Douglas Andrews: Is the Collegiate Death Spiral Coming Soon?
Our nation's colleges and universities are long overdue for a fiscal reckoning.
For those of us on the Right, it’s about time. Our colleges and universities have for years grown unchecked by free-market principles, fully enabled by a corrupt deal between spiraling tuition costs and endless government subsidies. And all this while serving as leftist indoctrination camps for our children.
It’s a noxious bubble that can’t burst soon enough.
“Colleges and universities were already facing mounting financial pressure,” writescolumnist, scholar, and university professor Steven Hayward, “because enrollment is steadily declining and certain to get much worse in the coming decade (the result of falling birthrates back at the time of the housing crash in 2008-09). Add to this the financial hit they are taking right now because of the virus, on top of the huge loss this year of foreign students who typically pay full tuition rates and subsidize other students, and a large number of colleges and universities face a serious risk of insolvency.”
Add to these pressures the reduction in enrollment of foreign students (they pay top dollar for an American college education), the cancellation of this year’s fall sports season (football, with its ticket sales, lucrative TV contracts, and licensing deals, is the meal ticket for nearly every other university sport), and the decision by many students to put off college at least temporarily, but perhaps permanently, and we can see why even Stanford has found it necessary to cut 11 of its sports programs altogether.
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For those of us on the Right, it’s about time. Our colleges and universities have for years grown unchecked by free-market principles, fully enabled by a corrupt deal between spiraling tuition costs and endless government subsidies. And all this while serving as leftist indoctrination camps for our children.
It’s a noxious bubble that can’t burst soon enough.
“Colleges and universities were already facing mounting financial pressure,” writescolumnist, scholar, and university professor Steven Hayward, “because enrollment is steadily declining and certain to get much worse in the coming decade (the result of falling birthrates back at the time of the housing crash in 2008-09). Add to this the financial hit they are taking right now because of the virus, on top of the huge loss this year of foreign students who typically pay full tuition rates and subsidize other students, and a large number of colleges and universities face a serious risk of insolvency.”
Add to these pressures the reduction in enrollment of foreign students (they pay top dollar for an American college education), the cancellation of this year’s fall sports season (football, with its ticket sales, lucrative TV contracts, and licensing deals, is the meal ticket for nearly every other university sport), and the decision by many students to put off college at least temporarily, but perhaps permanently, and we can see why even Stanford has found it necessary to cut 11 of its sports programs altogether.
More
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