Archive for the 'Expanding capacity' Category

As many of you know, Bob Dickeson retired from Lumina Foundation last December. It was Bob who envisioned creating this space to discuss college costs—especially as we approached our November 2005 summit in Washington, D.C. Since we launched this site last September, more than 120 of you have subscribed to this blog, indicating your interest in this discussion, and many others have offered comments to Bob and guest bloggers. So, I’m going to pick up where Bob left off, and I hope that you’ll join me.

We found Richard Colvin, director of the Hechinger Institute, taking notes at last week’s national summit on college costs. We told him we have a blog, and asked him to offer his observations. Here is his contribution, which we think is a terrific overview of the day’s events:

The most striking aspect of Lumina Foundation’s national summit on college costs on Nov. 2 was the bracingly honest conversations. The presenters did not minimize the challenges — educational, demographic, political and economic — that lie ahead for the U.S. and its colleges and universities. Nor did they shy away from acknowledging that not only have colleges and universities done little to address these challenges, they have little incentive to do so in the current seller’s education market. Except, of course, if they expect to survive over the long term.

I first became aware of summits and summitry when I was growing up and John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State (yes, I am that old). Dulles practiced summitry during the Eisenhower administration when, as a nation, we had a common enemy and words like “brinksmanship” and “massive retaliation” crept into the national vocabulary.

Today, former adversaries are now allies, and the threats to our future are somewhat less nuclear.

Today, the threat we care about most at Lumina Foundation, however, is the tragic loss of human potential.

This week, The Chronicle of Higher Education is highlighting solutions to the rising cost of college, presented in a Lumina Foundation publication, Course corrections: Experts offer solutions to the college cost crisis.