Recognizing Realities

The National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges is encouraging colleges and universities to be more transparent with their budgets. They argue that if universities want to be persuasive about funding, they must show where the money is going.

John Lombardi, President of Louisiana State, said that most universities have "obscure, confused and mucked-up budgets" in order to maintain competitiveness with other institutions. Cross-subsidization of budgets gives university leaders messaging control and allows for maneuvers "like the common practice of using undergraduate tuition to help finance research programs."

Of course, these are American post-secondary institutes, where the battle between public and private institutions is at the foreground. This makes the transparency argument all the more compelling north of the border, where a look at economic realities in depth and across the board can help ensure that public institutions are indeed serving the public.

Such a view could very well generate the sort of response that was seen at Brown University. In recognition of the "economic difficulties that many of [the] students and their families are facing", the institution is allowing students to register for classes regardless of debts they may owe the university.

Now, it's worth noting that this move may have been as much a matter of preserving enrollment as it was a matter of being sympathetic to students. But this only goes to show that a recognition of current economic realities is all that many students ask for.