Summary

The importance of for-profit higher education becomes clear when one examines
the state of higher education today. Traditional institutions are facing major
pressures, including diminishing financial support, a call to serve adult learners,
the need to balance applied and liberal arts curricula, and the need to maintain
and evolve the institutional mission. Stakeholders are more numerous than ever
before, and they are pulling institutions in different directions. Traditional higher
education institutions are increasingly pressured to alter the their missions
because diminished public funding has resulted in dependence on donors and
corporations with varied interests. This strain is causing universities to behave
in new ways. For-profit institutions provide a model of how to handle these
challenges by their very structure--they are organized to operate professionally
as a business and continually question and refine their organizational mission.

Gary A. Berg is Dean of Extended Education at California State University
Channel Islands and author of numerous articles on current issues in higher
education, educational technology, and media studies, as well as four books.


Published by Greenwood/Praeger