US: Decline of a Once-great System

From Sarah King Head in University World News

It may be that higher education is in greater demand during economic downturns but – after years of insidious cutbacks – American public institutions are struggling to maintain their traditionally high standards. Indeed, the Great Recession seems poised to wreak lasting damage on one of the most successful models of higher education in the world.

Higher Education Budgets and the Global Recession, a report published by the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education last month, outlines the discouraging picture. The report’s author and a senior research fellow, John Aubrey Douglass, gives a global overview and explores – in particular – the situation in the union’s wealthiest and most populous state, California.

The report notes that, while other OECD nations are actually using the recession as an excuse to improve the quality of output in the post-secondary sector and to promote innovation, the US is witnessing uncoordinated cuts in funding at the state level.

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