This time of the year offers many opportunities for personal reflection.  For those of us raised in the Judeo-Christian faiths, the celebration of the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the birth of Jesus are events that mark centuries of traditions and religious faith.  For people of these and other faiths, the end of the year and the beginning of the New Year on January 1 are times to celebrate the passage of time and to mark new opportunities in the year ahead.

In America, we are transitioning the leadership of our government which we have done every four or eight years since 1792.  This year, the voters wanted change.  The Obama administration has promised change while facing the formidable challenges associated with stepping into the leadership role of the world’s largest economic engine during a global and domestic economic crisis which is unprecedented since the Great Depression.  By all accounts, the situation has not reached its bottom and it will be years before we climb out of a trough created by our own hands.   Even worse is the knowledge that many of the “solutions” may be politically inspired and not the “best” solutions for the situation.

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Graphic from Measuring Up 2006, a publication of The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, showing the increasing costs of various consumer goods and services in relation to the Consumer Price Index.

As a recipient of financial aid in the 1970’s when I attended Duke and Tulane, I can relate to the continual and ongoing debate about the affordability of college.  I was fortunate to have parents who believed in the benefits of higher education and who told me to “go to the best school that you can get into and we’ll figure out how to pay whatever the financial aid office says that we have to pay.”  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Fast forward a few decades and it’s difficult to pick up a newspaper or magazine without reading about the issues surrounding the affordability of higher education.  The subject is complex, solutions are complex, and many people have opinions on the issue.  Robert Bliwise writes an article in the July-August issue of Duke Magazine that articulates the view from his vantage point as a professor of public policy.  There are a few highlights that I’ll mention and will certainly resurface in a few ongoing pieces about the financial aid debate.

Bliwise begins with a description of a book published twenty years ago by Charles Clotfelter (Duke ’69) called Buying the Best.  Clotfelter, a public policy professor at Duke, examined the way selective colleges and universities competed for the best students and awarded aid.  Students weren’t price sensitive about an elite education in those days and financial aid was growing faster than any other area of campus spending.  In the article, Clotfelter discusses the issues between need-based aid and merit aid.  Clotfelter defends need-based aid as “a guarantor of the brand,” and states that the value of the institution would be diminished if only the affluent could attend.  I agree, personally and professionally.  Bliwise quotes Duke’s undergraduate admissions director, Christoph Guttentag, as stating that there’s now a competition between the “haves and the have-mores” in demonstrating the social contract balancing the affluent and the needy.  Bliwise provides a list of thirty-six “elite” schools that have created more generous financial-aid packages for families with incomes ranging from $40,000-$100,000 per year.

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Bob Zemsky, co-author of Remaking the American University: Market-Smart and Mission-Centered led a session for Presidents and Trustees of colleges and universities at the 2007 Higher Learning Commission annual meeting in Chicago.  At the time, he was a member and participant on the Spellings Commission and he provided the audience with an update on the Commission’s findings from his perspective.  I was pleasantly surprised when he did not take the side of many in Higher Education who prefer that the government and corporations leave the accountability issue alone.

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