Tucked away in Friday's Denver Post was this little plea for flexibility from the state college presidents:
Several prominent college leaders want lawmakers to step aside and allow them to raise the price of tuition as they see fit -- especially with severe state budget cuts looming.University of Colorado president Bruce Benson -- with presidents at other schools lining up behind him -- is urging the legislature to loosen regulations that public colleges and universities have to abide by in doing business every day.
Benson believes the schools could save money and time if they could make decisions for themselves and not have to run everything through the loop of the legislature and the state Department of Higher Education.
I'm sure they could save time, but saving money doesn't seem to be much on their minds. In fact, the one thing you almost never see is any questioning or examination of how colleges are spending their money.
Note that this is the same set of college presidents who ran as from the plague from a suggestion that they get exactly that flexibility in return for forgoing state support altogether. Translation: keep funding us, but relinquish any control or right to question how we spend or what we charge.
Yeah, that's going to go over well in a recession.
The single best description of the big business that colleges have become is still, "Higher Ed, Inc.," by James B. Twitchell, published almost four years ago.
We'll be interviewing CU Regent Tom Lucero, who's already announced he's running for CD-4 in two years, tomorrow evening on our Blog Talk Radio show, and you can bet that funding and spending at our state's universities will feature prominently.
