A chilling deluge poured from black clouds above the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in mid January. The college is Americas second-oldest university, chartered in 1693 by King William III and Queen Mary II.The mood indoors matched the weather. State appropriations for higher education, which depends on tax revenue, have plummeted — down 15 percent since October in the case of William and Mary — and interest from endowments has fallen even faster. With their parents suffering layoffs or business reversals, more students are likely to need financial aid. And donors, with their own investments drying up, have less to give. We really are a good case study for the perfect storm, says the universitys president, Taylor Reveley, rain coursing down outside the windows of his office. And were still early in feeling the full force. Although some seem to hope they can ride it out, the recession has now hit US universities. They have lined up behind banks and car manufacturers asking for money from the federal government, so far without response. They want billions of dollars for science and engineering staff, research into energy alternatives and infrastructure improvement. And they have started to cut spending. William and Mary has delayed the implementation of a 3 percent pay rise for all staff, for example, and has cancelled some journal subscriptions. But the sectors financial leaders warn that this downturn will affect higher education in ways that require far more drastic action than trimming at the margins or asking Washington for handouts. The nature of this challenge is so much greater than any of us have seen in higher education, says Stephen Golding, vice president for finance at Cornell University. If were going to continue to teach, if were going to continue to do research, if were going to continue to provide students access to our institutions, we have to stop doing other things that dont support the core mission. Golding and other leaders predict that American higher education will have to change its whole way of doing business — and many see that as an opportunity. The phrase I hear people around here use is, dont waste a crisis, says Golding. Lets go after things weve known are among our inefficiencies and make them better. One way of doing this is to reduce duplication, be it in e-mail systems in different departments, facilities management or administrative offices. Learning to share resources among departments and even universities is another option. You get into a group and go to Microsoft and say, whats your best deal? suggests Golding. A national cull of support staff, whose numbers have swollen from three for every student in 1976 to more than six today, is also likely. I expect to see some major paring in what you might call the bureaucratic armies, says Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist who studies higher education. New construction is also threatened, with even Harvard announcing that it is reconsidering the scale and pace of a…
