EAST LANSING, Mich. — Higher education in the United States is under attack – and there are no easy answers for what the future holds, according to the dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education.
Donald Heller, a nationally known expert in higher education policy, said colleges and universities are going to bear the brunt of difficult fiscal, labor market and policy issues in the years to come.
“It is quite possible that state appropriations for higher education are not going to recover after this recession as they have in the past,” Heller said. “Publicly-funded colleges and universities will have to develop innovative solutions to reduce costs, shift revenues and deliver effective programs using new models and technologies.”
Heller said Michigan public universities are worse off than the rest of the nation, having experienced funding declines of more than 26 percent since 2001.
“The numbers get even more alarming when we look at them on a per-student basis,” Heller said. “Michigan appropriates only $2,992 per student today, or about 60 percent of the national average. Nobody knows just where this number is going to be down the road, but we are quite a bit worse off than the rest of the nation.”
Colleges and universities are responding with the tools at their disposal, including:
- Personnel changes (e.g., layoffs, freezes, furloughs and a heavier reliance on adjunct faculty)
- Operational shifts (e.g., budget cuts, increases in employee health care contributions)
- Revenue adjustments (e.g., tuition or enrollment increases, aid reductions, fundraising)
“One model that many institutions are considering would differentiate tuition for students depending on their area of study,” Heller said. “High-cost programs like science, technology or engineering would cost more for students than lower-cost majors in areas like the humanities.”
Despite these concerns, Heller remained optimistic about the impact of current work on the practice of educating postsecondary students.
“There are many things we can be doing to improve access and achievement, if we continue to work together,” Heller said. “The Lumina Foundation has established a goal of 60 percent degree attainment by 2025. If we coordinate our efforts, focus on providing support for at-risk students and build a more seamless path for students from pre-kindergarten through their college careers, we can increase our current growth rate and get there.”
Heller spoke on the issue recently before a group of educators and policymakers in Lansing. See his presentation here.