Inclusion Is the Heart of the American Way

The following op-ed appeared in Penn Live on 30 July 2019:

Inclusion Is the Heart of the American Way

Boise State University’s new president, Marlene Tromp, was recently pressed by a group of Idaho lawmakers to cease diversity and inclusion programs for being antithetical to the “Idaho way,” as reported by the Idaho Statesman.

Universities create and promote inclusion programs to develop citizens who exhibit the behaviors Americans expect from our leaders. Sadly, we also recognize the need to give our students the tools to navigate a world that is likely to demean or, even worse, discriminate against them.

The intolerant rhetoric and actions of prominent public officials is agonizing proof of our nation’s desperate need to learn how to live and thrive as a diverse and respectful society.

Inclusion is the heart of the American way. Our history is one of incremental progress toward an ideal framed by our founders. As an ideal, it was an aspiration that the architects of our nation failed to achieve in their contemporary realities, but in the 243 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, our nation has moved step by step toward true democratic pluralism.

The path has been painfully slow for the disenfranchised for whom, to paraphrase Dr. King, justice delayed has been justice denied. The destiny he clearly articulated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington remains the prophetic landing place for our nation’s maturity.

This spring, KQED published a story about Joe Lipton who recently shared a letter he received from Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz in 1970 when Lipton 10 years old. As part of a school assignment, Lipton had asked Schulz, “What makes a good citizen?” Schulz replied:

I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen than it has ever been before. Certainly, all any of us can do is follow our own conscience and retain faith in our democracy. Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call ‘American Virtues’ who lack this faith in our country. I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities.

Schulz’s remarks are presciently relevant to our current national crossroads and evocative of the scripture verse, “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”[1]

We promote diversity and inclusion on our campuses because they align with our missions. Like the ideals of the founders, we often fall short of our aspirations, but, like our nation, we must continue to strive toward the noblest goals. This is how we fulfill our calling to develop the citizen leaders our nation and world so desperately need.

We are counting on them to lift up the smallest voices and to provide a society that celebrates and respects the rich diversity of all its members. That is the true meaning of the American Way.

---

[1] Matthew, 25:40

In Celebration of GO

We recently returned from travel through central Europe.

Every time I travel abroad, I am struck by the richness of the hospitality I encounter and by the ways in which I find myself provoked to reconsider assumptions I have about others and myself. It was a wonderful and inspiring experience and a good reminder for me and Lynn of the significant importance of Susquehanna’s GO (Global Opportunities) Program.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary, GO is a defining element of an SU education. We are one of only a few universities where study away is a graduation requirement. Our program is unique within higher education in that a preparatory class, active engagement in a different culture, and a reflective experience are all parts of the requirement.

When I ask students to identify the most meaningful aspects of their Susquehanna education, GO is inevitably part of the conversation. The faculty designed the program with these learning goals:

1. Demonstrate a complex understanding of culture including the ability to develop a working definition of culture
1. Articulate awareness of differences and similarities between their culture of origin and the one in which they are immersed.
2. Define and recognize ethnocentrism and ethnocentric assumptions.
3. Demonstrate critical awareness of their own cultural values and identity.
2. Recognize how their attitudes, behaviors, and choices affect the quality of their cross-cultural experiences.
3. Reflect on their personal growth, social responsibility, and the value of active participation in human society.

We are experiencing a time in which our leaders and many of our neighbors are struggling to navigate difference. With our current public discourse frequently tainted by jingoistic rhetoric and a promulgation of misrepresentations of other peoples and cultures, the goals of the GO have never been more important.

Meaningful study and travel that focuses on cultural engagement helps us to appreciate how diversity makes us stronger as a global community. It reifies the validity of competing world views; it helps us begin to perceive the profound richness of what it truly means to be human; and most importantly, it challenges us to consider new perspectives.

In the Scientific American article, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” Katherine W. Phillips, Reuben Mark Professor of Organizational Character at the Columbia Business School, empirically demonstrated that diverse groups are better able to solve complex problems than homogeneous groups.

