and legacies of our nation's commanders in chief. and our new series, real america, featuring archival government and educational films from the 1930s through the 70s. cspan 3, created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable and satellite provider. like us on face book and follow us on twitter. >> next publicpolicpolicy, high education, university admission policies, academic standards and more, and then the challenges facing veterans and the services available to them. that's coming up on c sparks 3. next public policy issues that affect higher education and the role of the big ten conference,

with university of michigan president mark schlissell, including the cost of college, admissions policies, academic standards, research and athletics. cspan has been on a tour of big ten colleges these past few weeks and along the way, we have been talking with university presidents about higher education issues. this morning we take our viewers to ann arbor, michigan, where university of michigan president mark schlissell joins us. having seen both sides of the education system, the private school and public university side, what are the biggest differences that you have seen? >> well, first of all, john, thanks very much for the invitation to speak to you and thanks to cspan, it's a great idea for a series, universities are so important and they're so much in the public light that this was a wonderful and inspired idea, so thanks very

much. there are commonalities and there are distinct features, from brown, berkeley and the university of michigan. i think we all share a commitment to education, a commitment to excellence. the university of michigan is at a much larger scale, the breadth of scholarship that goes on here is almost unimaginable, the comprehensive excellence of the united states is really its distinguishing feature, compared to the many other educational institutions that i have had the privilege of working at. >> are the challenges different between a public university and a privates university? >> well the challenges, some of them are different, some of them are quite the same. the whole academy is dealing with the issue of affordability as are the public's, we all have different types of pressures. we're all dealing with the diminished level of support for research and scholarship from

the federal government. so there are common features, because we are a public institution, we have a very public mission and a public responsibility and that's a little bit different than it is at a private institution. in state tu which is, $13,486, out of state tuition, $41,000. is that affordable. >> in certainly it's affordable for many families in the country. we have tried to make sure that the -- to the extent possible, others from outside the state, around the country and around the world to apply by using very generous need-based and other scholarship types of aid to make sure that a michigan education is attainable for everyone in our society. >> some stats on grants for

need-based education and other education up on our screen, in state, about 70% of university of michigan undergraduates take grants need and merit based scholarships for work and study loans, out of state, about 51%, a question for you, dr. schlissell, specifically is college getting too expensive? >> well, as i said, college is expensive. i view it as a lifetime investment. i can't think of another investment that families can make that will benefit their children throughout their lifetimes that has greater value than a college or university education, we're one of the few public institutions that's committed to a need blind policy for our instate applicants. so we do our very best to two work study jobs, and a modest

amount of debt, to help every eligible and outstanding student in the state attend their flag shift university. >> you have reference this in your previous comments about the cuts in state funding. can you talk about the financial situation that you walked into when you became president at the university of michigan, michigan, a state obviously hard hit by the recession. >> in some ways, michigan is no different than other states, although it's been hit particularly hard and it's economy is recovering. i think the challenge is the state used to provide a very high fraction of the cost of educating our students and through a whole series of financial set backs over the course of decades, i think much to their credit, our current state government is beginning to reinvest in public higher ed as the economy recovers and that's

a very good trend. as i said, the increase in tuition is proportional to the decrease in public support. i would love to think in the futures the level of -- but the total amount of dollars it takes to give students an outstanding education is growing up modestly, but the mix of where those dollars come from has changed profoundly over the recent decades. >> if you want to talk to mark schlissell, split up our lines a bit differently this time.

we'll start with pat, pat, good morning. i'm curious to know in your institution in burglar, and all institutions across the country, the ratio of people in the classrooms to other employees, by administrators, researchers, whatever. and how that has changed over time and what percentage of the tuition costs will be paid. actually it's to pay the salary of nonteaching employees of the university. so the university of michigan has about 3,000 full-time tenure scre stream faculty that teach our students. we have clinical faculty that help train future physicians and residents and interns in our

hospitals. we probably have on the order of 2,000 or so of teaching faculty. the total number of employees of the university is approaching 40,000. we have a very large health care system, we're a major provider of health health care in the state. if you put aside the health care system, we probably have two or three fold the number of employees providing all the services necessary to run a residential campus. we have the health services, so because this is a residential community, it requires a lot more than just a professor standing up in the classrooms, i think a lot of the learning that goes on at the university of michigan, also throughout

residential higher education, occurs outside the classroom, environments where students can participate in groups and student activities and can learn by others and learn by doing. the fraction of people that look at like me, like presidents and vice presidents, although we're very visible, we make up only a handful of the number of employees at the university and only a modest fraction of salary commitment. we're in a very people oriented business. >> and we showed a stat just now talking a little bit about different expenses from the university of michigan, one of those expenditures in 2013, michigan spent 1.3 million on research efforts. >> that's one of the things that attracted me to the university of michigan. it's one of the top research institutions in the country if

