A recent article by Benjamin Cohen in University Business struck me as particularly relevant to us today. An excerpt follows:
In the late 1970s, the nation's economy was in a funk. Inflation soared into the double digits, tax revenues were down, unemployment was rising, and spikes in energy, food, and housing prices battered the wallets and pocketbooks of nearly every American family.
These economic obstacles did not deter the founders of what is now Western University of Health Sciences (Calif.) from soldiering on in their mission, which they developed in 1977, a scant year before the economy turned.
'Pressures nationally are causing severe deficits for many institutions of higher education,' noted Philip Pumerantz, founding president...'The result is that many colleges raise tuition and fees, while at the same time they cut educational services to students."
Pumerantz continued: "We cannot afford to gamble with the quality of our program. The choices we have are to be intimidated - to draw back and wither away--or to resolutely grow in spite of these external negative economic forces. ...We cannot stop growing at a time when growth is life itself for our College.'
This message--its call for sustained excellence, sustained achievement, and sustained growth--rings as true now as it did in 1978. ...