Cornell Experts Discuss Colleges' Responsibilities During Hard Times

One doesn't think of Cornell University as being as subject to to the financial winds as, say, an HBCU. But that doesn't stop Cornell from convening experts to discuss the impact of the financial crisis on higher education in the United States, and Cornell in particular:

He said colleges should try to figure out ways to improve their productivity, but without cutting employees' salaries or increasing their workload. Technology might be one way to do that.

He also said colleges should do what they can to protect and preserve jobs. Cornell, he noted, is the biggest employer between Albany and Buffalo. "We have to try to manage the university to blunt the effect on the work force," he said. "It is important to look forward to what our state economy should look like when it emerges from the financial mess."

Colleges should also take a more active role in trying to help the country emerge from this quagmire, he said. First, colleges should pursue research that will bring tangible benefits to the economy, through technology transfer and marketable inventions.

Second, more academics should take prominent roles in helping to form public policy. "Universities have abdicated their role to think tanks in the past 20 years," he said. "The leaders at the universities have been relatively silent."