Blessed Kateri

 

So today is a tough day in a tough year.  We are going to have to say goodbye to a very special part of the family, our pet cat Kateri.  She was and will remain a part of our hearts.  Like Nutty, our first pet together, Kateri has been a live action partner through quite a lot of challenges.

So where to begin?  Well, lets start with her name, Kateri, for Kateri Tekakwitha, the fairly recently canonized patron saint of the environment and ecology, the first canonized native person for the continent we call North America.  Our Kateri was born in a litter of kittens in July 2004 to a family of devout Roman Catholics that had befriended Jackie while I was away on my first deployment to Iraq, the Hamachers.  Belen and Paul were wonderful people, with Paul finishing out his service in the Air Force by commanding the AF ROTC detachment at the then named University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri S&T).  They had purchased and rented a small farm north of town given their rather large family, making space for a few pets in the barn or garage was normal.

The Hamacher children named the kittens for Catholic saints or blesseds that were commemorated around the date of their arrival.  Kateri (so named because the feast day of the, then, Blessed Kateri was July 14th) along with her long haired tabby colored brothers and sisters needed new homes.   Having returned recently from Iraq after a 14 month tour, Jackie and Nutty were very intent on having another feline partner in the mix.   So after a visit out to their home for breakfast, and after observing the rambunctiousness of the tree climbing longhairs, we were smitten, and Kateri was on her way home with us.

Kateri from the outset, was what I would call a “troublemaker”.   You see our other cat, Chestnut, Nutty as we called her, was the alpha of the two, but Kateri was not about to let that get in the way of her “counting coups” nearly any time Nutty went by.  And I mentioned that amazing tree climbing ability (Christmas or otherwise), well one weekend, not long after we had gotten Kateri, she escaped out the front door on Jackie and decided to run up a nearby tree at the edge of the woods near the duplex we rented in Rolla.  The problem was I was, of course, at Army Reserve drill some 45 minutes away at Fort Leonard Wood, and I didn’t have an extension ladder at the time.  So after rushing back home, renting a ladder in a pinch on a Saturday afternoon, I rescued our small, shivering and scared, Kateri kitten from her own treetop prison.

Kateri, as I said came to us in 2004, and at the end of that year, I defended my thesis and graduated with a MSCE from Rolla; we were then on the move.  This was our first civilian move, I now being in the Army reserve, but my job was taking us from Rolla, MO to northern Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.  The cross country trip was a two day drive affair, and we opted to split up, with myself and Nutty in the advanced party and Jackie and Kateri in the trail party.  I flew out to Saint Louis to help with the second drive east.  Unlike Nutty who was not a great traveler, we soon learned here that Kateri was the one that could always roll with the punches.  We also had it reinforced that if there was the possibly the most uncomfortable position to lay down or otherwise find herself, she did so.  This often included the upper area above the trunk in the Dodge Stratus that Jackie was driving at this time, or flopped over the  center console that made getting a cup into the cup holder a challenge.

For the first year in Virginia, we lived in a nice single story “rambler” (aka ranch) home in a nice wooded neighborhood that had a full size tennis court in the backyard and a really nice wood fireplace sunroom/family room that Kateri and Nutty made their own, but Kateri was especially grateful for the bookcase she was able to crawl into an nestle into, and the backyard full of leaves and branches that would inevitably be stuck to her tail.  She also more than proved her worth with her keen mousing, which Jackie and I greatly appreciated a couple time through the years.  Sadly, we couldn’t buy the house we were renting, so we found a nearby townhouse and a year later figured out a way to get all of our stuff and the two cats into it.  Before we moved our stuff in though, we took the cats over and let them get in their first prowl.  Nutty, being prim and proper, checked out the rooms and so forth, but Kateri, she headed straight for the basement, and figured out how to cover herself in cobwebs.  That also was Kateri, her long hair meant, to her at least, it was purposely for capturing whatever debris it could.  With the hope to be able to display the most disheveled appearance possible.  Inside or outside, she would constantly pick up leaves or cardboard flakes (from some scratching device or another), or some other foreign object.

