Comments on: Governors are vital to making college affordable http://www.makingopportunityaffordable.org/2005/10/10/49/ A Discussion on the Rising Costs of Higher Education Fri, 8 Aug 2008 18:36:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 By: Jonathan Brown http://www.makingopportunityaffordable.org/2005/10/10/49/#comment-7 Jonathan Brown Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:29:14 +0000 http://www.makingopportunityaffordable.org/2005/10/10/49/#comment-7 If one gets over the hyperbole in the comments there is a more fundamental set of questions that needs to be addressed - namely how do we assure that the broadest range of students has the broadest range of opportunities. In the last two decades we have changed the intergenerational bargain that we have traditionally offered to students. We cannot think of price alone - college costs really is a much broader issue. Ultimately students and their families and society are making an investment - we need to think about the cost and price issues in higher education as a set of investments. The more we address this in a single lens of areas like access or price - the less well we will do in serving the needs of this generation of students. The cost issue is not just an American phenomenom. The recent survey by the Economist on higher education found that a vast majority of the best research universities in the world are located in the United States - for example - among the top twenty - seventeen are in the US. The Economist concluded that the success of the American system is based on the very nature that our collection of colleges and universities is not a system. The more that the discussion of costs tries to solve to one solution the more we will be getting away from the essence that has made us the best. If one gets over the hyperbole in the comments there is a more fundamental set of questions that needs to be addressed - namely how do we assure that the broadest range of students has the broadest range of opportunities. In the last two decades we have changed the intergenerational bargain that we have traditionally offered to students. We cannot think of price alone - college costs really is a much broader issue. Ultimately students and their families and society are making an investment - we need to think about the cost and price issues in higher education as a set of investments. The more we address this in a single lens of areas like access or price - the less well we will do in serving the needs of this generation of students.

The cost issue is not just an American phenomenom. The recent survey by the Economist on higher education found that a vast majority of the best research universities in the world are located in the United States - for example - among the top twenty - seventeen are in the US. The Economist concluded that the success of the American system is based on the very nature that our collection of colleges and universities is not a system. The more that the discussion of costs tries to solve to one solution the more we will be getting away from the essence that has made us the best.

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