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Universities must show economic outcomes in quantifiable language

Sep 21, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
Massive reductions in government funding, increasing budget deficits, and the need to attract more students in higher education, tend to influence decisions to up tuition fees.
Chancellor of California State University system Dr. Charles B. Reed at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conference in Paris this week noted that increased tuition fees could alienate the public and reduce access of the poorest students into higher education.
The Chancellor believed that the international financial meltdown brought with it in its wake huge governmental funding reductions, increased demand for student admissions, and a depressed labour market.
Reed expects that the universities should aim to develop a knowledge-based workforce, and to show its economic outcomes in quantifiable language.
And a government’s funding of higher education is not going to be as usual as before. Reed argued that higher education is now in competition for funding from health, human services, criminal justice, and public safety.
Chancellor Reed made these observations around this time when the UK higher education sector gets ready for the British Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review and Lord Browne of Madingley’s appraisal of fees and funding.
At all times, I would argue that the poorest student must continue to have access to higher education, and not be denied access on the basis of inability to pay tuition fees.
The California State University system waives fees for students from families earning less than $70,000 annually.
And the California University system made this waiver a reality, notwithstanding it lost 20% of governmental funding.
Access to higher education remains the main variable in any discussion of tuition fee hike in countries where social and economic inequality becomes a growing problem.
And such countries with growing inequalities and high tuition fees in higher education, will serve to deny access to the poor and the country as a whole will remain uneducated; well, will remain educated for the elite, not the masses!
Furthermore, higher education costs need review. Political commentator Dick Morris speaking about cutting costs at York College in Pennsylvania, noted: “If colleges required their faculty to work harder (approximating the work week the rest of us find normal), held down administrative spending, and reined in borrowing for capital improvements, that these institutions could charge half of what they now do in tuition and fees.
That’s right…half! It would be one thing if students and their parents had to scrimp and save and borrow and compromise to pay the necessary costs of college.
But the plain fact is that they are doing so in order to let faculty members teach five classes a year, spending only 18-20 hours in the classroom per week!”
Dick Morris may very well have a point. The world constantly changes, becoming a global village, and so higher education will have to respond to these changes.
And in a discussion of tuition fees, we also must factor in the curriculum review variable and its correlation with national development needs.
Prem Misir

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