With no shortage of economic challenges, state budgets are under increasing pressure, providing a gloomy forecast for funding of public higher education. At the same time, a narrative of the “failure” of the higher education system that has been around for some time seems to be surging. Ideologically based clashes roil campus communities, creating issues of public safety. External political pressures for greater control/accountability threaten the independence of America’s colleges and universities.
Turns out the 1930s were a tough time for universities.
One of the leading critics of American higher education then was Maynard Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago. One of the leading advocates was Abraham Flexner of Princeton. Despite different diagnoses on the health of America’s colleges and universities in the 1930s, they agreed on the therapy: a focus on unlocking and developing human creativity.
From the struggle of higher education in those days arose a sustained period of innovation. Community colleges were founded to help address literacy. College enrollments surged with the GI Bill. America expanded regional comprehensive universities during the Space Race with the Soviets, when we realized that no talent could be left on the sidelines. And “distance” education programs eventually evolved into vastly different beasts – online universities. Each added a new layer to an onion that began with Lincoln signing the Morrill Act and thus opening the doors of education to the working class. Over the span of that century, the percentage of the American population with a college degree increased more than 10-fold, with college enrollments climbing by an even greater percentage.
But this dramatic surge in enrollments corresponded with changes in how America funded its health care system, leaving state legislators little choice but to allow tuition to creep upward, given a downward trend of state funding per enrolled student. Previously, state taxpayers paid the majority of the cost per student, allowing students with no significant resources to enroll and enter the skilled workforce. Over the period of the 1980s to today, the reality of who actually pays for public higher education has inverted, with students and their families now paying approximately 75% of the cost of a college education and the rest of us as taxpayers covering the rest; essentially flipping the ratios from when many of us “paid our way” through school. This increase in personal cost came during a time of tightening labor markets for folks without a college degree, and it has mixed dangerously with the swirling politics of today’s America to create an image of “educated elites,” feeding the narrative of “failure” of our higher education system. All of which is set against a backdrop of ideologically based campus turmoil, challenging state budget pictures, and external political calls for greater control/accountability of America’s colleges and universities.
I’m always skeptical when I hear times are unprecedented. Perhaps I read too much Ecclesiastes as a kid.
What’s different today is that the ending of this chapter hasn’t yet been written. In fact, we’re all busy writing it. It’s my belief, perhaps backed by the eternal optimism of every Chicago Cubs fan, that universities will survive this. And it’s also my belief that we face an upcoming period of great educational innovation. The tools we leave the next generation, in neuroscience, physics, AI, political science, and polling (OK – kidding on that one, just wanted to see if you were still reading….) are nothing short of miraculous. And as we understand more about human learning, our educational systems are switching from fact transfer to – wait for it, straight out of the 1930s – unlocking and developing human creativity.
I have no idea what a university will look like 50 years from now. And I wouldn’t even guess at the business model. But what we have today is pretty unrecognizable from the 1970s. Such seems to be the nature of such things.
But I also find it difficult to believe that 50 years from now, groups of dedicated, focused experts in their fields won’t be making new discoveries. That they won’t be applying them to improve life within our societies, affecting people who never set foot on a college campus (whatever that may look like then). That students – from all backgrounds and walks of life, armed with their talent and their motivation – won’t be coming to our campuses to “sharpen up whatever wit they may have obtained by inheritance, or environment, or both; (just as) a lumberman, going into the forest to fell trees, should wisely hold his axe against the grindstone.”
And none of that will be new. The last sentence was written in 1928 in an essay on whether college was worthwhile enough to survive.
Next fall, the campuses of the CSU System will welcome what we think will be one of the largest entering classes in history. Some will come from homes where their parents want them to have the same college experience they had. Some will come from homes where their parents see a college education as a path to the better future they want for their children. Some will come despite every obstacle that has been placed before them, purely and simply because this is what they want to do. They’ll come from farms and ranches and the urban corridor. From across the country and around the world. They’ll represent every race and religion and background imaginable. And their attendance will be possible, despite changes in the business model, because of the investment of previous generations of Coloradans. People who wanted to open doors of opportunity. Elected officials who made difficult choices about the future as well as the present. Because of people who recognize that whatever challenges the future brings, they’ll likely be solved by the unlocking and developing of human creativity.
But regardless of the path by which they get here, they’ll learn. They’ll learn in classrooms, yes, but they’ll learn from each other. They’ll think through what they’ve been told to believe, they’ll learn to weigh different ideas, how to defend ideas they believe in, how to abandon them when they become indefensible. They’ll learn to live and work with people who see the world very differently than they do. They’ll be surprised that some of these people will become their friends, oddly holding little in common (beyond the massive link of humanity we all share). They’ll learn during a time of no small uncertainty about the future. But learn they will. And then they’ll graduate and make contributions to society via the lives they’ll live. Later on, most of them will say that college was one of the single largest influences on who they became as people, and how they came to see the wider world around them.
Over the quarter century when it’s been my privilege to observe entering classes gathered for convocation, I’ve come to see each of those students as a book. A book whose next big chapter is about to be written. I, for one, can’t wait to read the books their lives will write.
– tony
Tony Frank, Chancellor
CSU System
This message was included in Chancellor Frank’s June 2025 newsletter. Subscribe to the Chancellor’s monthly letter.