ABSTRACT

Earlier in 1970, Business Week magazine anticipated Cheit's findings in a three-page report on the financial crisis on the campus. Referring to the efforts of two small colleges to avoid fiscal disaster, the report said that such incidents, "obscured by the daily barrage of headlines about campus unrest, signal a financial crisis in higher education that is taking on alarming dimensions." Testifying before the House Special Subcommittee on Education in March 1970, Clark Kerr said that the financial squeeze on higher education was probably having its greatest impact on the large research universities and the small liberal arts colleges. In response to the tightening financial situation, colleges began cutting budgets and effecting economies wherever possible. Arguing against student-aid programs, they contended that such programs are "subject to the annually shifting political and economic priorities of governments and private lenders and are undependable means to aid low- and middle-income students."