WASHINGTON – America has the “very best in the world” when it comes to higher education, but rising tuition and increased selectivity in admissions threaten to undermine the nation’s historical commitment to equity and opportunity.
That was the heart of the message that computer software magnate and philanthropist Bill Gates delivered Tuesday at an event to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the Morrill Act that created America’s public land-grant universities.
“Fewer of those who want to attend universities are getting in, and those who do get in pay more,” Gates said during his keynote speech at the 2012 Association of Public Land-grant Universities (APLU) Convocation, themed, “150 Years of the Morrill Act: Advancing the Legacy.”
“This is a big challenge,” Gates said. “It can’t continue if we all have a goal of fulfilling that mission of providing broad education.”
Gates blamed rising tuition on the fiscal crisis that has led cash-strapped states to slash spending on higher education. He blamed increased selectivity in admissions on the controversial annual college rankings put out by US News & World Report, which he and other critics have said induce institutions to favor admittance to higher-performing students to bolster their status within the rankings framework.
“We have to look at how we can reverse both spirals,” Gates said of rising college costs and increased selectivity. “We have to let in as many people as can be successfully educated and they have to get that education at the lowest possible costs.”
Gates spent much of his speech extolling the virtues and benefits of America’s public land-grant universities, ushered into existence amid the turmoil of the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act on July 2, 1862. The colleges originally focused largely on agriculture and the “mechanical arts.”
