About 98 percent of the state is experiencing varying levels of drought, Colorado State University climatologists confirmed this week, noting the Arkansas and Rio Grande river basins are especially dry, as are areas in the central and northwestern mountains due to an unusually lean snowpack.

“Right now the drought situation looks pretty ugly,” said Ken Neubecker, director of the Carbondale-based Western Rivers Institute. “It’s worse right now here in the Roaring Fork Valley than it was in 2002 and that was a pretty bad year for fires.”

Law enforcement agencies are investigating the Colorado State Forest Service’s handling of the prescribed burn that officials admit reignited unexpectedly and sparked the deadly Lower North Fork blaze in Jefferson County. Gov. John Hickenlooper has also convened a four-person review board led by Bill Bass, a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service, to examine details of the tragedy.

“Wildfire season usually starts much later in the year in Colorado, and this could very well turn out to be one of the worst,” U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, said in a prepared statement issued after he toured the fire wreckage Friday. “The dry and gusty conditions that have fueled this fire and others that have broken out around the state are warning signs that it may be a very long firefighting season.”

As the earth warms, climatologists say extreme weather events are to be expected. Floods, wildfires, hurricanes, droughts and heavy, wet snow dumps are all more likely in the years to come, they say.

“In my mind, this drought is definitely linked to climate change,” Neubecker said.

The Lower North Fork Fire (Image courtesy of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office)

The snowpack at most of Colorado’s ski areas is thin, forcing several resorts to shut down earlier than usual this year as brown grass overtakes white snow on lower-lying slopes. The same is true for many ski resorts across the nation outside of Alaska, which has been slammed with copious deposits of snow this winter.

There is ample time for some parts of the state to absorb enough moisture and lower the risk of fire, experts note. But they say April 2002 was similar to March of this year. And that’s ominous news when you consider that a decade ago Colorado braved the most destructive fire season on record.

“It’s pretty early for the snowpack to be melting,” said Wendy Ryan, a research associate in Colorado State University’s Climate Center. “We’ve seen stream flows come up, which is not normal for this time of year. To exacerbate things, we had one of the warmest and driest Marches on record.”

In Fort Collins, last month was the first March in 124 years with no measurable precipitation.

“Wildfire is definitely something we have to worry about in Colorado. It’s not always associated with drought, but in this case we can definitely point to short-term dryness that is leading to fires,” she said.

The National Interagency Fire Center’s most recent report (pdf) shows many parts of the nation are susceptible to conflagrations this year. Low levels of precipitation are forecast over portions of the Rocky Mountains, the report states, and above-normal temperatures are likely across most of the Southwest and Great Basin, and the Gulf and East Coast states from Texas to Maine through July.

“Above-normal significant fire potential is forecast over portions of the Rocky Mountain Area during April, mainly during the early portion of the month. … Although precipitation opportunities are expected as well, amounts are not anticipated to be enough to compensate for the abnormally dry and warm conditions that have depleted snowpack and stunted greenup thus far,” the report says.

Increased fire danger is expected to reemerge in western Colorado in June and July, the report said.

Sen. Udall is stressing the following three points for Coloradans this spring and summer:

Recreate Responsibly: Err on the side of caution. Don’t leave campfires unattended, think before doing anything that could cause a spark in the backcountry and avoid outdoor burning. Be aware of fire risk by watching for posted warnings, and take responsibility for obeying restrictions in your area.

Prepare Your Property for Fire: If you live in a high-risk area, you can take precautionary steps to protect your homes from fire, such as installing fire-resistant roofing and creating defensible space around your home, including carefully storing firewood and other flammable objects. Remember, the most important tool is not a chainsaw; it is a rake and a weed-wacker to remove things like pine needles and grasses from your home and deck.

Prepare in Advance for An Evacuation: Hundreds of homes have already been evacuated early in this season, and it can be a harrowing process. Families can cut down on stress by implementing an evacuation plan that ensures the safety of people and essential belongings. If you have neighbors who are elderly or have special needs, consider them in your plans too.

Trout habitat will be cut in half in the western United States over the next 70 years if current climate change trends continue, according to a federally funded study conducted by 11 scientists from various federal agencies, conservation groups and universities, including Colorado State in Fort Collins.

Published this week in the science journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” the study predicts native cutthroat trout populations across the West could drop by nearly 60 percent during that time span and that introduced brook trout could see 77 percent declines.

