Trusteeship Articles By Topic: Academic And Student Affairs

In response to Obama's emphasis on edu­cation in his State of the Union address in February, Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, noted that "no president in modern times has used an address to a joint session of Con­gress to make such a clear case for higher education's role in providing the solutions America needs to compete in the world economy."

The economic meltdown has hit our college campuses, and higher education is on the chopping block in state budgets, with cuts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars already approved and hundreds of millions in more cuts on the way. As veteran legislators, we have seen this story play out before in previous recessions.

How to evaluate faculty members in a way that they see as fair has long plagued education in general and higher education in particular.

Several forces suggest that this is a moment for board leaders and institutional chief executives to review their institutions' commitments to intercollegiate athletics. The recent NCAA basketball championships showcased not only one of the year's most compelling college sports events, but also the appropriate place of college sports at all competitive levels. An NCAA informational campaign, highlighted during the championships, emphasized that most of the more than 400,000 student athletes in our institutions don't pursue careers in professional sports. It was a useful reminder about the purpose of intercollegiate athletics--to produce well-educated men and women whose intercollegiate athletics experiences have helped prepare them for well-rounded and successful lives.

The first misconception is that problem drinking starts before college. That's true for some, but the effect of college on drinking is a very real one. According to our surveys, within six weeks of arriving on campus, abstention drops by 45 percent while high-risk or binge drinking goes up 114 percent. On top of this, college students outpace the drinking of their non-college-going peers--so it's not just a youth issue, it really is a college issue. And despite the myths about "healthier" European drinking, most European countries report higher rates of binge drinking among youth than the U.S. The U.S. ranks 19 of 23 countries surveyed on this measure, ahead of only Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey.

Shifting demographics, dramatically changing student bodies, and diminishing state funds now are dictating new national priorities for higher education. It's time for governing boards and their institution's administrators to wake up, have a strong cup of reality, and face these challenges head on. Many boards and institutional leaders have received presentations on projected national demographic changes over the past few decades, but given the enrollment and graduation statistics we see today, it is clear that some have not heard the alarm bells--and that much more must be done to meet the needs of the low-income and minority students who will make up a growing part of the college-age population in the near future.