will provide you more information about our group.
Alexandra Karlesses is a first-year Higher Education Policy & Student Affairs Graduate Student. AK928946@wcupa.edu
Nick Marcil is a first-year Higher Education Policy & Student Affairs Graduate Student. NM871511@wcupa.edu
Thanks for writing this article, it was extremely informative and very needed. Best of luck.