Missouri’s tuition increases are lower than most other states because state law prohibits colleges and universities from increasing tuition beyond increases in the consumer price index. The point here is that Missouri’s institutions are getting a double whammy. They are seeing reductions in state revenues and are simultaneously limited from raising additional funds through tuition.

To some, this doesn’t sound so bad. There has been growing concern about the rising costs in higher education. And increasingly, there is concern about the seemingly illiberal attitudes on college campuses that shout conservative speakers down. And we all remember the fiasco at Mizzou a few years ago.

These are legitimate concerns. Indeed, as George Mason economist Bryan Caplan has suggested in his recent book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, there are compelling arguments against public subsidies for higher education.

There are few solid arguments, however, for not allowing colleges and universities to raise tuition to the level they deem appropriate.

I understand the sentiment of wanting to make college affordable, but there are better ways to do it. For example, as mentioned in SMI’s Blueprint on Higher Education, Missouri could encourage competency-based education programs or income share agreements.

Prices are the thing that help the free-market flourish. Prices tell producers where they can make profits, and prices allow consumers to choose wisely. Tuition caps are anti-free market because they distort the true cost of a college education by artificially keeping the sticker price low. It’s time to remove these artificial caps and allow more free-market policies into higher education.

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It should be noted that this shortfall is not a result of legislators in Jefferson City cutting funding. This is prospective students freely deciding that they don’t want to spend their college years as Missouri Tigers and taking their money somewhere else. That should terrify administrators in Columbia. Will Mizzou go the way of other brands scorned by the marketplace, like Kodak, Pontiac, or Ask Jeeves?

Mizzou desperately needs to get its house in order. Most importantly, it needs an administration that realizes that protests on university campuses have been happening for decades.  In most cases, there is some element of truth to the protestors’ grievances, but it soon gets wrapped up in the narcissism and self-righteousness of 18-22 year olds.  The job of administrators is to separate the wheat from the chaff. They must address the real issues that are affecting students without losing sight of the fact that it is college kids making the demands.

Mizzou’s administration completely failed in this regard. The kernel of truth in the protestors’ anger is that far too few students of color are meeting with success on Mizzou’s campus.  This is undeniably true.  While African-Americans make up around 12% of Missouri’s population, they make up only 7% of Mizzou’s.  They are disproportionally enrolled in remedial classes, and drop out at higher rates than other students.  This is cause for concern, and something that the administration needs to address.

That entirely appropriate issue got wrapped into a series of out-there “demands,” including requiring that the former University of Missouri system president pen a handwritten note admitting his white privilege, and calling for the hiring of legions of staff across a variety of departments to provide services for minority students, but providing absolutely zero advice on how to pay for all of it. That is the chaff.

If the university does not have leadership that knows the difference between the two, or is incapable of dealing with substantive issues without being derailed by ridiculous ones, a loss of 25% of enrollment is just the start. And they shouldn’t expect the state to bail them out.

It appears that nearly everyone involved in this imbroglio has lost sight of the fundamental fact that the University of Missouri is paid for in large part by the citizens of Missouri.  Many of these people did not attend, will never attend, nor will ever have any of their children or grandchildren attend the university. University students, faculty, and administrators are asking the single mom in Cape Girardeau who is struggling to get by working two jobs to pay for their wants and desires. Just because they go to, or work at, Mizzou does not mean that they have a claim to that woman’s money.

We support Mizzou (and all of our other state universities) because they provide a service to our state; they educate our citizens and do research that improves our world.  If they’re not doing either of those things, they aren’t entitled to a dime.

Hopefully this enrollment nosedive serves as a wakeup call to the Mizzou community.  A strong flagship university can be an asset to its state and citizens.  Mizzou has a long way to go in proving that it is ready to resume that role.

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Universities have to be able to weather these events, though; otherwise, nothing will ever get done. It’s clear that the recent turmoil was more than the administration could overcome. Much ink was spilled in the post-mortem of the Wolf presidency, but I prefer to look to the future rather than dwelling on the past. I’m more interested in what we can do to improve Mizzou as the university moves forward.

