Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.
Many private institutions of higher education around the country are in danger. Not all will be saved, and perhaps not all deserved to be saved. There are low-quality schools just as there is low-quality business. We have no obligation to save them simply because they exist.
But many thriving institutions that deserve to continue are threatened. They are doing a fine job educationally, but they are caught in a financial squeeze, with no way to reduce rising costs or increasing revenues significantly. Raising tuition doesn’t bring in more revenues, for each time tuition goes up, the enrollment goes down, or the amount that must be given away in student aid goes up. Schools are businesses, whether public or private, not usually because of mismanagement but because of the nature of the enterprise. They lose money on every customer, and they can go bankrupt either from too few students or too many students. Even a very good college is a very bad business.
It is such colleges, thriving but threatened, I worry about. Low enrollment is not their chief problem. Even with full enrollment, they may go under. Efforts to save them, and preferably to keep them private, are a national necessity. There is no basis for arguing that private schools are inherently better than public schools. Examples to the contrary abound. Anyone can name state universities and colleges that rank as the finest in the nation and the world. It is now inevitable that public institutions will be dominant, and therefore diversity is a national necessity. Diversity in the way we support schools tends to give us a healthy diversity in the forms of education.
In an imperfect society such as ours. uniformity of education throughout the nation could be dangerous. In an imperfect society diversity is a positive good. Ardent supporters of public higher education know the importance of sustaining private higher education.
Some thriving institutions are also threatened because of ______.
