Higher Education Quick Takes

The leaders of some British universities found themselves sharing a little more information than expected when a journal published their views -- prior to the chance they had been promised to clear quotes and use of their names, The Times Higher reported. The journal Higher Education Quarterly has since removed the article from its Web site, but not before the Times Higher saved a copy. The newspaper quoted one vice chancellor as fearful of "the faintest hint of revolution." Further, this vice chancellor said: "We all know that education is a commodity that can be bought and sold, often at a very high price.... So universities are busy doing that - charging students a large amount of money to study in England because it is a popular destination. Branding and marketing take the front seat, and education is in the back."

Colleges in most states have, since a national change made in 2006, been granted the authority to spend endowment money from individual funds whose value has fallen below what it was when originally made. A new survey suggests that institutions have taken advantage of that additional flexibility. The study, by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, and the Commonfund Institute, finds that as of the end of 2008, 38 percent of survey participants' total endowment funds were "underwater," or now valued below the value of the original gift. While colleges previously were barred from spending an endowment fund to a level below the value of the original gift, the 2006 change -- the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which has been adopted in 38 states -- allows colleges to do so. Since the change, the survey found, 11.3 percent fewer colleges and universities have ceased discontinuing all distributions from "underwater" funds, and more are finding ways to use the money to support their institutions.

The national economic downturn appears to be reversing the long-standing trend in which larger college endowments earn more than smaller endowments. Of course this year, the comparisons are about losses, not gains. The Wall Street Journal reported that in the fiscal year ending today, the five largest college and university endowments anticipate final losses in the 25-30 percent range. But examining data from Northern Trust Corp., which manages 90 endowments, the Journal found that the median loss for endowments for institutions with less than $100 million was only 16 percent.

Wisconsin's budget bill, signed into law on Monday, gives collective bargaining rights to academic employees in the University of Wisconsin system, including tenured and tenure-track faculty members, part-time and full-time lecturers, adjuncts and others. The Wisconsin branch of the American Federation of Teachers lobbied for the law and is expected to now move ahead with organizing campaigns. Those drives would be campus-by-campus, and an AFT spokesman declined to say which institutions might be first. Also on Monday, the AFT announced that instructors and adjuncts at Western Michigan University voted, 207-29, to unionize with an AFT affiliate called the Professional Instructors Organization.