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. Update: what we have today is Inside Higher Ed missing this exact point with respect to an Wall Street Journal article.
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