Advocate Online

Speaking Out

An Open Letter From Reg Weaver

On behalf of the 125,000 higher education professionals represented by the National Education Association, I am writing to express our concern with a paper from the Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. 

The paper, titled “Frequently Asked Questions About College Costs,” makes the unsubstantiated assertion that the nation’s full-time faculty is responsible for the high cost of a college education. The paper further asserts that a proprietary business model with an over-emphasis on part-time employment is the solution to rising college costs. We disagree.

NEA believes the faculty has primary responsibility for the curriculum, the area in which the faculty is most capable. The Spellings paper attacks this concept of faculty preeminence in curricular decisions as “inefficient.”

NEA believes that faculty work is a full-time profession. The Spellings paper argues for reliance on part-time faculty as a cost-saver that gives management greater flexibility.

NEA believes that tenure and faculty self-governance protect academic freedom and are essential for quality higher education. The Spellings paper argues that “tenure is costly” and no longer needed.

NEA believes the three functions of the faculty calling—teaching, research, and service—are critical functions of the academic enterprise. The Spellings paper celebrates a business model used by for-profit schools that ignores the research component of faculty work.

Despite concerns about the make-up of the commission, NEA has taken the initiative to participate to the extent possible in this national dialogue, including meeting with commission staff and having two of our leaders, Catherine A. Boudreau, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and NEA’s Legislative Committee chair, testify before the commission.

NEA’s vision of the future looks toward a broader and better informed discussion of higher education’s role in our society.  Our nation needs to recognize that higher education is a public good, as well as an individual benefit. And we must ensure that higher education is accessible and affordable to all.

I look forward to a continuing dialogue with the commission and hope to see its future reports reflect more comprehensively the varied voices of the academy and the best of the rigorous, peer-reviewed research that higher education has to offer our nation.

Sincerely,
Reg Weaver
President, National Education Association

For full text of President Weaver’s letter to the Spellings Commission, visit www.nea.org/he.