Higher education is deep in a jam both fiscally and strategically. In my travels, higher education leaders seem to be waiting for something while also acknowledging that when the stimulus funds run out that something will turn ugly. Half of the states will have spent all of their stimulus money for education by the end of June 2010 and 40 states that will experience revenue shortfalls in the next year only compound the crisis. Something has to give in the next year and much more will give in 2012.
There are smart people in leadership positions in higher education that are trying to mitigate coming fiscal disasters, but most of their efforts lack the sweeping agenda that could pull higher education out of a tailspin. Sadly, most actions are directed at preserving the status quo. Most states have either postponed thinking about how public institutions must match these new fiscal and demographic realities or are hoping things turn around very quickly. Those states in the former camp are most likely to permit their public institutions to raise tuition to levels that clearly harm low-income students. Those who believe things will soon get better perpetuate ignorance of the long, slow slog that marks the erosion of public support for higher education, a descent that began two decades ago as states struggled to balance expenditures for prisons, highways, K through 12 education and Medicaid.
At this time of crisis should we strive to maintain the current structure of public higher education? Can we continue to assume that all institutions produce equally valuable outcomes for the state and its taxpayers, the effect of which is to cut or reward all institutions on an equal basis?
Woe to the state budget officer who may understand the value of higher education but is faced with the traditional approach of taking a meat axe after the very sector that could propel a state’s economy (and future tax collections). Higher education should lead states onto higher ground that includes expanded job growth, gains in intellectual capital, and some assurance of being able to compete in a global market place. If your head hurts thinking about this, you, too, might be attracted to making across the board cuts to all institutions while ignoring greater issues of worth and merit. But, in this age, I would argue that sameness only short-term strategy, at best.
To survive, higher education and those that make decisions about how higher education is funded need to view institutional performance differently. In addition to performance data, courage will be required. Disproportionate cuts to institutions are inevitable in my opinion and states can get ready for new realities by asking:
• Which institutions graduate the most students for the least cost?
• Which institutions prepare graduates to match which state workforce needs?
• What other metrics of worth beside the workforce agenda does the state want to reward?
• How much return to the state’s investment in higher education is truly found in athletic programs?
• In an age of expanded access to technology, is it necessary that all institutions offer all major degree fields? How many programs can be shared across institutional boundaries?
• Which institutions are tearing down boundaries to higher education and which are insisting that things shouldn’t change? Whose interests are being preserved with the latter argument?
• How can states best provide incentives for all institutions to increase their performance?
These are only opening questions. The funding of higher education reflects values and value-probing questions are always difficult and messy. But, the values that we’ve held since the 1990’s—values that have reduced state appropriations to higher education to less than 10% of institutional revenue in many cases—are the same values that now require us to make difficult choices. How do we want our systems to look and how do we want our institutions to perform? The easy way out is to let the current crisis blunt our best ideas about strategy. But is this what our grandchildren will admire about us?
Rick Voorhees is marking the end of the traditional fiscal year by returning to spectacular Glenwood Springs, Colorado, from an Achieiving the Dream coaching visit to the Ivy Tech Community College (system) in Indiana.
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