not the world. of that $1.3 billion, almost a billion of that comes from outside sources. it comes from foundations and the federal government. our generous donors really is key to the future economy of our country, i'm really proud of it. >> phone lines for students, parents, educators and michigan residents in this last segment

of "today's" washington journal. mike is in bouie, maryland. mike. >> i had a question concerns the comments earlier about affordability. it seems interesting to me that we can talk about affordability when i just heard that the tuition for out of state is at 40,000, and this is a question that goes beyond the university of michigan, of course, just the education system, and public universities, but i recently read an article where the median income of college graduates at the highest level was somewhere near $60,000. and so if you have a student paying $4$40,000 a year for an education that goes upward about $300,000, when you total all expenses, i would say that that's pretty expensive, when

you compare that also to the me median income of an average family in this nation. i have to add, how is it that we can consider that affordable to the average american? >> i think that's a very important question, and i think the way we make it as affordable as possible. for example for an instate student, if u you're family income is less than around $60,000 a year, the out of pocket costs are almost zero. between scholarships, work study jobs, summer earning expectations and a modest amount of loans, we have managed to make it so that students from

families of pretty typical income can afford to get this spectacular education. and although the income levels that you cite may be national averages, michigan is a spectacular university, employers are queued up to employ our graduates. the significant number of them become enormously successful, so once again, i think it's a good investment. it's more of a challenge for out of state students because to the tuition is higher, and isles higher because they're not receiving any stubsidies from te university of ---one thing we're doing now in our new campaign, our fundraising cam pain, is we have set a goal of $1 billion to raise for supporting scholarships, need-based aid and support for graduate fellowships to try to work on this affordability problem.

but i share with you the notion that if we're not successful making a college education affordable, based on merit, based on willingness to work hard, then the future of our country is in trouble. >> michigan had one of the largest endowments at $4 million. is there any thought about using this endowment to help with the affordability problem? >> sure, we already do, a significant amount of that endowment is supporting our financial aid system, that's where a lot of the money comes from. and we're trying to raise additional endowment. we're just not there yet

financially. >> phowhat their lifetime needs will be. we're also educating citizens, so one of my goals as an educator, is to graduate students that are prepared to actively engage as good citizens and as leaders in their

community. as an engineer, you have to know more than engineering, you have to be able to communicate clearly, i think you should be able to write well, you should have cultural sensitivity, you should be educated to lead and be a professional that can attain a series of good jobs throughout a lifetime. and that's what we really continuously endeavor to do. >> we have the phone lines open, if you have a question about higher education, you can talk to mark schlissell, the president of education at the university of michigan. teresa, good morning. >> caller: thank you so much for taking my call and thank you to csp cspan. i just want to say, today, i think college is not affordable for american families. when you see the numbers, like they were just showing for out of state students.

$50,000? that's just the initial costs, that's not for the day to day expenses that the students have, and eventually if they get through college, they're lucky if they can do it in four years, that's the cost of a house, most families if they can afford a $200,000 home, get a 30-year commitment as far as a mortgage payment. and look at the interest you have to pay over 40 years for that house. now we're putting our students in a situation where that's what they need to get through college. it's just a difficult situation. and a part of this equation are the interest rates, when these students try to pay these loans back, it could be $500, plus the actual loan itself, again, as a country, it's just crazy to me what we're charging kids for college. i don't know why we can't figure

out a better system to educate our kids. >> dr. schlissell? >> yes, teresa, those are all excellent points and as i have said, i agree with you, that there is an affordability problem confronting all of higher education. the fraction of students that actually pay $50,000 and $200,000 over four years, to attend the university of michigan is less than half. so as i mentioned earlier, we are need blind in state, and we're attempting for out of state students to use financial aid and work study jobs and loans in combination to allow students from any background to attend the university. i think to the biggest challenges are rare at the borders of our financial aid formulas, where you make enough money where you don't qualify for tremendous amounts of support and it really is a

struggle and i think families do have to make a conscious decision on value. i was the oldest of four kids from a very middle class working family and my parents sent me to a private university. i took out a combination of loans, scholarships, i worked during school, i worked in the summertime, i graduated with debt. and in hindsight i would do it all over again in a heart beat. it's enormously challenging, we do our best to help. i appreciate that you pointed out that this is a national problem. i think it would be a wonderful thing to provoke a national discussion of how the public as a whole, this is a common goal for our society.

