The Iron Triangle: College Presidents Talk about Costs, Access, and Quality

From the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and Public Agenda, comes this late 2008 report. The structure of the introduction tells you something about the contents of the report: "Higher education in changing times"; "Are we headed for dialogue or for stalemate?"; 'A missing pre-condition for dialogue"; "An investment worth paying for"; "Are you listening to us?"; "A dangling conversation?"; "Expected and unexpected views."

Three key insights emerged from these conversations—one expected, the other two less so. The first is that, as one might have anticipated, our respondents were incredibly thoughtful, informed, and articulate; they drew from a wide range of experience from their own institutions, from other institutions where they had served, and from their participation in national and regional professional associations. The second factor, initially less anticipated, is that none of them was the least surprised by our questions. Indeed, we began each interview by asking the respondents to list his or her issues of greatest concern. For the most part, the presidents began by listing some version of our three main topics: college costs, access, and quality. In some cases, the presidents even conducted parts of the interview for us, following up their own statements by saying, “But you will probably ask me…” The third observation is that there was a great deal of commonality in the way the presidents perceived the issues. Just as it’s possible to put a number of photographs together to create a composite picture, the college presidents’ responses—taken together—can be summarized by a composite view. While few of the presidents would wholeheartedly agree with all of this composite (and some would endorse very little of it), most of the presidents we interviewed resonated with much of it.