The diverse groups were more accurate because they came at the problems from a variety of perspectives and experiences that forced them to challenge each other and work out a solution, whereas the homogeneous started from a consensus position, which when wrong went unchallenged.

The most valuable lesson from Prof. Phillips’s research is that, in spite of being right a significantly higher percentage of the time, the diverse groups had less confidence in their work. The process of challenging conclusions and introducing varied views made those participants less self-assured.

These are the fundamental challenges to legitimate inclusion: in diverse communities, we are challenged by views and traditions that are different from our own; monolithic world views we have deeply held to be true may be exposed as wrong; and the best work we do across differences will not always feel as good as it is.

The answers to many of life’s most important questions lie in the margins, and for most of us that is not a natural place of comfort. Thoughtful intercultural engagement is an invaluable way to appreciate the value and strength of collaborative work across difference. It is also one of the best ways to learn to make intellectually and culturally interstitial domains places of comfort and, if we develop true cosmopolitans, home.

The Not Broken, But Seriously Bent Higher-Ed Business Model Part Two: Where Can We Go from Here?

The Not Broken, But Seriously Bent Higher-Ed Business Model

Part Two: Where Can We Go from Here?

Some critics point to what they label as administrative bloat as the source for the rising price tag of a college degree. Most expansions in professional staff at colleges are tied to complying with the expectations of external accrediting bodies, meeting ever-expanding reporting requirements, or supporting the persistence of a student population that is at a continually higher risk of not completing.

In spite of these challenges, according the College Board, when adjusted for inflation, the average net tuition revenue at private, not-for-profit, four-year colleges has increased by only $1,390 since 2010.

In my previous installment, I outlined how discount rates (the average percentage of the reduction of the amount families pay to attend college from the published price) have rapidly escalated in recent years.

The logical correction would seem to be a recalibration of the published price to more closely align with the average out-of-pocket expense. Over the past two decades, a number of institutions have attempted this. They have typically seen a decline in applications, because consumers associate price with quality. In some cases, they have seen a short-lived increase in applications and enrollment because of media exposure, but those increases have rarely been sustainable.

It is likely that the only way to effectively reset the published tuition price would be if a large portion of a particular sector of higher education were to do so together. During the past year, there have been members of congress who have encouraged university leaders to get together to formulate such an initiative. To their surprise, we have had to inform them that we are legally prohibited from such an effort.

In 1991, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department charged the eight Ivy League schools and  MIT with price fixing. These institutions along with twenty-three of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges had met as what came to be known as the Overlap Group. The convening institutions, which were all need blind, meaning that they would fund each accepted student’s complete unmet need with scholarships, were seeking to make the cost of attendance uniform for each student.

The justification for this effort was that the participating institutions wanted students to choose the school they believed was the best fit rather than the one offering the best deal. In theory, with all need met, aid packages should have been comparable, but without consistent tuition and fees, that was not the case.

The Ivies signed a consent decree, but MIT went to court armed with amicus briefs from sixteen national educational organizations. MIT ultimately prevailed in 1994, arguing that their efforts were not anticompetitive because they aimed to save students money rather than inflate their expenses.
This led to Congress passing the Improving America's Schools Act in 1994. Section 568 of the Act states that is not unlawful for two or more need-blind institutions to agree or attempt to agree to: 1) award financial aid only on the basis of need; 2) use common principles for making the need determination; 3) use a common aid form; and 4) share, on a one-time basis, certain aggregated data about their admitted student pools. Student-specific data may not be shared.

The 568 Group was formed in response to the Act. This group of need-blind institutions share the permitted data, but they and other institutions do not have the ability to meet to discuss pricing strategies.

For higher education to make industry-wide realignments of price, aid, and out-of-pocket cost, we will need to work with the federal government to create a provisional forum that allows us to collaborate on our pricing models. Such an effort could de-escalate pricing and lead to a more consistent financial model for universities that would also be more understandable to consumers.

The Not Broken, But Seriously Bent Higher-Ed Business Model, Part One: How Did We Get Here?

The Not Broken, But Seriously Bent Higher-Ed Business Model

Part One: How Did We Get Here?