>> i think we have to tie the ability to take on debt to student outcomes. we have to take a look at -- make sure that this debt is being taken on by students that are going to graduate, and are going to graduate with zegs that will help them be employable or pursue their future ambitions and not one into trouble and never complete. i think we need to cap the amount of student loans you might expect a stunl to take on. i think one thing that people forget, half of the students here at the university of michigan graduate with no loans, so the data you're quoting is for students who take out loans,

your quoting averages, and for instead students, the students that do take out loans, it's about 25,000 for out of state debt. for out of state students, it's about $35,000 for four years of attendance. >> carol said, my daughter received her phd from the university of michigan and received a job immediately. ann arbor is lovely and faculty great and always helpful. bernie's waiting on our line for parents, bernie is in columbus, ohio, good morning. >> caller: good morning. sir, would you havhat you have to steal. if you subsidize babies, you where have the colleges worked at holding down the costs. their prices have gone way past the rate of inflation for the last ten years. the government keeps subsidizing

the loans, you keep raising your prices, the excuse is usually given is that we have to keep up with the other colleges, they're taking our professorsor they're taking our talent. just because they're stealing, doesn't mean you have to steal. >> dr. schlissell? >> there isn't really incredibly much new to say, i understand the frustration that people feel when they look at a cost of education that sounds out of reach. i think there is an issue that we have to do our very best to constrain the cost of higher ed, and in particular, to use financial aid and judicious amounts of debt to make sure that students can attend. i really don't accept the argument that the cost, at least here in michigan has grown dramatically beyond the rate of inflation. if you look hard at the data over the last decade, the

university by cutting costs has managed to mitigate a lot of the consequences of diminished state support, and the rate of increase in tuition, roughly parallels the rate of decrease in state support. we are in a very people intensive business, there are gains to be made by instituting technology that replaces a teacher, or a teacher manages a class discussion, but we haven't discovered those yet. i don't think we'll be done until our universities look like the society that they're serving and that students can come to school without mortgaging their future and their family's future. so we have to keep working on this. >> dr. schlissell, considering for a moment only the sciences, what do you consider as important growth areas over the next ten to 30 years, and then

adding in go blue. >> thanks for the go blue part. that's reassuring, the sciences fuel discovery. we have got an enormous and fantastic academic medical cent center, that includes a hospital and medical school, but also schools of nursing and pharmacy and public health. where the potential of the university to affect -- that's a tremendous area for furl investment and growth that will have a real and obvious upside for society. we have an absolutely spectacular school of engineering, that educates students at the engineering, at a masters and doctoral level, we have an automotive research center, other efforts that really fuel the local economy. a biotech industry, a great

bioengineering department. not just by training students, but by aproducing new knowledge that spurs new industries. >> lou is a parent, good morning. >> caller: good morning. just a comment, my son goes to a local university in washington, d.c. metro area. and he's a senior and what i have noticed about his classes over the years is that his major is economics. but i have noticed that a number of his classes are just pure fluff. i'm not just talking about a broad based education, where you take a literature class or take a class in something you normally would not take to round you out. i'm talking about classes that are pure fluff, they're just filler. and i'm shocked that there aren't more substantive classes. sometimes when i talk to my son, it seems like, i'm not really

working that hard at this particular subject, he's fulfilling the major, but there aren't enough substantive classes. so i would like to talk about the requirements for a bachelors, maybe engineering particularly, or maybe, you know, premed, where there's very structured classes, and there's not a whole lot of fluff. but i just think in a lot of other areas, there's not -- there's a large percentage that's not substantive, and can be eliminated, i appreciate hearing your comments. >> dr. schlissell on fluff. >> thank you very much, i never thought i would be able to make a definitive comment on fluff. a lot of the universities do teach very pragmatic practical things where you can see an obvious connection between what a student is studying and their first job or where they want to

go on to graduate school. a lot of our class -- taking an english class, learning how to read an appreciate literature, u how to write well, how to communicate clearly, taking a foreign language class, taking and and and an throw pollee glass. there are hard stills that people need to learn. what people call fluff often turns out to be enormously impactful. and i'm not going to admit to any fluff at the university. but we do educate our students both broadly and specifically. i'm a university president, i studied biochemistry as an undergrad, i studied medicine and biochemistry as a medical student and as a doctoral

