Mote on Public Higher Education

University of Maryland President C. D. Mote, Jr. on “Lower Expectations for Higher Education?” in this Sunday’s Washington Post (annoying free registration required):

My guess . . . is that the large majority of universities will opt to maintain access at lower tuition rates and that, as a consequence, quality will decline. In the access-vs.-quality equation, access will eventually win the day, because policymakers can understand it and measure it, whereas quality remains an abstract idea that can be ignored until it is too late to save it. This leads to what I call the “graceful decline model,” and we find ourselves at the beginning of it today.

No easy answers here, but some strong suggestions and an excellent historical overview of the life cycles of funding models for public higher education in the US.