A state college president from northern Minnesota joined a member of the governing body of the University of Minnesota to talk Monday about how to reform our state’s higher education system: change how much it costs, and change how administrators run it.
The latest Rosenmeier Forum at Chalberg Theatre inside Central Lakes College featured speakers Dr. Richard Hanson, president of Bemidji State University, and Darrin Rosha, one of the U of M’s Board of Regents.
The small crowd was comprised mostly of college students there for class. Hanson, who spoke first, told them that colleges are resistant to change.
The six-year graduation rate relied upon for measuring colleges, for example, was “bullhockey” in Hanson’s eyes. Better metrics of success included finding out if students were critically thinking, being engaged in the community, and leadership, Hanson said.
As for the leaders of the universities where the students are supposed to learn leadership, there are some issues that need to be worked out, Hanson said.
“There’s a lot of stupid leadership going on,” he said.
He gave as an example the case of Simon Newman, now-former president of Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, who compared academically struggling freshmen to rabbits that should be killed.
College leaders should take responsibility for correcting problems even if they didn’t cause them, he said. In addition, they shouldn’t let themselves assume the attitude of rejecting anything that didn’t conform to their worldview.
“I’m sorry to say to you young people, you increasingly believe that your experiential understanding of the world is the only thing that’s real,” he told the audience.
Rosha was first chosen to the Board of Regents as a student representative more than two decades ago, from 1989 to 1995. He went and made a career for himself, then came back to the board in 2015. His return left him shocked at the high costs for students and administrative bloat that had grown while he was gone. Government financial aid had distorted the market, he said.
“You guys are now kind of trapped in this vortex of financial aid,” he said. “I don’t want to be part of that problem anymore, and I’ve made that clear to the rest of my colleagues on the Board of Regents about the fact that we need to take that problem head on.”
The Board should take a more active role in approving salaries for university staff, he said.
Hanson and Rosha also took questions from the audience, including a student who said he was middle class, came from a family that lived “paycheck to paycheck” and faced difficulty getting financial aid because of his background.
“We make a fair amount of money, and we’re white,” he said. “How do you help kids like me afford college?”
Hanson said federal financial aid seemed like a good idea when it was created, but the years passing and changing demographics had made the system “outmoded.” Perhaps the entire system of entitlements needed to go away, he said.
“Some of the anger we’re experiencing in this current election cycle is about that,” Hanson said.
“The whole notion of entitlements is the part that bugs a lot of us. Maybe we should just get rid of them, all of them, and really base our system on something a little different.”
Rosha said being born in America still represented privilege. However, FAFSA, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, was skewed because it relied too much on the ability to pay on the part of students’ families, he said.
“I think we’re very much ‘Feel-good Enterprises,’ where we’re going to take a extra couple bucks from you and give it to some student who we’ve determined has need based on this FAFSA,” he said.
ZACH KAYSER may be reached at 218-855-5860 or Zach.Kayser@brainerddispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ZWKayser.