So, grooming a long haired cat is a task that is not to be taken lightly.  And it was a constant necessity.  Kateri, however, was simply not a fan of the process.  Jackie and I would be able to get in like 3 strokes of a comb or other grooming device before we would incur her wrath.  In the summer, Missouri’s and Virginia’s being warm, would often result in her fur getting matted and creating hot spots that, if not removed, would cause her real pain.  But getting them out, now that was a battle.  We eventually took to doing a summer shave, “lion cut”, to help her wade through.  Invariably, out on the patio, the day we would do this, it was a scene of fur and screeching and scrapes (mainly on Jackie and I) and a cat transformed.  A few times we were able to get a local groomer to take the mantle of this effort, and I think Kateri and us both agreed that was the better way out.

Kateri, as I indicated, was a flopper, almost anywhere and any way, but she also loved to curl up like a ball, and lay on top of Jackie.  At night, especially in winter, if Kateri wasn’t in her “Tuft” cat bed, she was laying out on top of Jackie.  Nutty would like to lay on my chest or next to us, but Kateri had claimed Jackie as her own and best bed spot.  Given her name and this clear preference for Jackie, I’d tease her as being the “Catholic cat” to Nutty as the “Lutheran cat”.  And there was a bit to all this as Kateri with her grooming needs, could certainly pour on the “Catholic guilt.”  The only other place you can always find a cat, and Kateri was no exception, is in an open cardboard box.  So much so that its probably no surprise that her second favorite spot was in one of our paper recycling boxes or what ever new package arrival was left for her to climb into.

Holidays, when we were living in Virginia were nearly always a drive back to the Syracuse/Auburn area in NYS where our families were located.  Most years we would opt to take the cats with us.  When we were in Syracuse, they were more or less confined to the second floor at my parent’s place.  But when we got to Auburn, on account of Jackie’s mom’s small apartment, the cats became guests of the Elster’s, often for almost a week.  Nutty always the less adventuresome, stayed to the main house, but Kateri, nope that wasn’t enough. One time she had to crawl through the the utter bowels of the basement, covering herself in cobwebs and lint and whatever else she could find.  And despite being allergic to cats, Dale Elster, our brother-in-law, became enamored with Kateri and the two were often best buds each year.  Sadly, after Christmas in 2013 (a year we didn’t take the cats with us), we came home to see that Nutty had a respiratory issue which led to us having to put her down in early 2014 (for more, see Tribute to Nutty here:  http://backusec.blogspot.com/2014/01/tribute-to-nutty.html).  So Kateri, who always had Nutty as the leader, was now running solo.  By now she had grown into her “go with the flow” existence and being the alpha cat just wasn’t her bag.  But she did her best to cuddle into laps like Nutty did and be our prime home comforter.  Later that year, a fateful decision made, we were on our way to northern New York State, and Kateri was moving (returning if there is karma involved) to the land of her namesake’s people.

Now Missouri and the DC area have some snow on occasion and sometimes its heavy, but here in the north country of NYS, where there are more cows and deer than people, Canada is a mere hop, skip and jump away, and ice hockey is THE sport, umm, snow, its like here.  And not to subtlety help us in remembering this fact, as we were returning to our mutual alma mater’s at Clarkson University, the first winter back was a return to the bitter snowy cold we experienced back the 1990s (climate change had been inching the thermometers up for some time, to the point that ticks and lime disease, never seen in my youth this far north on account of the historic cold winters, are a serious issue).  Kateri features in as, undeterred, and by now a bit heavier on account of her age and taking full advantage of self feeding, jumped out to experience the winter snows fully.  She was so insistent on going out onto our patio area around the backyard pool, that in the winter I would shovel a “run” for her to be able to get out and about.  She really thought about being a permanent outdoor cat, but the aforementioned ticks and her age, well, it wasn’t going to happen, even when an unexpected guest arrived.