We regularly hear about the broken business model of higher education. It is in need of being fixed, but it didn’t break. The contemporary components of the operational side of colleges and universities all stem from a history that did work at certain times in history. The problem is that the ratios have all changed for external and internal reasons that have led to practices that are unsustainable for many institutions.

It is the current model that has led Harvard professor, Clayton Christensen, to predict the bankruptcy of half of America’s colleges and universities in the next 10 to 15 years. He is wrong, but the current discourse around the economics of higher education has given him much more airtime than he would have received a decade ago.

American higher education has a wide range of funding models: private not-for-profit, public, and for-profit being the principal categories. The private not-for-profit institutions include religiously affiliated and independent institutions. Religiously affiliated institutions range from associations of little more than founding histories and no financial support to significant ecclesiastical oversight and concomitant funding.

Aside from some institutions that receive religious funding, most institutions receive revenue from tuition, room, board, fees, gifts, grants, endowment income, contract services, and state and federal funding.

Students who attend private institutions may receive state and federal funding in the form of grants and loans. These include PELL grants and, in many cases, limited state support for students who stay in state to attend private colleges. Over the past few decades the percentage of operating revenue for state-sponsored colleges and universities has dropped dramatically. For example, last year, the state appropriation to the University of Virginia represented 8% of its budget.

Rising interest in “free college” as part of the current presidential campaign conversation is founded on an incomplete understanding of how limited the federal government’s involvement in education is and how little states actually support their namesake universities. {An extended commentary on the “free college” movement will appear in an installment later this month.}

The components that have warped the business model include dramatically expanded access to a college education, especially for students with limited means that once precluded post-secondary education; the high cost of innovation; a decline in public funding when adjusted for inflation; and a decreased willingness of families with the capacity to pay to invest in the best educational opportunity available to their students rather than “the best deal.”

Financial aid is typically awarded in two categories: need-based and merit-based. Many institutions, like Susquehanna, are deeply committed to providing access to meritorious students, and we provide substantial financial aid packages to students whose families do not have the economic capacity to fund their attendance. For our most financially challenged students, some aid is provided through federal and state programs, which when combined with institutional aid makes it possible for these students to complete a life-changing college education.

The historic model of institutional scholarships was that endowment funds and current gifts would offset the discount associated with each scholarship. This meant that the discount had a funding source. That practice remains true at the very wealthiest schools, but at the vast majority of institutions, only a small portion of financial aid is funded. At my institution, about 11% of institutional aid is generated from endowed funds.

The remainder of that aid is tuition we waive in the form of a scholarship. This practice is often regarded as new, but there has been a long tradition of colleges waiving some tuition from poorer students and making up revenue from the students who required less aid. At Susquehanna, this was a foundation practice. Students enrolled in the Missionary Institute (an original core component of the University) paid no tuition. Part of their education was underwritten by gifts from the church, but most of the cost of operations was made up from the tuition paid by students in the Classical Division and the Female Academy, which were the liberal-arts branches at the time.

During the Great Depression, many colleges and universities supplemented operations in creative ways. Illinois Wesleyan University, where I used to work, accepted produce and livestock in lieu of tuition from students who no longer had the traditional means to attend.

After the much more recent Great Recession, endowments took dramatic hits and many families were suddenly unable to continue underwriting the cost of education they had before the market fell and unemployment rose. Most private institutions undertook significant measures to help their students complete their programs by discounting their tuition at higher levels while having shrunken endowments unable to directly fund these expanded aid packages.

Because the economic recovery has favored those with the resources and incomes to invest, average families have not seen an equal share of the boom. These families have seen virtually no increase in their ability to pay for college over the past ten years. Tuition and fees have increased steadily, and in many cases the discount rate has grown to accommodate all of the increase, resulting in an escalation of the overall discount rate.

All of the pieces of the model that worked historically have not been aligned with the economic division we have experienced over the past decade, and our commitment to providing access has exacerbated this challenge.

That is how we got here. In the next installment, I will address the challenges of the present situation and potential solutions.