That’s why I was heartened to see a legislative effort to promote greater transparency in the university system. Taxpayers and citizens have a vested interest in the university, and they can’t know if their hard-earned dollars are going to productive ends if they don’t know how those dollars are being spent. Louis Brandeis had it right—sunlight is the best disinfectant—and illuminating the inner workings of the university system can empower citizens to influence how the system is run.

The reform efforts have two central planks (available here and here). The first calls for the Missouri state auditor to complete a comprehensive audit of the university every year. The people of Missouri (many of whom will never have a child set foot on Mizzou’s campus) fund the university system to the tune of half a billion dollars every year. Is it going to fund research on Twilight fans, or is it being used to put more microscopes in the chemistry lab? Right now, we don’t know, and we should.

The second reform requires all instructors to put their syllabi and course reading lists online. Now, it’s not as if these documents are top secret today, but in the past when citizens and researchers have asked for access to syllabi to find out what students were being taught, Missouri universities have stonewalled them. Again, taxpayers have a right to know what they are paying for, and they should not have to pull teeth to find out what is actually being taught in the university’s classrooms.

The University of Missouri system is an important part of the fabric of our state. Not only does it instruct tens of thousands of our students every year, but it also serves as the locus of important research, debate, and discussion. A thriving Mizzou is good for Missouri, and greater transparency will strengthen the university and give Missouri citizens greater confidence that their tax dollars are going to fund important work.

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From Ugarte’s commentary:

[T]he reason I’m against SB 465 is that I don’t trust the motivations of those who are proposing it. It’s a bill with an agenda that goes far beyond a desire for transparency. It provides an opportunity for those determined to question, debunk, attack and diminish the pedagogical and research projects of university professors. I don’t think the effects will be positive; rather, we will have more of the same: animosity and lack of understanding.

As someone who has written on and testified in support of curriculum transparency for Missouri’s public universities, I can tell you that my motivation for supporting proposals like this comes from a conviction that public universities—and all public institutions—should be candid and open with the public about their affairs. Members of a public university should abide by the same transparency laws as everyone else who works in our public sector.

My motivation for supporting this bill doesn’t stem from a desire to “question, debunk, attack or diminish” the university, but I find it odd that a scholar would view someone questioning his work as a problem. Scholarship thrives on debate and challenges. As a student at Mizzou, you can bet I questioned my professors. They questioned, attacked, and debunked me right back. And I got a great education because of it.

I disagree with Professor Ugarte’s contention that an open academy will breed animosity and lack of understanding between it and the rest of society. On the contrary, I believe an open and honest discourse is the way you build trust and understanding. And there’s no reason why open and honest discourse can’t involve questions, debate, and, yes, sometimes even debunking.

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1. The anti-transparency faction at the University of Missouri argues that professors own the content of their courses, while the University of Missouri’s own rules suggest otherwise. According to 100.030.A.2 of the Collected Rules, the university owns the copyright to “works that are commissioned for University use by the University” and “works that are created by employees if the production of the materials is a specific responsibility of the position for which the employee is hired.”
2. Even if professors have an intellectual property interest in syllabi, nothing about making this information publicly available would prevent professors from enforcing a copyright claim. If a member of the public accesses a syllabus through the Sunshine Law and then plagiarizes the syllabus, the professor could still sue for a violation of copyright. Making information publicly accessible is not a bar to enforcing copyright.
3. Fair use should protect disclosure of public records pursuant to state sunshine laws. Fair use doctrine allows for copyrighted work to be transformed or appropriated, within limits, for certain educational, scholarly, satirical, and noncommercial uses. In other words, fair use protects creators and commentators alike, facilitating discussions about ideas and, ultimately, building knowledge for society. For a publicly funded university system to reject this well-established framework suggests that it wants neither the comment nor the discussion the publication of these syllabus materials may generate. If that’s the system’s goal, it’s an appalling objective for an institution of higher learning, public or otherwise.

I doubt college administrators and university professors are ignorant of these facts. I suspect that the intellectual property argument is just an excuse for avoiding the transparency requirements that every other public entity is subject to. If you don’t want the potential scrutiny that comes with transparency, then perhaps you shouldn’t work for a public institution.

