Are We Wasting a Perfectly Good Crisis?
July 27th, 2009In last week’s The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson reported on a speech given by George Pernsteiner, Chancellor of the Oregon University System. In addressing attendees at the annual meeting of the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), Pernsteiner was quoted as saying “If [the crisis] is all we look at, we will have failed. Our institutions will have failed.”
Mr. Pernsteiner believes that all the solutions generated so far out of the current crisis are “Band-Aids.” He talked about the slipping position of college educated Americans versus other nations, the cutback in funding to public institutions by the states, and the growing percentage of Latinos who have been a traditionally underserved group in higher education. “More students, different students, fewer dollars, more control, and more accountability,” Mr. Pernsteiner said. “If you lay those things down end to end, you have a series of puzzles.”
