Chronicle Chat: Experts Discuss the Neglect of Public Colleges

A special Chronicle report, “An Era of Neglect,” examines the continuing erosion of support for public higher education in the United States. The report, published on Sunday, rejects the conventional notion that decisions about spending on higher education merely reflect the ups and downs of state-budget cycles. The report focuses instead on the small but consequential choices that a generation of lawmakers, lobbyists, and college officials have made—choices that have steadily shifted the burden of paying for a college degree from taxpayers to individual students.

Why have public colleges lost out in the fight for state dollars? What has led to the fraying of ties between higher education and both elected officials and the public? What are the consequences of that transformation?

Join a Chronicle reporter, Karin Fischer, on Wednesday, March 5, for a live chat on those issues. She will talk with James F. Barker, a former president of Clemson University; Brian D. Burnett, senior executive vice chancellor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs; and Louis Glazer, president of Michigan Future Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group for higher education.