Thank You Pennsylvania

The Governor of Pennsylvania has proposed an increase of 13% to the PHEAA direct grant program for the 2019-2020 state budget, and there appears to be broad support in the State Senate and Legislature.

This is a prudent increase because the breadth of educational opportunities for which these funds can be applied has expanded in recent years. This increase will help to keep traditional college students in the Commonwealth at financial parity from this year to the next. Last month, legislative members of the PHEAA Board voted unanimously to maintain the maximum grant award at the same level as last year, $4,123. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this momentum persists.

This is also one of the best investments we can make in our future workforce and future leaders. I am confident that much of the credit for this legislative progress is attributable to students from across Pennsylvania’s private colleges and universities who advocated in Harrisburg on behalf of their classmates.

Below is a photo of Susquehanna’s own Natasia Martin ’19 speaking at the Pennsylvania Capitol in support of PHEAA support for the students who succeed her. Thank you Natasia, thank you student advocates, thank you Pennsylvania.

Lewisburg Baccalaureate Remarks

I had the privilege of delivering the keynote address at Lewisburg Area High School's Baccalaureate. A few people asked me to share those remarks.

Advice from a person a little older than most of your parents sounds out of touch, but ever since I finished high school, I have spent my life surrounded by people who have recently finished high school, first as one of them, and since, as a teacher, advisor, and an administrator.

Each of us has a limited number of opportunities to reassert or reinvent ourselves, and you are approaching one of them. Whether you are going to college, pursuing technical training, or entering the workforce, you are about to make a community leap.

Most of you have been together for years, and you don’t need to close the door on your current community of friends, but each of you is about to encounter a new cohort of friends, classmates, mentors, and neighbors who don’t know you. They don’t remember the great things you have done, and, more importantly, they don’t remember the embarrassing things you have done. You have a fresh start, use it wisely.

Always be yourself, but I encourage you to spend the next few weeks thinking about any moments in your life you wish you could do over or would emphatically do again, and let them help inform how you enter the next chapter in your life.

You are entering a pivotal time in your life in which you will encounter a much greater level of independence and personal responsibility. It is a sobering realization to find yourself solely in your life’s driver’s seat, but you have many willing, sometimes too willing, co-pilots. Be comforted by their support, but remember that it is your course to steer.

We often hear the labels and descriptions of GenX, GenY, and millennials. Most of the time, those describing are critical if not downright disparaging, and often they are remarkably uninformed. Here are some ways your generation differs from those before you. As a group, you report significantly higher levels of depression and anxiety, and you are generally less independent from your families in decision making. You are also less prone to bigotry and intolerance, and you are more committed to fairness and issues of social justice.

Some of those differences are of concern, but most of them are cause for optimism for our future. Let’s consider those differences and think about how you can best navigate them to your advantage.

Depression and Anxiety

Social media and delayed independence are two causes for some of these changes. Social media create unbridled opportunities for bullying, but the fear of missing out makes it hard to avoid. I had been on Facebook from the beginning, but a few months ago, I quit, and I am glad I did. The world around you is almost always more interesting than the phone in your hand. I’m not suggesting that you shun technology, but don’t miss out on the real world around you as a slave of media.

Brian Chen, the Personal Technology columnist for the New York Times recently wrote this about cancelling his Facebook account:

Over the 14 years that I used Facebook, I accrued about 500 friends. Most were former classmates whom I had lost touch with. In my real life, I have about 20 friends I talk to on a regular basis. So, when I finally deleted Facebook, the fallout was underwhelming.[1]

In the past 40 years, the average age when parents first let their children go someplace with a friend unsupervised has gone from 5 or 6 to 11 or 12. Those unchaperoned experiences create a lot of opportunities for conflicts and necessitate the need to resolve them without help. Resolving problems teaches us to become resilient, and nationwide, your generation has had far fewer opportunities to develop that resilience than any previous time.

As you enter what will be the most independent period you have yet experienced, remember that most problems you encounter are less significant than they feel at the moment. Stop and think through a problem objectively and consider the advice you would provide a friend at a similar intersection in their life. Thinking about a personal challenge from the outside always reduces its magnitude.

