What is the single most important agenda item in higher education for the next administration?

C.L. Max Nikias Executive Vice President and Provost Malcolm R. Currie Chair in Technology and the Humanities University of Southern California

The next administration must strengthen federal support for the American research enterprise, which since World War II has been carried out chiefly at some 60 leading U.S. research universities.

America’s future lies in the ability to innovate while others imitate. Innovation explodes into existence most dramatically at the crossroads of distinct intellectual disciplines – and this happens best within a comprehensive research university, where the social sciences, natural sciences, medicine, creative arts, humanities and technology can all assert themselves in dynamic interrelationships. This innovation serves as the creator and destroyer of global industries and eras: It creates vast new economic sectors, businesses, jobs and products to drive the global economy. The Internet is just the most recent example. Now, we must set our faces toward the medical and biological science frontiers, as those are the likely settings for the planet's next technological and humanistic revolutions.

Given recent actions by Washington to skimp on funding for university-based research for the Department of Defense, such a level of commitment no longer exists. Industry, given its constraints and pressures, is not in a position to perform science research on its own. The next administration must help government, research universities and industry to work together in generating new discoveries and facilitating their way to the marketplace.

Given how embarrassingly poor our K-12 educational system has become, and given the economic uncertainty in our nation and our world, we would be foolish to fail to capitalize on our single greatest competitive edge: the presence of the world’s very best universities here on these shores, universities that shape future American leaders and that also draw the world’s best minds here for our long-term benefit.

Jorge Klor de Alva Senior Vice President for Academic Excellence and Director National Research Center University of Phoenix

Promoting access, affordability, accountability, and competitiveness dominate the proposals on higher education sent by the academy to the candidates. From support for community colleges to changes in immigration policy, each suggestion merits a place in the candidates' agendas, but with the exception of increases in financial aid and the simplification of the federal student-aid process none have moved to the top of their to-do lists.

What is likely to force itself on the victor's radar is the recognition that higher education-reflecting the changes in the population (read: electorate)-is undergoing the most dramatic demographic transformation it has ever experienced. A tidal wave composed of underrepresented, underprepared students with little previous exposure to the ways of the academy, needing to work to survive, and eager to see their education transformed into workplace advantages is already challenging the academy profoundly.

What this should mean for the next administration is, above all, the need to rethink the mission and regulations of the Department of Education (ED). This gatekeeper of financial aid needs to be transformed into a productive partner of all types of postsecondary institutions, private and public, for-profit and non-profit, in order to prepare millions of underrepresented students to become skilled workers and responsible citizens.

Because a significant proportion of these students will study at career colleges as well as universities that focus on the professions, ED needs to end its long-standing policy bias against these institutions. In short, the new administration must address access head on and that means leveling the playing field for career-oriented institutions, which already graduate over 500,000 students per year and soon will be filling 22% of the openings in the fastest growing occupations. To quote Senator Kennedy, "sending more of our students to college is the key to our international competitiveness in the global economy" (Press release, April 30, 2008).

John Katzman Chief Executive Officer for 2tor Founder and former CEO Princeton Review

Tuition at private colleges has tripled since 1970, even after adjusting for inflation. Tuition is now 75% of median household income. This is not only a problem for families and policy-makers ("Why are we working so hard to prepare more students for college if we can't afford to actually send them?"), but presents a fundamental threat to many of the colleges themselves.

The rise of the for-profit universities shines a light on some of the forces driving these increases. Most classes at non-profits are now taught by adjunct faculty; Richard Vedder and others have pointed out that for-profit schools pay adjuncts up to twice as much as do not-for-profits, and yet still manage to spend less than half as much to educate their students. The reason for this apparent discrepancy is the money spent by not-for-profits on research: Vedder argues that fewer schools should do it, and that costs should be transparent to students ("55% of your tuition pays for instruction, while 45% pays for the research we do").

While it's impossible to argue against transparency, there is an underlying problem that transparency alone won't solve. In the past century there have been no gains in the efficiency of classroom teaching-it's still a professor in a room in front of some number of students-while almost everything else has become far less expensive to produce. There is no way that the cost of education, whether K12 or college, can grow at or below an inflation rate that incorporates numerous inefficiencies all along the supply chain.

The only way to control instructional costs is to bring more programs online, and find ways to mix classroom and online courses in both undergraduate and graduate programs. The challenge will be for this migration online to enhance rather than dilute instructional quality, even as it lowers the cost of delivering that instruction. Simply using broadband as a broadcast medium won't accomplish this. However, with the thoughtful incorporation of the tools and methods of social networking and the important lessons learned from the "informal" pedagogies of wikis and instructables, I believe that online courses can surpass classroom instruction not just in efficiency but in student satisfaction as well.

An additional benefit of an online strategy is that it will help US universities compete internationally. Since 9/11, the administration has made it much harder for students to come to the US to study, and countries like Singapore, Dubai and Australia have become more effective competitors for the global student. A committed, creative move online should be married to an aggressive marketing strategy worldwide.

Dr. Sidney Harman Founder and Chairman Emeritus Harman International Industries Inc

Others will write about the enormous cost of higher education and the relatively unsatisfactory performances by so many of our students, compared to those from other nations. Those are valid subjects, of course, but I wish to emphasize the following:

Higher education is flaccid. For the most part, it continues the tradition of specialization-training students in one or another narrow, concentrated discipline. As a result, it, too often, produces graduates with little interest beyond making a living in that specialty.

There is nothing wrong with making a living. We must all do it, but if the next President promotes the view that higher education should encourage the innovation and productivity that grows out of a multi-disciplined approach, he will be dealing with a most-pressing problem.

I have often said, "Get me some poets as managers." Yes, it is meant to be provocative but it really argues that poets are our original systems thinkers and that systems thinking and systems processing produces optimal managerial results.

I urge the new President to find the way to get the bureaucrats' strangle on education undone. Yes, we need competent managers of education, but we also need teachers focused on learning and epistemology. It is they who will encourage students to develop a facility for critical judgment, and critical judgment is the ultimate expression of an educated mind.

If the new President brings that focus, he will honor the term, "higher education."