How Low Can You Go?

A revealing portrait of what happens when the laudable goals of low tuition and universal access collide with an economic downturn can be seen in Paul Fain's latest "Management and Money" piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Using Florida as an example, Fain describes well the rather desperate struggle educational institutions enter when the mantra of doing more with less reaches its logical limit.

The Florida case study could be instructive for independent schools, since many of these are now pondering how to attenuate tuition increases while still preserving quality.  As with the effects of starvation on a living organism, excess fat is the first to go, leading to the mistaken belief that the cloud of Draconian cost-cutting actually has a silver lining.  But, to continue the starvation analogy, muscle follows fat and eventually the entire organism begins shutting down.  Compensatory mechanisms are, as intended, short-term fixes.  Quality (of life or of education) eventually suffers.

To be sure, there is no doubt fat in the independent school world.  But cutting alone will not forever address the dilemmas posed by escalating tuition, any more than selling off acreage of the family farm solved financial issues for rural families.  We are going to need a whole new model of educational delivery before long.