Decision Making

Over that the past 20 years, there has been a remarkable shift in how young adults engage their parents in decision making. I think part of it has to do with the ubiquity of cell-phone communication, but the students I work with now consistently consult their parents when they make decisions. This is fundamentally a good thing. Be careful to remember that you are ultimately responsible for the choices you make. Getting informed opinions is a smart way to make good decisions.

The great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, would have said I’m wrong. He wrote:

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness.[2]

You can still try to be rational. There are also plenty of moments when advice is neither timely nor available. That can be particularly challenging, because your brains are not finished developing. You have your full intellectual capacity, but your frontal cortex and the neural networks that send messages back and forth between it and the amygdala will still be under construction for another 7 or 8 years. The amygdala is where your fight and flight reactions occur. As those neural connections expand, so does our ability to temper immediate responses with rational judgement.

At 18, you are physically more likely to make bad spontaneous decisions than when you’re 25. Do you ever say to  yourself, “I should have known better?” Or ask, “Why did I do that?” Often, it’s because the less sophisticated part of your brain took off before the sophisticated part could send a message to the contrary over wiring that isn’t completely connected.

That’s why people say, stop and count to ten before you do something you might regret. Train yourselves to take a beat so the front and back of your brain have time to communicate. It is also important for you to know that those connections are especially susceptible to alcohol. Young adults are more physiologically inclined to have their judgement affected by alcohol than older adults. Older adults don’t fare a whole lot better, but being self-aware is an important part of avoiding bad decisions.

Tolerance and Inclusion/ Doing the Right Thing

In my role at Susquehanna, I regularly speak and write about citizen leadership. Every generation has bequeathed a collection of problems, often of their own making, to their children and their children’s children. My generation inherited the Cold War and legalized racism. Yours is inheriting global warming, anti-intellectualism, and the seeming death knell of civility. I’m sorry for that, but as I said earlier, your generation is the most inclusive in history and dedicated to social justice in inspiring ways. I am hopeful that you are up teaching us to be better.

The debate over global warming is an important lesson in how to be an informed citizen. First and foremost, it is no longer a topic for debate. There is a 97% consensus among peer-reviewed scientific research that human beings are causing global warming. The Academies of Science in over 80 countries agree, and yet every day, we still hear arguments instead of a unanimous call to action.

Look for the motivations of the speakers on both sides of a debate. If personal gain is aligned with one side and not the other, the side with nothing to gain usually has more merit. For example, years after medical research had identified the health threats associated with smoking, cigarette companies continued to advertise the benefits of their product citing studies they had funded for their own benefit.

There are many who suggest that climate has already become a lost cause, but I have seen students and faculty from my campus introduce precision conservation techniques to waterways throughout our region that have dramatically restored trout streams and lowered their temperatures in a short period of time. How can you advance environmental stewardship? This is your home, and you should want to protect it.

We are at an inflection point as a society in which values of pluralism and inclusion have come under attack in the media, in public discourse, and in politics. We use terms like tribalism, and you only need to turn on the news to hear messages of fear mongering and denigration. Populism is on the rise around the globe.

Your generation is by the far the most tolerant and supportive of difference in our nation’s history at a time when older generations are regressing. Please don’t let the loud voices of bigotry turn you in their direction. You have the ability to be advocates for what is right. To be successful requires an abundance of grace, which is a quality in desperately short supply these days.

It is difficult to resist an angry response when we observe ignorant and hateful behavior, but yelling at someone has rarely enlightened them. All too often it deepens their convictions.

I so often hear people use the term “politically correct” as a term of disparagement. Being sensitive to the feelings of others and moderating our behavior out of human respect is a very good and right thing. But often, we correct others in ways that hurt them. Telling people that they are ignorant, no matter how true it may be, is as hurtful as the behavior we are trying to correct.

Asking people why they feel the way they do or say the things they say is a better beginning, because it forces them to put a logical frame around an illogical picture. It also provides a chance for you to listen for any common ground. That can be a useful touch point as you share what you believe to be true and why. Small children are beautifully open to difference. We each learn our prejudices, which means we can unlearn them, but that will only be achieved by lifting up those with whom we disagree. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.[3]

As scripture says,

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.[4]

That is tough advice to take, which is why it is such a rare behavior. Imagine our world if it were common.