student. but as an undergrad i took classes in religion and history and bopolitics and government a music and all those things it turns outs have affected how i live my life and it's also affecting how i look at the leadership of a great university. i think we have to educate broadly and that's not fluff and we also have a responsibility to educate with specificity. >> allan is on our line with educators. good morning. >> caller: i appreciate you taking my call. my question goes backs to the student loans that are funding the nation's universities. i just want to point out the fact, and hopefully you're aware of this. student loans are the only types of loans to be specifically vacated of the most fundamental student protections that exist forever other type of loan, this is bankruptcy protections, this is statutes of limitations, and

other protections that people take for granted and they assume are in place for their student loans when they sign for them. i have been looking at this for over a decade. i have not heard one university president say anything about this very unique exemption and to say nothing about the structurally predatory behaviors that this enables. so if i could just get your comments, i i would appreciate it. >> what do you teach? >> caller: i'm actually in charge of a group called student loan.org, i give talks across the country at colleges and universities. >> dr. schlissell? >> those are excellent points. i have to educate myself more because i'm not expert personally in the laws and practices that govern student loans, but i think this is a really interesting area for universities to organize and for our government to act. i'll speak to our government

relations people, i'll speak to our student loan folks, so i understand this better, particularly in the state of michigan, we have caps on the amount of debt that we allow the students to take on under the university's auspices, the practices that you're talking about are important and i think i need to understand them better. >> frank is a student, good morning. >> caller: good morning, i have a question or a comment about it seems like the elephant in the room that has not been addressed and as costs rise, in the educational system, the costs are not evenly spread. the universities are hiring more and more adjuncts, as a grad student, i'm right now writing my thesis, i expect to finish it next month. but every -- not one full-time

professor, and obviously i don't want to mention the school. but i am here in central florida. so you can pick the schools. but nonetheless, every professor was anned a jujts. they do receive pen uys on the dollar, many of the professors have secondary or two or three jobs outside of the academic field to make ends meet, but still the university's costs are going up exponentially. u how do you justify that? >> what you' ee're pointing out certainly a national problem, it's not an issue here at the university of michigan because we employ very few adjuncts and think're normally professionals that have degrees in law or -- they aisle come and teach a course for us because they love to teach, it's not their real

job. the problem you're pointing out is a real one across the breadth of the academy, but here at the university of michigan, it's ten-year stream factuality members and professional lectures that affect our curriculum. i do applaud you, that's a real problem that deserves scrutiny, one university at a time and perhaps discussion more broadly. >> and as we are talking about spending by universities, can you comment on athletic department spending, do you think the spending is in line with the goals and the missions of the university? >> sure, so, i think athletics certainly a major public universities have become bigger and bigger, through the years, with more attention from the public, more attention from the media, the size of the program has grown, not the number of students, but the dollars flowing through them, here at the university of michigan, we're very fortunate that because of the attention of our

alumni and the involvement of the community in supporting some

of the major sports are athletic programs are self-supporting, in fact, the football and men's basketball -- as a matter of fact, no disrespect, i just want to ask a couple of quick questions. i wonder how much it costs per credit hour currently at the university of michigan? >> you'll have to forgive me, but i don't have per credit hour numbers in my head. i certainly know that the cost of attendance of tuition for an undergrajs watt student, for a full year is approximately $13,000 instead, and approximately $41,000 out of state. but i don't have the credit number hours broken up in my head. >> jason it sounded like you had a follow-up? >> caller: yeah, $13,000, how many credit hours is that? >> typical students will take between 12 and 18 credits a semester, so for full-time students, you can do the math, it's 24 to 36 credits over the course of a year. >> caller: but that doesn't include housing or food or

anything else? >> that's correct, students have to have a place to live and they have to eat while they're studying. >> several folks calling in to talk to dr. mark schlissell. let's go to amy who's been waiting on our line for parents. >> caller: actually i'm a grandparent-- >> oh. >> but i am wondering if maybe as parents we need to rethink our idea of wanting to give our children this experience of, yoiyu you know, going off to college. you go to college when you're 18, you graduate when you're 22. why is it a problem if it takes longer than four years? i mean if you go a semester, work a semester, go a semester or take night classes, most colleges have a lot of students who have been in the workforce

and are returning to school while continues to work. and so they're taking classes on the weekends or whenever. but as parents, we want our children to have this kind of carefree college experience, except that it is hurting them later and so i don't think that it's really harmful to a child to deprive them of that if for the whole rest of their life they are not saddled with debt. >> dr. schlissell? >> i think those are very good points, i think there are many ways for students to make their way through college. i think there are -- it's wonderful that in the united states, there are thousands of colleges and they cater to students of different interests, students of different means, students with different types of ambitions. but i have tremendous respect for students that in effect work their way through college if it takes longer, you know, that's

