As the Conference letter to the Louisiana Postsecondary Education Review Commission (you can see it elsewhere on the website) points out, spiraling higher ed costs make change unavoidable.  In our cultural climate, the usual response to financial exigency is “stronger managment.”  The problem is that response almost always translates into further weakening of shared governance.  The problem with that is that the faculty, those who actually do scholarly work, are the only ones who know quality in that area.  The managers focus on headcounts of various kinds, like completion rates, ignoring what is in or has been added to the heads they feverishly count.

What is needed are faculty views about how administrative bloat and mission creep can be avoided. About how the mix of public, private not-for-profi and for profit educational institutions can avoid unproductive duplication, or worse, the degradation of education in accordance with Gresham’s law…the triumph of “bad money” over good money.  WE NEED TO HEAR FROM YOU.