University of New Hampshire president says change or go under

From Associated Press writer Holly Ramer:

CONCORD, N.H.—The president of the University of New Hampshire outlined a 10-year strategic plan Tuesday he says is necessary to keep the state’s flagship public university from eventually sinking.

If the current trend continues, the typical New Hampshire family will be paying 75 percent of its disposable income to send a child to UNH by 2020, compared to 40 percent in 1978 and 60 percent today, Mark Huddleston said in a speech in Durham. That’s unsustainable, he said, and it’s time to move beyond asking families to work more to pay tuition and asking faculty and staff to simply make do with less.

Public colleges and universities around the country have been cutting costs, laying off staff and passing on much of their state budget shortfalls to students through higher tuition. But the current paradigm of higher education isn’t equipped to withstand the turbulence created by economic, political and demographic forces, Huddleston said.

“Either we change the paradigm or we go out of business,” he said. “This is not simply another year-ahead worry about UNH’s budget. It is about our ability to remain viable in the face of a gap between cost and ability to pay that grows into a true chasm when one looks ahead more than a year or two.”

For the article in the Boston Globe…