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Read the full testimony:

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It seems absurd that a public university would treat the content of its courses as a closely held secret. Unfortunately, the University of Missouri is doing just this by shielding course syllabi from state transparency laws.

In 2012, the University of Missouri refused to release course syllabi, which are outlines of the content included in a course of study, to the National Council on Teacher Quality. Under Missouri’s Open Meetings and Records Law (a.k.a. the Sunshine Law), most government records are supposed to be accessible to the public. However, Mizzou took the position that course syllabi are exempt from the Sunshine Law because they are copyrighted.

Unfortunately for open-government advocates, the courts refused to require the University of Missouri to disclose these records. Now it appears that absent a policy change members of the public might be left in the dark about this important aspect of public higher education. Worse still, government agencies that wish to avoid public scrutiny may try to use copyright as an excuse not to produce public documents. The University of Missouri’s refusal to operate in a forthright and transparent manner stands in stark contrast to my experience as a student at the school.

In my undergrad work at Mizzou, I felt like I was a part of an enlightened institution that valued free inquiry, rationality, and open society. I listened to impromptu debates at Speakers Circle, socialized with journalism students excited about making their first sunshine request, and heard lectures from professors on the nature of civil society. My alma mater seemed so committed to the idea of open society that I’m almost surprised that syllabi aren’t already posted online for anyone to see.

Of course, I’m not really surprised. If the University of Missouri allowed the public to see course syllabi, it would invite public scrutiny. In all likelihood, there’s some professor teaching a class at Mizzou this semester that’s full of substandard or inappropriate content. Rather than deal with the inevitable criticism that a transparent institution would invite, the people in charge have decided to shield the university from the state’s transparency laws.

Certainly some of the criticisms of course content would be unwarranted. But does that even matter? A conviction I picked up at Mizzou was that the solution to some bad speech is more good speech and that in an open society the truth will win out in the marketplace of ideas. Public scrutiny is no enemy of free inquiry. On the contrary, I’d argue that scrutiny can help foster it.

The University of Missouri is a government institution. Its operations are paid for in part with tax revenues, and it serves the public. Mizzou should not let fear of criticism and a legal loophole to state transparency laws prevent it from being just as committed to the values of an open society as I remember it being.

John Wright is a policy researcher at the Show-Me Institute.

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The University of Missouri has refused to release course syllabi in accordance with state transparency laws. John Wright points out that it makes very little sense for a public university to treat course content as a secret. Especially when much of the information the university is shielding from transparency laws is already available to the public.

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Meanwhile, the General Assembly, through House Bill 1812 and Senate Bill 784, is focused on reform of the Access Missouri grant. Currently, Access Missouri is structured to award a maximum of $1,000 in aid to students enrolled in two-year Missouri public schools, $2,150 to students at four-year public schools, and $4,600 for students attending Missouri's private colleges and universities. The bills in consideration would equalize these aid amounts to a maximum of $2,850 for all students, across all participating schools.

Choking the channels of aid to private school students while continuing to lavish aid on public school students only exacerbates the inequality and inefficiency that is characteristic of how the state currently supports its students. The current level of funds that the state awards to public school students already dwarfs the pool of funds directed toward private school students. In 2009, the General Assembly appropriated roughly $808 billion for four-year public higher education institutions. This amounts to an average per-student subsidy of approximately $7,280.

On top of this, qualifying public school students enjoyed an additional $56 million of publicly funded scholarships. Meanwhile, private school students received no per-student subsidies and shared a slightly smaller total of $52 million in public scholarship funds. Those who argue in favor of equalizing Access Missouri funds are misguided when they consider only Access Missouri and ignore the state's larger funding apparatus. Put simply, moving toward greater equality in Access Missouri is also a move toward greater inequality in total state support. There is, and always has been, a large disparity of public aid distributed between public and private students. Both reform proposals increase the size of this wedge. It is imperative, then, to consider whether this wedge is justified.