okay, the important thing is that they get their education, and their education sets them up for a successful future and to fulfill their ambitions. the university of michigan also has campuses in flint and dear born, where the pathways you're describing are much more common, where students come in and out of school over the course of longer than just four years, ultimately heading for a degree. i think it's great that we provides those kinds of opportunities and that type of access for students. >> let's go to mike in detroit, michigan also a student. mike, good morning. >> caller: hey, i wanted to know if you see any way to reverse the dangerous trend of our higher education facilities deinvolving into sports faciliti facilities. >> well, yeah, i think the issue of sports and intercollegiate

sports, i think there's wonderful opportunities for intercollegiate sports at the university of michigan. it provides entertainment for students, it's provides a connection for alumni. the alumni culture that i meet, they care tremendously about our sports programs and they also care about their academic programs. it's about striking the right balance, athletics is a wonderful activity, it's a cultural activity, but it's not the core mission of the university, the core mission of the university is doing research that will fuel future opportunities in our economy. so sports just have to occur in the appropriate balance with the rest of the things that are on mission for the campus. >> we'll try to get to as many calls as we can in our last five minutes or so with dr. mark

schlissell, phil's waiting in fairfax, virginia. >> caller: doctor, i was recently reading a book and an interesting observation that the average student at harvard, his family income is over $400,000 i was wondering if you know what it is for university of michigan students and if it's really possible for middle income students to attend a school like the university of michigan. >> i think -- has had tremendous ous influence on thought across the whole institution, one of the missions of public universities is to in effect address the mall distribution of income across our society. to me, the most tried and true way to do that is through higher education. so the challenge is to identify students regardless of their

background, who are talented enough to benefit from the level of education we provide here. and we have to be creative in how we look for talent, talent is absolutely everywhere, opportunity certainly isn't, so it's an obligation we have to identify people who would benefit, to bring them here to the yourt of michigan, to support them educationally and to provide the financial resources they need to attend. and in the long run, i think that's the surest way to change this mall distribution of income issue. i'm quite sure the demographic here is different than $400,000 a year. but we certainly are not yet representative of the distribution of income in our society, and we won't be able to stop working on this issue of access and affordability until we are representative of society as a whole. >> a twitter question for you in our last couple of minutes here. what efforts does michigan make to ensure that the degrees offers are marketable? >> sure, so as i mentioned a bit

earlier, we offer over 250 different programs and in addition to that, students can design their own program in a variety of ways, so we have tremendous flexibility. we make sure that all of our students learn a common set of skills as well as a particular areas they happen to be interested in. we have got great interest in education here in engineering and business and economics, in skills that students who are looking for careers in those areas can find education here. and we also provide such a broad array of things that allow students to pursue their interests in an uncertain future, where you don't know what the basis of information is going to be 10 or 20 years out. the things driving the economy today barely existed 20 years ago. so we offer a breadth of displungedi disciplines as well as education, as quell as

marketable skills for a lifetime of personal satisfaction and employability. >> wanda is a parent. good morning. >> caller: i just want to know why my husband and my income has affected the amount of money that my son is able to get on a student loan. it's ridiculous. he's working, but my income and my husband's income affects those loans and the interest rates are too high and the government's making a lot of profit on these kids. and it's shameful. elizabeth warren's got the answer, we need to listen to her. thank you, good buy. >> dr. schlissell, if you have some comments. >> yeah, other than feeling the challenge of families that struggle to pull together the resources that their children need to get educated, and the fact that loans and the way we distribute loans are challenging here, i don't have much more to

say. i think we're struggling because we don't have or devote adequate resources to make sure that everyone in this country has access to affordable higher education. i personally think it's a responsibility of society to our children. and we have to work towards that in many ways, through government means, through private philanthro philanthropy, through the activity that goes on through each institution at a time. >> we wanted to give you a chance to talk about foreign student at the university of michigan rank, among the highest number of foreign students at a u.s. university with 8,895. >> well, many of those students you're talking about are also doctoral or professional students. so we have over 43,000 students on the ann arrebor campus loan d another 8,000 in dear born.

but i think it's a wuchonderful thing and higher education not just in michigan, not just in the state or in the coin try but around the world. that're able to atrablt students here from all corners of the world to come and study. in addition to serving a brotder population of students, it affects the quality and the nature of the education we provide here on campus, we're heading unarguably towards an increasingly globalized society and having our students here from in state and in the united states to be educated in different parts of the world makes their education richer as a whole. it's actually a wonderful thing, and it's one of the comparative advantages of the united states that i'm very proud of. >> dr. mark schlissell is the president of the university of michigan, were