Public Opinion And College Presidents Disagree That Colleges Can Be more Efficient

Guest blogger : Will Doyle, Assistant Professor , Vanderbilt University (w.doyle@vanderbilt.edu)

As state budgets continue to suffer and funding for higher education continues to shrink, it’s worth noting that the leaders of institutions of higher education and the public don’t see the problem in the same way.

Some of the most recent public opinion data comes from Immerwahr’s “Squeeze Play 2010” report for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and Public Agenda. The big finding from this report is that most people think that colleges care more about the bottom line than they do about students. Most important, however, may be that 60% of the public agrees that colleges could accept many more students without raising prices or hurting quality. There’s also a general perception that many qualified students do not have the opportunity to go to college, coupled with a sense that college is necessary for a young person to succeed in life. So the public thinks that college is necessary, that many qualified people can’t go and that colleges could probably do more with less.

College presidents seem to think that there’s no possible way they could do more with less. Immerwahr interviewed more than two dozen college presidents, the results of which are in a report titled “The Iron Triangle”. The iron triangle for presidents consists of costs, quality and access. The presidents Immerwahr interviewed are convinced that changes in one part of that triangle must inevitably affect another. So, for instance, an increase in access without a concomitant increase in costs will result in a decrease in quality. College presidents, in contrast with the general public, seem to think that there’s no possible way to have either more access or higher quality without increasing costs.