On June 26, Paul Basken reported in the Chronicle that Bob Berdahl, the president of the Association of American Universities, had recommended to Senator Lamar Alexander that the United States might not be able to afford our current number of research universities. Berdahl’s position is that a “fewer but better” policy would be worth considering, and his input is apparently behind the request of Alexander (and three other lawmakers) to the National Academies to “Study and report on the ‘top 10 actions’ that the government and research universities could take to maintain the quality of the universities and ensure the nation’s economic growth.” Berdahl, whose AAU represents the self-selected leading research universities in the country, admitted to Basken that “the decentralization of the American system of higher education could make it hard to plan a reduction in the number of research universities.”

“Impossible” seems to me a better word than “hard.” I cannot imagine a process (similar to those in Germany and the United Kingdom) to seriously evaluate and compare research programs across American universities. Start with the AAU, which prides itself on selectivity in membership – would it be capable of reducing its membership by 50 percent? Are all 60 AAU member institutions remotely equal to one another? Are we dealing with a “last man in” problem? I don’t see any way to imposed quality control (which is really what Berdahl is suggesting) in this country, given the lack of federal (that is, central) control over higher education. Our only existing mechanism for achieving some modicum of national control is through funding decisions, but even these are in the end subject to political constraints. What would happen if the NSF and NIH decided to restrict their funding to the top 10 institutions in each of the fields they funded? Does anyone think their budgets would pass in Congress the next year?

As Berdahl recognizes, the split between public and privately-funded research universities also makes uniform national policies a very difficult goal. But even within the so-called “public” sphere, state government has less control than one would think — the states now contribute, on average, such a small percentage of the annual operating budgets of public universities that their leverage has dramatically declined. Berdahl recognizes this, and suggests that in California, at least, the answer might be in “opening enrollment to larger numbers of out-of-state students,” since they can be assessed much higher tuition fees. Many state universities are considering just such a move — which will of course make them less accessible for state residents. Such moves are likely to make an already perilous situation for public education much worse.

We seem, once again, to be impaled upon a conflict between elitism and democracy. I think that is a false dichotomy. If I am correct, the leaders of the research universities will have to become more adept in making the case for democratic elitism. If their rationale rests entirely upon higher education’s importance for the “economic growth,” I think the sector is headed for even deeper trouble than it is now in.