When universities require applicants to swear fealty to equity, what are they asking them to commit to? Are they asking people to pledge their support for equity policies such as this new mortgage policy? If not, what are they asking applicants to pledge their support to?

This is the problem with requiring DEI statements. Without a clear understanding of what the employer is looking for, one can only speculate about the purpose and intent of a DEI statement. If an applicant gives an answer that is out of step with the ideology held by most at the university, will that person be denied a job? This is one of the reasons why conservatives have called this requirement nothing more than a political litmus test that should not be allowed at public universities.

In March, University of Missouri System President Mun Choi sent an email to faculty that outlined a new policy prohibiting the use of DEI statements in hiring. Instead, the university will ask candidates to reply to the following statement, which Choi called a “values commitment”:

We value the uniqueness of every individual and strive to ensure each person’s success. Contributions from individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives promote intellectual pluralism and enable us to achieve the excellence that we seek in learning, research and engagement.

This commitment makes our university a better place to work, learn and innovate. In your application materials, please discuss your experiences and expertise that support these values and enrich our missions of teaching, research and engagement.

This change is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, many public universities in the state still require an ideological litmus test DEI statements. It is time for more leaders, in the legislature and in higher education, to take a stand against these practices.

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But perhaps the most interesting recent development on this subject happened Tuesday night. As part of the House’s annual budget debate, amendments were repeatedly added to spending bills that would explicitly stop state funding from going to DEI programs—not only in higher education, but in other state departments as well.

Now that the budget bills go to the Senate, this language will likely change or even be removed by the upper chamber. We’ll keep you posted on the progress of the budget bills and on the other anti-loyalty oath initiatives. The legislation remains a long way from crossing the finish line.

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The goal of this language change would be to address concerns about diversity statements resembling “loyalty oaths” or “litmus tests,” Choi explained in his letter. MU spokesperson Christian Basi said Friday afternoon that the university does not and has not used these practices during the hiring process but wanted to clarify its practices. . . .

The Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank that advocates for “free markets and individual liberty,” also criticized the state’s universities for using diversity statements as “loyalty oaths” in the hiring process.

“We do not use loyalty oaths or litmus tests but a few of our job advertisements contained information that may give some readers the impression that such a request was inferred,” Choi wrote in his letter this week.

As reported by the Columbia Missourian, the new “values” language reads as follows:

We value the uniqueness of every individual and strive to ensure each person’s success. Contributions from individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives promote intellectual pluralism and enable us to achieve the excellence that we seek in learning, research and engagement. This commitment makes our university a better place to work, learn and innovate. In your application materials, please discuss your experiences and expertise that support these values and enrich our missions of teaching, research and engagement.

Without nitpicking, I will say that this language is an improvement over previous university job application expectations, such as noting that ideal candidates for a math professor position “employ justice-oriented frameworks (e.g., anti-racist, abolitionist, decolonial, indigenous)” in their work.

No one should blind themselves to the fact that the woke mindset has penetrated deep into Missouri’s higher academy. The incidents I cited were not isolated, and they are likely the tip of the iceberg. President Choi’s statement was good as far as it goes, but so far as I can tell no university employee was disciplined for requiring diversity statements, and the bureaucracies that produced them remain untouched.

Barring a legislative solution, we are going to see the woke agenda continue to consolidate its control over Missouri higher education.

If the system’s move was made to halt a statutory solution, Missouri legislators should not oblige. While I welcome President Choi’s improved and appropriate expectations for prospective hires, he doesn’t lead every public university in the state, and there’s nothing to stop other universities—or the University of Missouri System in the future—from falling back on woke bad habits.

President Choi’s decision to excise woke loyalty oaths from university hiring documents is encouraging. The legislature should finish the job.

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“Loyalty oaths” can mean a lot of things, but here I mean “loyalty oath” to be an ideological attestation required for public employment. Want to work at Missouri State? UMSL? UMKC? You might have to toe the DEI line first, even though doing so (1) is prejudicial to applicants, (2) undermines the free inquiry objectives of government colleges and universities by homogenizing professors, and (3) could deny Missouri students the best teachers by biasing hiring toward ideologues rather than experts.

Here’s another example: a University of Central Missouri job listing for a librarian features this remarkable sentence that starts reasonably and spirals from there:

The Cataloging and Metadata Librarian identifies and addresses metadata remediation needs, as well as the adoption of new or updated standards and vocabularies in support of James C. Kirkpatrick Libraries’ commitment to incorporating social justice into our work, focusing on the James C. Kirkpatrick Libraries’ diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racist efforts.

A math professor listing for Mizzou notes that an applicant who can “employ justice-oriented frameworks (e.g., anti-racist, abolitionist, decolonial, indigenous)” to their work would be a preferred applicant.

Taxpayers should be paying to “decolonize” math, huh?

Employees of America’s higher education system have long been left of center on average, but taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize this special kind of nonsense. Compelling librarians and math professors to commit to the Left’s preferred politics is viewpoint discrimination that encourages groupthink and creates an academic environment where everyone who’s hired to educate is part of some political in-group. That’s unhealthy if you want an academic environment that challenges biases rather than affirms them.

