Starving the Beast - commentary on declining public support for higher education in the U.S.A.

A new documentary tackles the question that most higher education institutions in the U.S.A. have faced for a number of years - the shrinking public support and resulting increased cost of higher education. The documentary, Starving the Beast, will hopefully begin to raise question about the conservative movement's targeting of higher education as being too costly, inefficient, and irrelevant. The U.S.A. prospered mightily from its investment in low-cost higher education in the 1960s and 1970s only to withdraw this support in the last part of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. Educators in the U.S.A. and around the world should look at the question of public funding for higher education very carefully. To not be careful would allow elite higher education to continue to benefit only the already privileged and could result in cutting off the human capacity building so critical to private and public welfare.