Higher Education in the Eighties: Beyond Institutional Survival

9 A final question: What might make it necessary to revise Mayhew's pre­ scriptions in the short run and how much revision will be necessary? The themes of good management, wide consultation, and the location of responsibi­ lity should be good for a long time to come. The notion that those in trouble must preserve the traditional in their own institutions should not be read as advocating adherence to the same traditions always and forever. May­ hew's best example of an institution that successfully changed its focus is Stanford, his own institution. But it did so when it was stable and not in trouble. (Perhaps Mayhew's next book should be entitled, Having Survived, Then What?) In the near future, I believe Mayhew's book will stand up very well, and that the modifications he might want to include in subsequent edi­ tions would involve refinements of the prescriptions he has given rather than entirely new ones. For example, it seems to me that good practice for endangered colleges in the future will include not only adjusting faculty composition, raising workloads, and getting in position to drop faculty determined to be redun­ dant, but also giving considerable attention to ways of looking at the careers of their faculty members that traditional colleges have heretofore not used. Mayhew says flatly, "No leaves of absence of more than two consec­ utive years should be allowed. If an individual became, for example, the U.S. Secretary of State, he or she could take two years' leave of absence and return to a tenured position— beyond that, the choice would be forced return or termination. The purpose of such policies is to ensure institutional flexibility" (p. 247). But we have few Kissingers in those institutions in such trouble that they need the vacancies for flexibility. What we have are a far larger number of people who may become surplus but are not deadwood, and who don't know how to move outside the institution as Kissinger did. If they are to be redundant, and if the institution could use their positions for other purposes, might it not be a good idea to encourage them to take leaves, and longer leaves than two years if necessary, to help them establish themselves outside the institution and eventually free their positions either to be abolished or to be filled in different ways? In fact, the rigid twoyear rule is being modified on some campuses with just this goal in mind. It will behoove those relying on Mayhew to keep an eye out for the development of additional strategies. Meanwhile, he is a reliable guide. What we now need is a lot of reliable followers. REFERENCES Brown, Ralph S., Jr. "Financial Exigency." AAUP Bulletin. (Spring 1976) 8. HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE EIGHTIES: BEYOND INSTITUTIONAL SURVIVAL Jay L. Chronister University of Virginia It is unlikely that the higher education establishment has ever entered a new decade with the trepidation with which it is entering the 1980's. The literature is replete with perceptions of the stagnant environment within which higher education will function in the next decade and prescriptions as to how institutions should deal with the malaise. Following the decades of the 1960's during which enrollments more than doubled and the 1970's when enrollment growth began to level off and was at times unsettled, forecasts of enrollment for the 1980's range from relative 10 stability to sharp decline. Parallelling the unsettling patterns in enroll­ ment have been changes in the relative economic support for higher education and the financial condition of individual colleges and universities. In recent years increased attention has been focused on the future of higher education during the 1980's in view of demographic data which indi­ cate a sharp decline in the traditional college age cohort (18-24 years of age), declining institutional financial conditions brought about by costincome problems of the 1970's, and the generally unsettled national economic situation. The literature on the future of higher education comes from a wide variety of sources and provides interesting, if not always comforting reading. From among the variety of writings, the Carnegie Foundation commen­ tary entitled More Than Survival...