According to a recent survey, 55 percent of Board members at colleges and universities across the country think that the cost of college is too high. But when asked if their own college or university was too expensive, 62 percent said no (http://agb.org/reports/2012/2012-agb-survey-higher-education-governance). Let’s face reality: college is too expensive for most families, and Whittier is no exception. The challenge is how to preserve the quality of education at schools like Whittier at less cost to students. Whittier is attacking this challenge in multiple ways: (1) attracting more financial aid, scholarship, and fellowship support, often through gifts from generous alumni who tell us they could not have earned a Whittier education without the aid they received; (2) deriving more of the revenue needed to run the College from sources other than students’ tuition (e.g., running summer camps and educational programs, and renting conference space); (3) scouring administrative and academic budgets for ways to economize, and (4) continuing to urge that education is a public good, which should be supported by all of the citizens of this nation and state (please join me in asking Congress to extend tax incentives for charitable giving to colleges and universities). As I said at the beginning of this post, we do not want to sacrifice the quality of the education we offer to save on costs, but there are many other ways to achieve some relief for our students and we’re determined to succeed. Sticking our heads in the sand and saying “there is no problem at our school” is not a viable solution.
