The Big Picture: Gazing Into Higher Ed's Crystal Ball for 2009

This broad-ranging article by Amy Milshtein in College Planning & Management magazine addresses some pertinent facilities and capital budgeting trends, but goes wider than that, to curriculum, food, IT, safety, and more. Definitely worth a read.

2008 was quite a roller coaster. From an historic election to a worldwide financial crisis to yet even more technological advances, everyone, including today’s students and their parents, has been on a wild ride. How can colleges and universities cope and compete in the uncertain months ahead? College Planning & Management asked some experts to gaze into their crystal balls and find some answers.

“Not every college will be impacted in the same way . . . . [s]chool budgets that are profoundly tuition-based are very vulnerable. But even endowments are shrinking. They may not be the usual three to five times the annual budget.”

This lack of liquidity has schools making strategic budget decisions and yes, some cuts. “We have a major building project underway at Gettysburg and it will be completed,” related Fritze. “New projects will be re-evaluated.” She insisted that the academic experience should not suffer. “We just may have to get smarter in how we deliver it.”

Engaging Higher Education in Societal Challenges of the 21st Century

This Special Report by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education was published April 22, 2008. The 11-page report is available on line in HTML and PDF. It is structured, following its front page, in sections labeled: "To Optimize Learning"; "Conjoining Self-Interest and Societal Purpose"; "Drawing the Strands Together"; and "Exercising Leadership.":

The challenge for the years ahead is to achieve a public agenda in an era of diminished public purposes. Many have observed that in the relative decline of policy as a motivating force, higher education institutions may choose priorities primarily from market considerations, setting agendas that seek to advance their own prestige and market position more than the fulfillment of publicly defined purposes. If markets have supplanted the force of policy per se as the primary drivers of higher education’s motivations, what actions will create the market that engages universities and colleges in solving the nation’s most important challenges? Any successful strategy must recognize that no single, centralized approach—no one 'market'—can enlist the energies and passion of higher education to achieve a particular purpose. Higher education in the U.S. rightly and productively proceeds from a system of incentives rather than control.