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Economic hardship and uncertainty dominates the discussion of American higher education these days. Since about 80 percent of American students attend public institutions, much of the conversation has centered on their plummeting state aid and soaring student fees. With a hike in student fees by a third in one year, California's situation has been particularly newsworthy.
Media attention has also focused on well-endowed private research universities, where the drop in stock market values unfortunately coincided with a rising dependence on endowments to augment operating budgets and an increasing reliance on alternative assets such as hedge funds; meanwhile, relatively illiquid investments constrained the amount of cash that institutions had to meet payroll and other obligations. Harvard, the most frequently cited example, is hardly unique.
But what about the rest of us? How have hundreds of small private colleges with smaller enrollments and lower endowments coped? While it is impossible to draw definitive generalizations about such a diverse group, I have observed at least a few broad trends. Here I will focus on the initial fears in fall 2008, the facts as they emerged through 2009 and into 2010, and selected responses that seemed most effective.
Kent John Chabotar is president and professor of political science at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, a private institution of 2800 students with an endowment of about $55 million. He is also a senior faculty member at the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education. His previous positions have included vice president and treasurer at Bowdoin College, lecturer on finance at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and associate professor of management at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
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