Putting It to Provosts - Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

"It is our time," Mehaffy told the public university provosts when the commercial ended, "time to get serious about the process of change in American higher education. It is important that we resolve to make substantive changes -- major changes, not changes around the margins -- and that we do so with a fierce sense of urgency." To the chief academic officers in the audience at AASCU's Academic Affairs summer meeting, virtually all of whom are facing intense budget pressures at the same time that state and national leaders are telling them their campuses need to be more productive and efficient, the idea that something needs to give was not a hard sell.