2019-08-02 09.05.03

| August 2, 2019

How to shrink a university and how to talk about it: one campus begins the process by

Bryan Alexander discusses the strategies being pursued by universities in the face of fiscal pressure: "Quality over quantity, right-sizing (from corporate America): key words for describing this strategy." But there's a disturbing aspect to this: "Will those be students from wealthier families?" The thing is, the more universities serve a small wealthy elite, the less there will be broad support for public funding. We already see this with complaints that student grants and loan forgiveness only benefit the rich. A lack of public support pushes them to contract even more. It's a downward spiral universities can correct only if they find a way to serve the wider public. Of course, my scepticism is such that I don't think many of them really have an interest in doing that. Direct link: https://bryanalexander.org/horizon-scanning/how-to-shrink-a-university-and-how-to-talk-about-it-one-campus-begins-the-process/