Noted education author and activist James Murphy argued in a recent op-ed for the Chronicle of Higher Education, “You can’t drive social mobility if you don’t enroll poor people.”
The University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus enrolls half of the proportion of Pell-eligible students — that is, lower-income students — compared to the regional campuses in Dearborn and Flint. In fact, U-M Dearborn, where 44% of students are Pell-eligible, is one of the most successful in the nation at promoting economic mobility. Despite representing significantly more low-income students, the University’s central administration significantly underinvests in U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint students. In fact, U-M Ann Arbor students are provided almost four times the resources as U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint students.
Austerity at U-M Flint and U-M Dearborn prevents the University from realizing a positive vision of inclusion by institutionalizing class and race inequalities. Like individuals, organizations can engage in behavior that has racist, classist or discriminatory impact. Organizations can, inadvertently or sometimes deliberately, adopt policies, budgets and rules that systematically disadvantage people of some backgrounds relative to others.
U-M Ann Arbor campus leaders have a responsibility to monitor their policies and rules to make certain that they do not have discriminatory impacts. This work has yet to be accomplished. If the administration chooses not to do so, our democratically elected Board of Regents must step up.
Yet, the regents have taken no action to suggest they understand the profoundly discriminatory nature of the current model. U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint enroll proportionally more working-class students, first-generation students and students of Color than U-M Ann Arbor. And despite the profound efficacy of a college education for low-income students, the University’s recent review of its diversity, equity and inclusion audit, DEI 1.0, failed to mention students from regional campuses.
Leadership will say that each campus has its own plan. But like everything else, DEI at U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint is underfunded and under constant strain. It seems like the central administration thinks of us as one university when they are touting their diversity statistics in a recent affirmative action amicus brief, but excludes the highly diverse regional student bodies in DEI outreach, programming, benchmarking and reporting.
Through a budget model that under-resources low-income students, the University enables inequity and is failing at its espoused DEI mission. It is undermining its responsibility as a state-founded and funded institution, creating a culture that is hypocritical and imperiling the University’s ethos of inclusivity.
This system of inequitable funding has also imposed a regime of permanent austerity on the Dearborn and Flint campuses. Liberal arts classes and programs that fulfill an essential part of the University’s mission are cut. University President Santa Ono has said that an education without the liberal arts is “a danger to humanity.” And yet, these cuts reduce such vitally important educational options for students, perpetuating a vicious circle of declining enrollment, falling revenues and further rounds of cuts.
The U-M Flint and U-M Dearborn have been closing their liberal arts-centered programs — notably, Africana Studies at U-M Flint — and shrinking others, preventing students from majoring in these disciplines. Closing programs, cutting classes required for majors and reducing the number of times that classes are available reduces student enrollment. Enrollment at the Flint campus has been falling for some years now, reinforcing a vicious circle of austerity. If you don’t build it, they won’t come.
Why is austerity across campuses not more equally shared if equity is a U-M value? The truth is that austerity is imposed by policy, not a lack of resources. Every year, the University generates a large enough surplus of income through operating expenses to easily provide U-M Flint and U-M Dearborn with the extra resources they need without cuts to U-M Ann Arbor programs.
An equitable budget might include $15 million per campus per year to pay for the full-fledged U-M Ann Arbor version of the Go Blue Guarantee for U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint students, and leave substantial sums on both campuses to pay for student support programs and needed improvements in faculty and staff compensation. This $30 million could come from surplus revenue and would not need to come out of the U-M Ann Arbor General Fund budget.
There are other ways in which that money might be distributed more evenly. To give some sense of orders of magnitude, $30 million would be just 1.2% of U-M Ann Arbor’s 2022-23 General Fund expenditures. Living up to its DEI principles, central administration should make such changes in its next budget and commit to these transfers of funds unless and until increases in other revenue streams make such transfers unnecessary — that is, if equity is achieved when U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint students are no longer subject to austerity.
This budget would also make up for the Ann Arbor campus’s current practice of admitting half of its students from out of state. A growing population of out-of-state students compromises the campus’s mission as a state university. However, the underfunded Dearborn and Flint campuses could pick up the slack, bolstering the University’s value to the state. They run on shoestrings in constant crisis mode even as their student bodies support the diversity that the central administration allegedly values. How is the current culture not discriminatory?
When talking about DEI 1.0, Ono said, “Institutions have to be committed to continuous, positive momentum. It’s important for me to show I’m behind DEI 1.0 to make sure when we embark on DEI 2.0 as an institution, we do so with even more vigor, determination and support.”
We agree with Ono. Diversity, equity and inclusion at the University should be vigorous, determined and supported. But moving forward, DEI initiatives should include revitalized resources for U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint students. Self-imposed austerity on the University’s regional campuses is stressful for its students, faculty and staff, making teaching and learning more difficult and degrees harder to pursue and enjoy. Without a new budget model, authentic DEI is not possible.
Liz Rohan is a professor of composition and rhetoric at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and can be reached at erohan@umich.edu.
Daille Held is an undergraduate at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and can be reached at dailleh@umich.edu.
Andrew Thompson is a lecturer at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and can be reached at mcandyt@umich.edu.