Student fees at nearly all colleges and universities continue to climb, and reports from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education confirm that students and their families are being saddled with increased debt due to rising tuition and other costs. A driving force in increased student costs is declining state support for higher education. For example, state appropriations declined from 45 percent of Auburn University 's operating budget in 1995-96 to 33 percent in 2002-03. Within the same seven-year period, the portion of Auburn 's budget coming from tuition and fees increased from one fifth to almost one third —a whopping 66 percent increase!

Economic recession, declining state tax revenues and shifting state priorities favoring homeland security and health care have forced many universities to institute deep spending cuts. Yet universities continue to face financial pressures from rising personnel health care costs, capital improvements and financial aid investments to attract and retain students.

Declining public confidence parallels the decline in financial support. State legislatures have adopted political and financial agendas that are either indifferent or hostile to higher education. Rightly or wrongly, parents and students believe colleges are expensive and wasteful. Institutions cannot continue to pass along their own increasing costs to parents and students through yearly, double-digit tuition and fee increases.

In light of these mounting pressures, financial viability and, for some institutions, survival may depend upon a unified campuswide effort to increase productivity. A key first step is for colleges and universities to recognize and accept the permanence of these issues. Short-term solutions for long-term problems will not be enough.

Productivity and quality cannot be separated; rather, realistic and sustainable educational innovation must be designed with both in mind. The pursuit of quality becomes productive when innovations and changes are attainable, substantive and affordable.

Institutions should implement assessment strategies that rest upon valid and reliable uses of measurement. A culture of assessment should be broadly adopted, demonstrating the impact of programs and activities that are tied back to institutional goals and quality. Instructional effort and faculty time, as well as the allocation of university resources, should be regularly measured against the attainment of desired institutional, faculty and student-learning outcomes.

Institutions should renew their focus on faculty development. Increased attention needs to be paid to mentoring and training current and future faculty for the work that is actually done — which is primarily teaching — and for an understanding of the interrelationships between cost and quality.

Technology, when used appropriately and correctly, can also enhance productivity. While not a panacea, technology can increase access to information and to students, and have other positive impact on costs and quality.

Higher education institutions can reduce costs and increase learning through curricular reform. Careful investigation can ensure that what is taught is up-to-date and relevant, as well as avoid unnecessary course repetition and redundancy. Finally, campus leaders must challenge and support their instructional staff to use effective, evidence-based classroom teaching strategies to increase learning productivity and quality.

A hopeful sign for the latter is that, after centuries using the efficient but ineffective lecture, there is an evolution away from lecturing to more active learning methods. There is strong evidence that higher education professionals, as well as accrediting bodies, state legislators, governing boards and the general public, are increasingly focusing on student learning, access, graduation, productivity, and faculty work as much or more than on research.

The good news is that colleges and universities are implementing many of these changes. Innovative approaches to increasing productivity are springing up across the globe. To continue this trend, all members of the institution — faculty, administrators, staff, students, alumni and governing boards — as well as an informed public, must accept responsibility for addressing economic and quality issues that rest at the core of the institution's survival.