"NEW YORK, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- 'The most successful institutions will not be those that ride out the economic downturn by returning to the status quo,' said Madeleine d'Ambrosio, vice president and executive director of the TIAA-CREF Institute, in opening this year's TIAA-CREF Institute conference, 'Smart Leadership in Difficult Times.' More than 150 higher education leaders from around the country were gathered for this timely forum.
Colleges and universities will be forced to 'focus on enrollment, affordability and fund-raising' added d'Ambrosio, who also cited a Moody's report predicting the harshest effects of the economic downturn are likely still ahead for higher education."
The result: a "new normal" for colleges and universities, said keynote speaker David Gergen, professor of public service at Harvard's JFK School of Government and a director of its Center for Public Leadership. Gergen is also editor at large for US News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN.
"For universities the new normal means the budget crunch is not going away," Gergen said. Seventy percent of all U.S. college and university students go to public institutions using state funding from budgets so stressed that "more than half of the states anticipate deficits for fiscal year 2011," added Muriel Howard, president, AASCU. "We're not going to spend our way out of this budget crunch," Gergen said. "We're not going to tax our way out of it. We're going to have to innovate our way out of it as a country."
