State Schools

I remember sitting down with the college president of my school when I was elected student body president and having a candid and free flowing discussion about the future of higher education. Beyond remembering his amazing seer sucker suit, I remember the part of the conversation about fundraising. I remember it, because we agreed that in principal state money should never be used to build a building, because that is the role of the state. Money should flow to scholarships.

Twenty years later I don’t think there is college president around who thinks that, and I have witnessed firsthand how campuses that caught on to the reality that higher education was being privatized too late have fallen behind.

Thus, it is interesting to read “The New Public Domain At Public Universities: Less for More” in the New York Times today. It is partly interesting to me because the premise of the article is so easily accepted and there seems to be no turning of the tide. In higher education, we are all rushing to become Harvard, and many of us are ignoring students in the process. More importantly, in ignoring students we are ignoring the very people who can fix those problems that we can already see and those that will inevitably surprise us.

And if I admit it, my response is deeply personal because I worry there will be no place in college for guys like me. I was a solid B student with a B attitude and lots of dreams. I came from a solidly middle class existence, but there was no college fund, and financial aid was a big part of what paid the bills. Where does a kid like me go today? If the state flagships are becoming Ivy’s and students like me frankly don’t matter much, then where do they matter?

It also affects what I do for a living, because I want to spend more time communicating to the students like me that they matter. To recognize the dignity of each potential student I am communicating with. We can spend so much time in marketing talking about a demographic like high achieving students or students that can pay, that we seem to lose sight of communicating to students who need us as much as we need them. That's why I got in the business, if I can't remember that everyday it might be time to get out.