College for All?

There are several articles (Salon, NYT) in the last week or so describing the new playing field in post-secondary education. Namely, private colleges (their endowments shrunken like dried fruit) are very excited by candidates who can pay full fare. If that sounds a tad old fashioned- well perhaps it is. Old fashioned in an elitist, whites only kind of way.

What should be interesting is how the public universities react to this. Each year the best public institutions are flooded with applicants. As more qualified, but non-rich, applicants set their sights on Cal instead of Harvard (or even Drexel) the competition will increase. That will have a knock-on effect into the next tier of schools (Davis, KU, etc) where those students who were on the back edge get tossed back into the smaller state schools.

At the end of this little food chain are the community colleges and third tier state schools. What they lack in name recognition they make up for in value. Community Colleges in California are $20/credit, unsurpassed value in America.

Now, the real question is whether state governments (and the Feds) will step forward to maintain or even increase the number of opportunities for students in the coming years as Cornell and Yale wait for their broker statements to recover.