The tuition increases now being resorted to by American schools threaten to make college education even more difficult to pay for than it already is for those middle-class families who do not have access to the financial aid that poorer families may have (“Trend of small tuition increases ends at universities,” News, Feb. 22).
Robust cost-cutting is needed throughout higher education, including in the considerable amenities that students have been allowed to expect.
One major mode of cost-cutting by schools is rarely relied upon these days: the substantial reduction of full-time faculty and administrative salaries until economic conditions improve.
Some of this effect can also be secured by raising teaching loads.
I have long believed that law schools, too, should do this kind of thing when financially troubled.
Perhaps I reflect here what I learned from professor Malcolm Sharp at the University of Chicago Law School many years ago. It is salutary to be reminded from time to time of his insistence that a man who would not teach for nothing should not be teaching at all.