Pepper, a new kitten who joined the family in the summer of 2015, was Kateri’s next challenge.  Kateri, never taking the alpha position, was just not happy having Pepper around and growled in her general direction any chance she could.  After all she had ruled the roost for a year or so and here was the young whipper snapper that was in her space.  With the help of some felaway feline scent treatments, eventually Kateri was able to cope.  Wrestling matches still ensued from time to time, but the whole big house, big yard world gave Kateri enough space to get away as she needed to.  That, and by now, her flopping was often on top of the toad stool just inside the living room window or on the shelf in the bedroom where she could bask in the sun, her favorite pastime.  Life was good, summers by the pool, winter romps in the snow, sleeping on Jackie at night and sun bathing by day.

And that brings us to the last couple years, age had begun to show.  Nutty lived from 2001 to January 2014, 13 great years.  This past July, Kateri went over 16 years old.  As age took her, things began to show.  First, it was a lot of fussiness over the litter box and occasional over sprays or urination on the tray we put in place around the box for such problems.  Bespeaking her joints didn’t quite want to crawl over the ever shallower litter box edge anymore, we started a regimen of antinol pills at dinner.  It was also fussiness about food, and weight loss.  We changed diet, went back to self feeding (to which Pepper has taken advantage and needs to trim up a bit), and other strategies to get her back her mo-jo.  Then the vomiting began, something we attributed to her love of eating grass in the summer as she went out (and of the cat grass we would provide in pots in the winter for her), but it became more chronic and with or without grass eating involved.  And then it wasn’t just urination outside the box, it was #2 as well, to the point that she was using the co-located “puppy pads” much more often than the box, if she used the box at all.  She was old, we thought, things happen.  But after some blood work of late, it was clear she had liver disease and it was getting worse.  With a newborn child, Emily, joining us in early November this year, she really took a more serious dive, so we got a check and we tried another diet change and added some new medications, but ... well it was clear her GI track wasn’t recovering and wasn’t likely to rebound.

As we learned with Nutty, cats tend to hide their conditions for a long time.  There was also the factor of loss of vim and vigor, even for things that she really loved in the past.  It was just hard to see her suffer in the long term.  Her fur wasn’t the same and it was just time to make the ultimate decision.  So, not wanting to put it off until after Christmas (after all losing Nutty when we came back from the holidays was a real bad way to start a year), and it being 2020, the year of less than optimal circumstances, we made arrangements and today, 15 December 2020, was the day.  We’ve been melancholy since this weekend, knowing we were going to call on Monday to set the day, and today has been hard.  Emily is bubbly as ever and a wonderful joy, but it just can’t make up, today at least, for the hole we were going to create in our hearts for our long haired tabby friend.

So the title of this post, takes its cue from Kateri’s namesake, but I can’t seem to get a song out of my head, one I know many have heard and find hope in, as do I.  “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; O what a foretaste of glory divine; Heir of salvation, purchase of God; Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.”  I know that death is a part of life and that God is in the midst of all pain and joy and love and sadness.  So this is not the final end, her memory is in ours.  Earlier this summer, Jackie created little flip signs so we could keep track of when each of the cats was outside, and for Kateri’s it has a picture of her flopped in an upside down umbrella and the caption “Out adventuring” for when she would be out on her loved patio; now flipped to that side forever on the back door.  There is no doubt she is indeed adventuring somewhere, eating the grass she loves to chew, and enjoying more of the shrimp dinner that I shared with her last night.  We are going to miss you Ka-tear.

Blessed Kateri, feline of ours

O what a companion, of both of our hearts

Cuddle-er of Jackie, fur that’s a mess

Born in Missouri, always in our love

Love, your humans.

The Cause of the High Rate of Price Increase in Higher Education in 9 Charts

I continue to have this dialog about the cost of higher education and the college debt crisis.  It is driving me more or less nuts that I can never find the time to write the full explanation for what is happening and why.  People keep blaming the wrong things on why the cost of college education on the part of the individual student is rising at a faster pace than nearly everything else in the economy.  Here are some of the reasons I have heard that are just bunk:

• Federal government backing college loans is driving up the cost of higher education.

• Higher education really isn’t “non-profit” or “not-for-profit” and is all about raking in money.

• Colleges and Universities have been on a building spree, creating mounting debt that is only causing tuition to rise.

• Athletics is costing more and the average student is paying for these non-academic “luxuries”.