Hiring practices like those required in these “loyalty oaths” could discourage highly qualified subject matter experts from even applying for jobs that have no, or should have no, political or social justice component. Florida is in the process of uprooting this sort of caustic academic culture entirely, dismantling DEI programs in colleges and universities statewide. All other things being equal, are Missouri taxpayers really willing to cede qualified conservative and moderate professors to states like Florida? I don’t think so.

Missouri institutions of higher learning should focus on creating a welcoming environment by treating employees and students as individuals instead of trying to engineer campus-wide groupthink through the way that they hire teachers. Woke loyalty oaths have no business in the state’s hiring documents.

Update: University of Missouri President Mun Choi responded to this post with the following statement:

University of Missouri President on faculty recruiting practices:

The UM System does not have loyalty oaths

——-

COLUMBIA, Mo. — A recent post from the Show-Me Institute references “loyalty oaths” related to faculty hiring at higher education institutions. I want to be very clear — we do not have loyalty oaths of any kind at the University of Missouri System.

We strive to ensure that every UM System university has employees who are committed to an inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone. Currently, we have students and scholars from every county in Missouri, all 50 states and more than 50 countries, among them individuals from various walks of life, including from rural and metro areas, military veterans and first-generation students — each with a different point of view.

———–

We hire the best faculty who exemplify the highest standards of teaching and research, and we do not compromise on quality.

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THE SOLUTION: Higher education reform.

Reform in Missouri should focus on reduc­ing costs through innovation to attract more students. Universities could help reduce costs by encouraging competency-based education (CBE), which can reduce the time that students must spend in the classroom by granting ac­creditation when a student shows that she has mastered the subject matter. These programs allow students to pursue a degree while simul­taneously protecting them from excessive costs and loan defaults. At the same time, the state could promote income-share agreements (ISAs), which provide an alternative to student loans whereby a student agrees to pay a percentage of future income in exchange for present financial aid.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Schools across the nation, such as Texas A&M, Purdue, University of Michigan, and University of Wisconsin, offer CBE degrees. Purdue has a self-funding ISA program in which it loans money to current students and then reinvests returns into future student borrowing.

THE OPPORTUNITY: Recent upheaval at Missouri’s largest university has given us a chance to step back and evaluate how best to improve the higher education environment and provide cost-effective options to students. The University of Missouri system made progress in protecting free speech this past summer; now it should focus on reducing costs to help draw more students to our public universities.

KEY POINTS

• Higher education can greatly increase a student’s financial prospects, but not everyone who spends money at a university comes out in the black.
• CBE programs can reduce tuition costs and the time a student must spend in class.
• By reinvesting earnings, ISAs can fund future de­grees.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Essay: Stuck in the Middle with Mizzou: Examining the Effectiveness and Efficiency of the University of Missouri

Case Study: Moving Mizzou Forward: Reform Ideas from Around the Nation

Op-Ed: Reaping the Whirlwind in Columbia

Blog Post: Mizzou Enrollment Shrinks to a New Low

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

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Tuition revenue is a huge part of Mizzou’s operating budget, as are Pell Grants and other forms of state and federal support that are directly linked to the number of students who enroll. Huge declines in enrollment mean huge declines in tuition, which mean huge declines in funding and serious ramifications for the university’s operations.

Already the university has closed seven residence halls. The University of Missouri system as a whole is looking at 8 to 12 percent budget cuts.

There is not a lot to say at this point, to be quite honest. As I wrote over a year ago, actions have consequences, and we are continuing to see them play out today. Students have more and more choice in where they spend their college years, and Mizzou isn’t guaranteed students. It desperately needs to change its image and reform its operation.

One thing I will say is that we are rapidly moving out of tinkering-around-the-edges territory. Continuing to lose students at this rate means a fundamentally different university in a few short years.  While I certainly appreciate president Choi offering ideas like free open source textbooks as a way to decrease costs, it’s going to take more than that to right this ship.  It’s time for some fresh thinking. I hope we get it.

The post Mizzou Enrollment Shrinks to a New Low appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Often, people who propose reforming public employee pension systems—people like me and the scholars at the Show-Me Institute—get painted with a very negative brush. In 2013, the American Federation of Teachers listed the Show-Me Institute and two other organizations as personae non gratae for pension fund managers, suggesting that plans should disinvest from funds affiliated with the Institute. In 2015 (and at various other times), Steve Yoakum, executive director of the Public School Retirement System of Missouri, attacked SMI in a letter to retirees. He wrote, “As has become a pattern, ‘studies’ done by the Show-Me Institute and their attendant comments tend to mislead both participants and Missouri citizens and this was no exception.”

What’s interesting is that the report from the University of Missouri faculty makes many of the exact same arguments that we have made at the Show-Me Institute for years. For example, the committee noted that DB plans can provide excellent retirement security for individuals who work a full career at the university. However, few actually do this . Indeed, the report noted “that only 16% [of employees] reach 20 or more years of service.”

