This paper suggests that higher education's response to declining resources (budget cuts, program eliminations, retrenchment, reallocation, curriculum reform) may seem chaotic to faculty but are not confused, short-term measures that will disappear as the economy recovers. Union tactics or other responses that are merely reactive and depend on…

From current data on higher education finance, it is concluded that American colleges and universities have been extremely slow to recognize the depth of the current fiscal crisis, and that American higher education is beginning a transformation as significant as the one that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century. (MSE)