• Too many are going to college that don’t need to, inflating the cost for those that do.

• And many more.

I am not going to spend time debunking each of these, because I want to get out a post on this now.  Suffice it to say, they just are not the reasons for the spiking cost of higher education.  The real reason for why this is happening comes down to a perfect storm of factors that have very little to do with the above, at all!  What it comes down to, in order of effect, is:

1. Plummeting taxpayer/public support for higher education by the several states.

2. Significant increase in labor cost to employers especially for healthcare and daycare in an industry that is highly labor dependent.

3. Increased mandated oversight and administrative tasks requiring increased administrative full time equivalent staff.

4. Increased demand for capacity for student support and auxiliary services as a differentiator among the competition.

So here in a series of graphs and charts I am going to try to spell it out.  Let’s first start with the fact that, yes, the cost of higher education has skyrocketed over the last several decades.  Here is a handy chart from the American Enterprise Institute that lays it out fairly clearly; other than hospital stays, the cost of the price college (to the consumer) has risen starkly.

[i]

But the question is why?  Well let me start with the most clear reason:  its simply not being subsidized like it used to be.  As a case in point, here is a chart from George Mason University, a public institution in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  This chart lays out in clear terms the impact of what the precipitous loss of State support to the institution is doing to the individual student and their expenses.

[ii]

Basically, since 1985, the ratio of state support coverage of the cost of attending Mason to that of what the student paid or other revenue sources[iii] pay has more than flipped (and if you go back to the 1960s, where many a baby boomer will recall covering college by “working their way through”, it is even more stark).  Simply, the taxpayer used to cover most of the cost, and now they are “supporting” the effort at a significantly reduced rate.  Mason is simply an easy example with a clear chart.  The next two charts show how States have pulled out of the college funding business, in some cases nearly completely.

[iv]

[v]

And as recessions hit, or other economic challenges emerge within the world of State financing, it’s getting worse each time.  As shown in this chart, the easy answer for State legislatures to help balance their budgets and/or lower taxes is to cut higher education spending when times are tough.

[vi]

So bottom line is that a huge contribution to the driver of the rise in the cost of college education to the individual student is that government is not helping nearly as much, or even at a reasonable proportion of as much as it did for their parents or their grandparents.  So what we have is that college costs are going to rise faster than inflation, or the general cost of everything else, because what had previously covered it was gone.

This brings us to the next driver, however, and that is the general cost of labor has risen steadily over that last decades driven by several things, but certainly healthcare.  The following a chart created from data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as it relates to employer costs for employing its labor.

You will note from this graph, that the cost of labor has gone up.  If you look carefully, however, you will also note that workers’ wages are NOT increasing, rather it is really driven by the cost of insurance going up.  On the side of the higher education customer (students and their parents), this basically means that there aren’t any increased resources on their part to cover the costs that they are incurring.  So, the many charts available that show how the cost of college is outpacing wages and salaries are on par.  All good there (well not "good" but accurate).  What folks continue to forget, however, is that on the college and university side, this has yet another effect: driving the cost of higher education even higher.

As is illustrated in a report from the California State Legislative Analyst’s Office, the following graphs make clear that largest portion of any college or university is the cost of its employees, somewhere between 66 to 75% of the overall enterprise.

[vii]

Thus, when you put together that the largest portion of the actual cost to run a college or university has risen some 15 to 25% in the last two decades (and over 60% since the 1980s), it becomes clear that the reality is that it just costs a lot to do education, because education is a human resource intensive enterprise.  This is seen in K-12 education as well.  This is especially true when you want to do it well and at a level commensurate with the expectations society has for it (e.g. leading to professional careers or other pursuits near the top of society).  This is not really any different than one of the major causes of the rise in health care costs, in that health care is inherently human resource intensive too (which creates a bit of a price spiral).  To that point the following chart helps you see how salaries have tracked as it relates to higher education as compared with medical professionals as well as lawyers.