If you think about it, each of the issues I have addressed this evening is fundamentally about how we react to the world around us.

To provide the kind of leadership our world needs, will require courage and imagination, and it will require a generation collectively committed to making myriad incremental steps in the right direction. I have great confidence that you are up to the task. To succeed:

You will need to feed your passions and steer them with intellect. As you encounter obstacles and challenges, embrace them. As Helen Keller wrote:

… character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.[5]

Once you embrace your obstacles, work to understand them objectively and dissect them into solvable portions.

Be mindful that disappointments are just that, and never forget to learn everything you can from the moments that don’t go as you wished.

Celebrate each person for who they are, and be encouraged to live authentically.

Advocate for those who are afraid to speak for themselves.

Return hate with love, and never be afraid to do the right thing.

These thoughts have been focused on the future, but the best piece of advice I have for you is not to take the present for granted. At Susquehanna, our baccalaureate is focused on gratitude. Despite all the challenges that inhabit our world, we are surrounded by immeasurable good fortune.

There is a poem by James Agee I turn to frequently. In it, he wrote:

All my people are larger bodies than mine,
with voices gentle and meaningless
like the voices of sleeping bird.

One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home.
One is my mother who is good to me.
One is my father who is good to me.
By some chance, here they are,
all on this earth.[6]

Every day, we are surrounded by people and events that deserve to be celebrated and treasured. As you take on the task of making our future better be sure to savor the many gifts that surround you at each moment. This is one of those moments. 

---

[1] NYT, 21 March 2019.

[2] Jung, Carl: Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 125.

[3] From King, Martin Luther, Strength to Love.

[4] Matthew, 5:44.

[5] Helen Keller’s Journal: 1936-1937, 60.

[6] James Agee, from A Death in the Family.

The Still Small Voice of Gratitude

The Still Small Voice of Gratitude

Yesterday, Susquehanna celebrated its 161^st commencement ceremony. I had the sublime privilege of conferring degrees on the University’s 525 newest graduates. This was my second year as the agent who confers the degree and therefore the person who hands the students their diplomas.

For fourteen years, as Provost/Dean at other institutions, I read the names of the graduates. I loved that job. I got to be the herald proclaiming each graduate’s entry into the company of learned people. I was proud of them, and I had the gleeful role of campus crier.

To my surprise I have discovered that my new role is even more rewarding. I get to watch each of their faces as they cross the stage. Some are nervous, some teary-eyed (so am I), some of them are humbled (so am I), some are ecstatic, most are clearly proud, and every one of them said “Thank you.”

At Susquehanna, the night before commencement, we hold a Baccalaureate that is different from any other so named event that I have attended. It is an occasion to formally gather with families and friends and give thanks. Selected students give reflections and readings. They give thanks for the experiences they have had, for the support of faculty and staff, and for the extraordinary opportunity to be in community with each other.

That event is followed by a grand party in the campus center attended by the impending graduates, their families (grandparents to baby nieces and nephews), faculty, and staff. Scores of our wonderful staff colleagues volunteer to help serve and bus hours after their regular shifts and not so many hours before they return to campus to support graduation.

At yesterday’s ceremony, I said, “We need Susquehanna graduates now more than ever. We need you to become voices for reason in your communities. We need you to be advocates for justice, for human dignity, and  for the breadth and depth of intellectual endeavors.”

We really do need them. These are young people who take nothing for granted. They recognize the sacrifices and privileges of their achievements, they are deeply committed to the welfare of others, and they have the self-awareness and dignity to be sincerely thankful.

As Thomas Gray wrote centuries ago:

Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,

The bee’s collected treasures sweet,

Sweet music’s melting fall, but sweeter yet

The still small voice of gratitude.[1]

It is sweet indeed.

Congratulations to the Class of 2019 and thank you!

---

[1] Thomas Gray: Ode for Music [1769], l. 61