You may have heard that the economy is in the dumper right now. Sometimes, the rumors around campus and the news I hear and read sound a little too much like Chicken Little and the falling sky, though I do appreciate the fact that all things money are very bad. In the higher education world, there has been much talk lately about costs and tuition. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean.
“Changing the tuition discussion” is an article in Inside Higher Ed about how universities need to do a better job of explaining the costs of higher education and also to find ways to cut costs. Here’s a quote:
In this environment, the leaders of a national association of public universities hope to shift the debate — calling for better information about what really is going on with college costs, and also urging colleges to consider some potentially radical ways to control their costs. “University Tuition, Consumer Choice and College Affordability,” being released today by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, both defends public higher education and criticizes it. While suggesting that colleges are more affordable than many people realize today, the report sees a “looming affordability challenge” in which public institutions could move out of the reach of many Americans, a potential shift that the association sees as counter to the values of its institutions.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Ed, “Colleges are told to improve financial practices to cope with downturn” and “The U.S. is falling behind on education and lacks key data, report card finds.” (By the way, both of these links, if you are off campus, will take you to the library proxy server space where you have to log in first to get the full article). Here’s a passage from that second article:
Many states, and the United States as a whole, are doing a better job than they were two years ago of preparing students for college and expanding access to higher education, according to a national report card on higher education scheduled for release today.
But the country continues to slip behind other nations on measures of enrollment and degree completion, particularly among young adults, the report found, and on the subject of college affordability, it gave failing grades to all but one state: California, which got a C-.
What’s a student to do? Well, according to this New York Times article, why not go to Scotland? Realistically, the kind of Americans who attend St. Andrews University are probably the kind who would have gone to some kind of Ivy League school in the U.S., but I think the point that higher education is an increasingly international commodity is interesting.