[viii]

These are just not industries like construction, finance, industry or others where there are other components like materials, energy, and equipment drive the cost of the enterprise.  This means the cost of it will outpace the cost growth in most of those other industries consistently.  So when you add the precipitous drop in public/taxpayer support higher education to this intensive real cost increase, that exceeds the norm for most any other industry or component in the economy, it is a perfect cost storm to the individual student.  These two factors (loss of support and increased cost of labor) are the largest components of the actual reasons for the increased cost of college for the average individual student.

That said, there are a couple more reasons for the rapid cost increases, that are not at the level of the previous reasons, yet are worth mentioning.  Of the two, one is shown in the following chart, which shows the increase in the full time equivalent senior staff and administrators compared with faculty in the University of California system over time.

[ix]

This is not unusual or particularly helpful in itself, except as it relates a couple points.  Administrators typically cost more than faculty at most ranks, so an increased number means increased marginal cost to the institution.  The further question is, why then are there more administrators?  Good question.  Well the biggest driver of the increase in the number of administrators is the numerous additional regulations and other oversight mechanisms that have been put into place on the industry, creating an administrative burden that someone is paying for (aka the average college student).  But it also ties to the other reason for the uptick in the college price tag: the demand for services that go beyond what we had in yesteryear.

The following chart helps to show this shift.  This chart from the University of California system, again, highlights the breakdown of the spending from two different snapshots in time, just 5 years apart.

[x]

If you look carefully, you will note that, as a percentage, instruction costs have gone down from 26.3% to 24.2% (and facilities costs have gone from 3.3% to 1%).  Then you will see that three specific areas have had varying levels of growth:

• Academic support went from 7% to 8.5%

• Student services went from 3.8% to 3.9%

• Auxiliary enterprises went from 6.3% to 9.1%

Adding those increases together, is a whopping 5% shift, all towards providing more “niceties” if you will.  Some of these are certainly things like an on campus Starbucks or better recreation facilities, but others are much more robust accommodative services, increased and improved tutoring or other academic help, counseling services, increased public safety, and better student life activities for all, which, many times are also mandated.  These final two reasons also contribute to the rise in per capita cost to the customer.  The bottom line is, yes, there are potentially some small nice to haves that are adding to the bottom line.  In many cases however, the cause for them is based on “must do” items that won’t appreciably change the picture unless the said same legislatures that are reducing the support for higher education also give relief from those requirements; there is fairly low likelihood of that.

In conclusion, the biggest driver of the increase in the price tag of college comes back to the rather dramatic decrease of taxpayer/public support coupled with the significant increase in the cost of the human resources required to make the enterprise work.  Fixes for this will inevitably come in the form of public policy shifts that we have to struggle to debate and resolve.  Public policies, however, can also make the problem a lot worse.  One such prime example is a minimum wage hike where colleges and universities employ many low-wage workers, sometimes college students, to accomplish a myriad of activities across campuses.  Adding even more costs to the already intensive human resource enterprise will only add to the high rate of growth.  I am not sure I have a silver bullet, other than to realize that yesteryear’s highly subsidized false price tag of higher education is a false comparison.  To that end, we need to get real and get on making some hard choices going forward.

End Notes:

[i] “Chart of the Day.... or Century?,” American Enterprise Institute - AEI (blog), January 11, 2019, https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century/.

[ii] Davis, J.J. Wagner (2016), Presentation to the Board of Visitors, Finance and Land Use Committee, George Mason University, October, 13 2016

[iii] Basically, on campus enterprises, auxiliaries and so forth as well as fundraising.  In some cases this further increases the cost to the student (e.g. for housing and dining) and in others has driven decisions about things like athletics, public-private partnerships, and so forth with the costs being carried by others.

[iv] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[v] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[vi] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[vii] “The 2020-21 Budget: Analyzing UC and CSU Cost Pressures,” December 17, 2019, 20.

[viii] Archibald, Robert B, and David H Feldman. “Drivers of the Rising Price of a College Education,” August 2018, 20.

[ix] Christensen, Kim. “Is UC Spending Too Little on Teaching, Too Much on Administration?” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2015. https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html.

[x] Public Policy Institute of California. “Higher Education in California: Institutional Costs.” Accessed December 8, 2020. https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-in-california-institutional-costs/.