What the majority of the members of the committee came to realize was that the standard DB pension plan was simply too risky. The system was shouldering a burden that it could ill afford to carry. So, they suggested a change.

Pension reform is not a crazy conspiracy to rob retirees, as some might have you believe. It is simply common sense planning. It is time for other DB pension systems in Missouri to follow the University of Missouri system’s lead. 

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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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A recent Columbia Daily Tribune article shed some light on the extent to which the administration in the UM system has grown to a quite complex and increasingly burdensome size. From the article:

“UM has a president; MU has a chancellor. UM has a vice president of academic affairs, MU has a provost in charge of academics. UM has a vice president of finance; MU has a budget director. UM has a vice president of research; MU has a vice chancellor of research. UM has a PR office as does MU.”

It is clear that there is significant overlap in duties, which adds to confusion in the system but, more importantly, accounts for unnecessary spending in a rapidly tightening budget. This example does not account for other administrations at state universities in Missouri, such as Northeast Missouri State and Truman State. If the UM system focused on cutting back on costly (not to mention superfluous) administrative expansion rather than chipping away at smaller expenditures such as the university press, they might find it easier to fit into a smaller budget in a much shorter time frame.

As I have said previously, less funding from the state government does not mean that educational quality at Missouri’s colleges and universities needs to suffer. Instead, universities should see it as an opportunity to address the bloated state of their administrations and to re-focus their goals as an educational community. Taking an ax to the beast that has become the oversized bureaucracy in the UM system may seem drastic. But it is far more effective in terms of budgetary savings than the wishy-washy goal of “focusing on strategic priorities” — a phrase that sounds as grossly bureaucratic as the board of administrators that produced it.

The post How Many Administrators Are Needed To Run One University System? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s a quote from a video published Monday that captures two University of Missouri–St. Louis professors, identified as Judy Ancel and David Giljam, teaching a publicly funded course about labor negotiations. In the video, both Ancel and Giljam seem to advocate in favor of violence, physical intimidation, and industrial sabotage as tactics to be used during labor negotiations.

It’s a stunning video that I encourage you to watch for yourself. If these tapes accurately reflect what’s being taught in those classes, UMSL and UMKC — the two universities teaching the course — have a lot explaining to do. It appears that, at least as far as UMSL is concerned, they’re taking the matter very seriously.

Obviously, the public should not be funding, or be forced to fund, classes that advocate violent and illegal behavior against its citizens. Such instruction is precisely the opposite of what a publicly financed education is about.

But the episode raises another, arguably more important, concern: Is the University of Missouri system really in control of its labor negotiations program, or are labor unions effectively running the show on the taxpayers’ dime?

It’s an open question that needs to be explored, because if unions are essentially writing and teaching the curriculum for these classes and, not only that, violence is being advocated, it’s an outrageous exploitation of regular Missourians.

Unfortunately, there’s reason to believe that some collaboration is going on between the universities and organized labor. For those unfamiliar with the it, the Labor Tribune is a Saint Louis–based newspaper that markets itself as the “OFFICIAL VOICE OF THE AFL-CIO” in the city.

With 110 subscribing unions, the Labor Tribune is the only AFL-CIO endorsed newspaper in the bi-state metropolitan region.

Key word: “VOICE.”

Long before the videos were released, the Tribune promoted the courses that have now been caught on tape as part of a story about UMSL’s Labor Studies Certificate Program. The Tribune’s piece described the certificate program as follows:

The Labor Studies Certificate Program gives current and future union leaders, representatives and activists the background and skills needed to deal with the changing workplace and economy.

With a grounding in history, political science, law and economics, students have the opportunity to develop skills of analysis, leadership and organizing that will provide an equal footing with counterparts in the corporate and political world.

Completion of the program results in 18 credit hours toward a degree and a Certificate in Labor Studies.

Click to enlarge

But was that a news piece, or a press release? The words used in the article are essentially a copy-paste job of the words the university itself uses to describe the program:

The Labor Studies Certificate Program gives current and future union leaders, representatives, and activists the background and skills needed to deal with the changing workplace and economy. With a grounding in history, political science, law, and economics, students have the opportunity to develop skills of analysis, leadership, and organizing that will provide an equal footing with counterparts in the corporate and political world. Completion of the program earns 18 credit hours toward a degree and a Certificate in Labor Studies.

So the AFL-CIO’s “official” newspaper publishes a press release for a program for union “activists,” neutrally describing a program that actually promotes violence and industrial sabotage against Missourians — during, of all things, a recession. Adding insult to not-so-metaphorical injury, the endeavor is supported by Missouri tax dollars.

That’s a big, big problem.

Taxpayers deserve to be adequately assured that their tax dollars are not only being spent wisely, but that those tax dollars won’t be used by special interests as a cudgel — figuratively and literally — against them. Taxpayer-funded education should not be an arm, or a “VOICE,” of special interests, but a neutral arbiter enriching dialogue, not impoverishing it.

Ancel may want to teach a class on irony, too. Note the headline.

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