A decade ago, the thought of a company such as Lego getting involved in higher education would have been scoffed at by Danish academics. Private universities are not currently permitted, and public ones cannot charge tuition fees. However, the country's government is preparing a change to the law to allow private universities, and its academics are hacked off.
Laura L. Anglin, president of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, in New York, describes the budget troubles facing New York's private institutions—and makes the case for how those institutions can bolster the state's economic competitiveness.
Nonprofit colleges in financial trouble have options other than merging, shutting down, or, as was the case for institutions like the College of Santa Fe and Daniel Webster, Kendall, and Waldorf Colleges, selling themselves to for-profit higher-education companies.
In a state where higher education is dominated by flagships and football, Southwestern University is a bit of an outlier. Just about 30 minutes away from the University of Texas at Austin, it has only 1,300 students, all of them undergraduates. Football there is intramural—and flag.
A group of leading independent schools is studying plans to set up an elite private university modelled on American liberal arts colleges, which concentrates on high-quality teaching for undergraduates rather than research.
The company's foundation aims to help first-generation students graduate in two ways: through small private colleges and via minority-serving institutions.