The New Balancing Act in the Business of Higher Education

It would be badly wrongheaded to assert that colleges and universities were until recent years somehow above the unruly fray of commerce. High-minded notions of the public good, with the accompaniment of guidance and support by governmental and spiritual organizations, have indeed long been elements in higher education, indeed of learning more generally, but the first of the modern universities were market-driven in the most basic, foundational sense (Kerr 1993).1 The organizational form of the modern university, now largely taken for granted, originated not from the highest reaches of government and church, with the inevitable accompaniment of lofty rhetoric, but rather from old-fashioned demand at ‘the ground level. ’ In these early exemplars, adequate revenues from paying customers were essential for survival. Perhaps inevitably, this simple, ground level marketplace came to be supplanted by larger forces. Church and state gradually came to be more intimately involved in subsidizing the emerging institutions. In the US especially, other actors also became financially involved. Largesse from businesses, charitable organizations, alumni, and friends enabled institutions to persist, prosper, and also to price low, despite rising costs