WMU CFO PREDICTS PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES WILL GO PRIVATE

Robert Beam, vice president of finance for Western Michigan University, predicted in a recent interview with the Business Review that Michigan’s public universities will eventually become private schools.  The driving factor behind Beam’s prediction is that “defunding” of the state’s public universities is not a recent phenomenon.  He notes that in 1965 taxpayers funded 75% of the collective public university budget.  Today that figure is half that, with schools like the University of Michigan being public in name only.  Taxpayers fund less than fifteen percent of U-M’s annual budget (with parents being suckered into picking up much of the rest with inflated tuition bills).

Beam thinks voters will support continued de facto privatization of our public universities for two reasons.  One, they put a higher priority on public spending for elementary and secondary schools, Medicaid, and other social programs.  Two, they put a higher priority on those things because the perception of higher education has changed from generally benefiting society to a tool for individual advancement.  Beam says he supports this development, which goes to show not everyone on the public dime views the taxpayers as a meal ticket.