Liz Lemon had a dilemma. She loved the jeans she had bought from "Brooklyn Without Limits," a store she wanted to support because it was "all about fair trade and local artisans and staying green," but then she discovered that the store was actually owned by Halliburton. She couldn't decide if she should keep her beloved jeans or return them to protest the corporate behemoth.
When I watched the drama unfold on last week's episode of "30 Rock," I was surprised to find myself reminded of The Herald's Opinions section. Liz's liberal existential crisis — whether it would be nobler in her mind to suffer the slings and arrows of corporate conglomeration or return a pair of jeans against that sea of troubles — made me think of this section's recurring theme of whether Brown University has become too "corporate."
In his columns this semester, Simon Liebling '12 has argued, forcefully and persistently, that Brown is increasingly "replacing public interest with profit interest" ("Brown, Inc." Sept. 10) while pursuing "thoughtless emulation of Harvard and Yale" ("Kertzer's Brown, Inc. legacy," Nov. 12).
According to Liebling, "the recession-era University budget has been balanced entirely on the backs of students and staff," which he identifies as "the kind of behavior we would expect from a profit-maximizing corporation on a cost-cutting spree, not from a non-profit education institution operating in the public interest" ("Brown, Inc.").
Right now, he argues, we at Brown are "in the middle of the fight over the University's commercial future. We have only just arrived at the juncture between service and profit, between community and callousness" ("Brown, Inc.").
In reality, though, Brown's situation is not nearly as precarious as those dichotomies would suggest. The Corporation did need to cut a $30 million deficit this year, resulting in layoffs and a 4.5 percent tuition increase, after the Great Recession took its toll on our endowment ("Corporation balances budget, raises tuition," March 1).
However, the administration also increased financial aid funding for undergraduates by 6.5 percent and raised salaries for staff — hardly the actions of a heartless entity determined to hoard profit at the expense of the community.
Furthermore, Brown's mission statement, posted on our website, binds the University to service: "The mission of Brown University is to serve the community, the nation and the world" by fostering public knowledge and educating students "in a unified community known as a university-college." If we want to evaluate Brown to see if it measures up to this mission of non-profit service, we can always compare it to the explicitly for-profit universities proliferating around the country.
For example, there is the online, hugely lucrative Kaplan University, which raises 91.5 percent of its revenue from federal student aid. A recent New York Times article explained how "Kaplan and other for-profit education companies have come under intense scrutiny from Congress, amid growing concerns that the industry leaves too many students mired in debt, and with credentials that provide little help in finding jobs."
Several lawsuits and investigations against Kaplan and its ilk allege that for-profit colleges deliberately recruit economically distressed students.
A leaked training manual for Kaplan's recruitment in Pittsburgh encouraged recruiters to pursue applicants characterized by "low self-esteem, reliance on public assistance, being fired, laid off, incarcerated or physically or mentally abused" because they were "considered most likely to drop out before completing the program, leaving Kaplan with the aid money and no need to provide more services."
Even though for-profit universities only enroll roughly 11 percent of American college students, "their students account for 43 percent of those defaulting on student loans," which contributes to the mounting cost of federal aid programs.
Strayer Education, Inc., another for-profit university enterprise, paid its CEO $41.9 million in 2009, which is 26 times the highest salary for the president of a regular, non-profit university, according to a recent Bloomberg News report.
The difference between for-profit universities' practices and the behavior of Brown's administration is not a difference of degree; it is a difference of kind. "Brown, Inc." is a scary-sounding boogeyman, but in reality, we do not see our University setting its students up to fail for the sake of gaining cash from them (or from taxpayers).
Currently, the Department of Education is planning to adjust its regulations to deny federal aid to schools like Kaplan with high rates of loan defaults and low academic success. Kaplan alone has spent $350,000 in the past few months to lobby against the change.
In the fight against profit-seeking universities, there are clearly defined defenders of the lucrative status quo, but they do not work on College Hill.
William Tomasko '13 is a political
science concentrator from
Washington, D.C. He can be reached
at william_tomasko (at) brown.edu.
