US: Call for a crisis commission

As America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, a distinguished American educator, Dr John Aubrey Douglass, has called on the new Obama administration to establish an exploratory Commission on Higher Education similar to that created by President Harry Truman in 1946 to avoid a projected steep post-World War II recession. But Douglass says the issue has more urgency today and a new commission would need an initial budget as well as "a larger vision to contemplate a range of options".

Douglass is a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Conditions for Admissions: Access, equity and the social contract of public universities (Stanford University Press) and writes about global trends in higher education.

In a paper released by the centre last week*, he says the commission's short-term and immediate policies could include significant "directed subsidisation" via state governments of their public higher education sectors, a big increase in grants for low-income students and expanded resources for direct loans.

It should also consider a one-time grant for middle-income students to attend a participating public or accredited private institution while for some targeted age groups federal unemployment compensation could be tied to enrolment in accredited higher education institutions. There could also be support for public college and university building programmes to provide for expanding enrolments as part of any new infrastructure investment schemes.

Long-term goals should include an assessment of the overall health of the American "still famous but strained higher education system and what national and state goals might be conjured", Douglass says.

Demand for higher education generally goes up during economic downturns, he says. Expanding higher education funding and enrolments could be as important as any other policy decisions to cope with an economic downturn, including funding for infrastructure. Yet most state and local governments are involved in a wholesale cutting of their budgets.

"Some 75% of all students in the US are in public institutions. Feeling the effects of repeated cuts in budgets, many multi-campus public systems are threatening to cap or reduce enrolments despite growing demand. Would it be smart to constrict access to higher education just when unemployment rates are potentially peaking?"

Globally, nations that resort to uncoordinated and reactionary cutting of funding, and reductions in access, will find themselves at a disadvantage for dealing with the impact of the worldwide recession, and will lose ground in the race to develop human capital suitable for the modern era, Douglass concludes.

"The post-World War II era and its economic stimulus efforts, which focused on a federal-state partnership, might prove a more valuable source of inspiration for dealing with the current economic downturn than the more interventionist New Deal," he says.

"Like the Roosevelt and later Truman presidential administrations, the incoming Obama administration should more fully integrate higher education policy into its economic recovery strategy. The US is at a critical juncture in effectively combating the severity of the economic downturn, and higher education will either be an important mitigation, or a large-scale drag on economic recovery. What is missing thus far is the national leadership that can do something proactive."

* College vs Unemployment: Expanding access to higher education is the smart investment during economic downturns www.berkeley.edu