No doubt higher education’s culture wars have been restoked in the last two months, and it would be foolish for college presidents to ignore the increasingly critical, even treacherous, political environment their institutions now face. But free speech battles, donor revolts, legislative scrutiny and student activism are not the higher education threats with which most presidents should be most concerned. At the vast majority of colleges, even some elites, the biggest problem is a more fundamental one, common to most enterprises: how to operate in a financially responsible way. At America’s colleges, this means reducing the structural budget deficits that are driving up costs and harming students in the process.