In 2008, Missouri's Coordinating Board for Higher Education adopted a set of basic values to guide higher education policy in the state. First among the list of values, the board recognized that the system is focused on students, learning, and each individual's realization of his or her full educational potential. The proposed reforms to higher education funding fail to do this vision justice.

First, the reforms do not support the full realization of student potential because they fail to honor the individual interests, skills, and needs of Missouri's diverse student population. For example, no public institutions in Missouri offer a complete architectural studies program, so students with an interest in architecture must turn to private institutions. On the margin, students unable to finance a private school education without assistance will necessarily settle for public-institution programs to which they are comparatively less suited.

Second, the proposed reforms pervert the vision of a higher education funding apparatus as centered on students. Instead, the reforms elevate the importance of institutions and suggest that students who attend public institutions are somehow more deserving of the taxpayer dime than students attending private colleges and universities. This is especially disturbing when considering that students attending private institutions contribute along with their parents funds to the pool of tax dollars that finance Missouri's support for higher education. The reform bills in the legislature would only serve to more unevenly distribute the resources of this pool. Meanwhile, Nixon's proposal would restrict private students access to the pool entirely.

The governor has said, In times like these, we simply can't continue to subsidize the choice to attend a private school.” This seems to suggest that the institutional choices that students make should be more relevant to the amount of aid they receive than their income, ability, or interest. This view fails to recognize that it is precisely in times like these that Missouri cannot afford to abandon its principles, or its investments in higher education students regardless of the institutions they choose.

Abhi Sivasailam is an intern with the Show-Me Institute and an economics student at the University of Missouri Columbia.

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Proponents of reform have made three, general arguments, all of them dubious:

First, they assert that reform would make the distribution of public aid more equitable. It’s atrocious that private school students may receive more than $2,000 in additional funding than their public school counterparts. This is tantamount to pandering to special interests. This argument is very puzzling; do its exponents not remember that the award amounts were carefully derived from two years of collaboration among private and public representatives and financial aid experts in order to meet “just” and “equitable” standards? Do they not understand that public aid is already lavished upon public school students and that the Access Missouri grants constitute the only form of public aid available for low-income students attending private colleges? Would not equalization of AM grants then be tantamount to pandering to public college students at the expense of their deserving private school counterparts? Are taxpaying Missouri citizens choosing to attend private colleges less deserving of the taxpayer dime than those attending public colleges?

Second, they argue that private school students should not receive a higher subsidy because they chose a more expensive education. It is an inefficient use of government funds to confer grants to students who are simply “paying too much” for education that they could receive at a public institution at a much lower cost. Here, too, problems abound. First, this claim once again ignores the state appropriations already going toward public institutions and the students who matriculate there. Second, the claim assumes that private and public schools have homogeneous curricula that can easily be compared. The reality is more complicated. Private colleges offer unique course and degree possibilities, with unique levels of quality and market value relative to public schools. In that light, the value of education at a private college is private and subjective. Even if we were to assume that private and public colleges are perfect substitutes, it is unclear why Missouri should, other things being equal, choose to subsidize one group of students at the expense of another group.

Third, proponents suggest that reform would open access to more students. Some legislators have argued that equalizing the award amounts would result in an increase in the total matriculation of Missouri students. Given a dearth of quality data on the impact of Access Missouri, this claim is utterly unsubstantiated; without appropriate data, I find it very difficult to accept prima facie. To begin, the reform package reduces the maximum amount of private aid by $1,750 and increases the maximum amount of public aid by $750. All else equal, it is reasonable to assume that students would be less motivated to attend private colleges, but not significantly more motivated to attend public universities. Of course, all else would not be equal, and the sum effect of reform is difficult to project. What can be said is that the claim that access would increase as a result of the reform is premature.

The Post-Dispatch doesn’t seem to like the reform package, and instead suggests that schools compete for funds. As per this view, students would receive aid relative to the “effectiveness” of the institution they attend. It is an interesting idea, primarily because it would involve the development of outcome measures that higher education currently lacks.

I have a better idea, one on which I have previously written: Support students through higher education vouchers, and then use Access Missouri for the rest.

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