“The study advances our understanding of climate change impacts by looking beyond temperature increases to the role of flooding and interactions between species,” lead author Seth Wenger said in a press release. “The study also is notable in scope, using data from nearly 10,000 sites throughout about 400,000 square miles of the western United States.”

Besides Colorado State University, the study was conducted by Trout Unlimited, the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group. In addition to rising water temperatures, the study looks at other factors such as “flow regimes” and “biotic interactions.”

Researchers concluded that such significant declines in habitat would result in huge impacts to trout fishing throughout the West – a major economic driver in Colorado and other Rocky Mountain states.

Kurt Fausch, professor in CSU’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, said the study builds on 15 years of research by CSU graduate students trying to find ways to prevent the degradation of habitat for native cutthroat trout, considered a keystone species in the Rocky Mountain ecosystem.

“It’s exciting to see these ideas being used,” Fausch said, “but the impending loss of trout habitat is both startling and depressing. The West is iconic for trout fishing, but much of this is projected to go away.”

Trout Unlimited has been working to maintain habitat by reconnecting coldwater drainages and protecting existing habitat on public lands in the West, but the pace of TU’s work clearly needs to be accelerated, experts say.

“This report is a wake-up call,” said Chris Wood, president and CEO of Trout Unlimited. “The good news is that we’re already working to protect high-quality trout habitat, such as backcountry roadless areas on national forests. We’re reconnecting tributaries to mainstem rivers, and we’re restoring degraded habitat.

“It is imperative that we accelerate the scope and the pace of that work if we are to have healthy trout populations and the irreplaceable fishing opportunities they provide through this century.”

Wood also said the study shows why congressional attempts to cut funding for conservation programs and to reduce the acreage of protected federal roadless lands are misguided.

Effective Feb. 1, Ritter also will assume the title of senior scholar at CSU’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability.

Ritter leaves office Jan. 11 after one term as governor, during which he dedicated himself to establishing Colorado as a clean-energy leader. During his term, thousands of new energy jobs were created in Colorado. Ritter also signed 57 clean-energy bills into law. Colorado is now home to the fourth-highest concentration of clean-energy workers in the country, the second-highest renewable energy standard in the nation, and the first law in the country that will convert old and inefficient coal plants to cleaner natural gas.

“The New Energy Economy is now synonymous with Colorado,” Ritter said in a prepared statement, “and the Center for the New Energy Economy will serve as a national leader as we move toward a future in which our children will produce and consume energy far differently than we do today. This new center will help address three key challenges for America: economic security, energy security and environmental security.

“It will facilitate science-based policy, research and education to support the growth of clean energy in Colorado, the nation and the world. This is also a natural partnership that allows me to combine two of my passions – higher education and the new energy economy – and is something of a homecoming for me.” Ritter earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from CSU in 1978.

With CSU now considered a world research leader in engineering clean and alternative energy solutions, the Center for the New Energy Economy will be part of the university’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability. Funding for the Center for the New Energy Economy and Ritter’s position will come entirely from private sources: the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation and the Fort Collins-based Bohemian Foundation. Additional funding from a number of other donor organizations is anticipated to build an endowment to sustain the center long-term.

In his new role, Ritter will work closely with CSU’s rural economic development activities to advance statewide economic initiatives related to clean and renewable energy. Other responsibilities will include:

Directing and overseeing the development of the Center for the New Energy Economy, working with internal and external partners to clearly define its mission, scope, and a five-year strategic plan.

Identifying and pursuing opportunities for The Center to lead and participate in productive public policy discussions and debates related to clean-energy policy and the growth of the New Energy Economy.

Building and promoting the Center as a vital, credible source of unbiased, science-based information, data, and research on clean energy policy and its economic impacts.

Engaging other universities, the private sector and other partners in the Center’s mission and activities.

“Clean and renewable energy is a new economic frontier, and it’s important for Colorado and our country that we continue to position ourselves as leaders in this emerging economy,” CSU President Tony Frank said in a press release. “This policy center–under Gov. Ritter’s leadership–will help build essential partnerships around research-based clean energy solutions, workforce development and advancement of technologies that will fuel long-term, sustainable economic growth.”

Colorado’s petition to the federal government to accept the state’s plan for managing more than 4 million acres of roadless national forest land contains road-building exemptions for coal mining, ski area expansion and logging to reduce wildfire danger.

Conservation groups want the Obama administration to reject the Colorado petition and make the 2001 Clinton roadless rule, or a modernized version of it, the law of the land. That rule was quickly tossed out by the Bush administration and tied up in court for years.

State officials argue that the full scope of the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic that has killed more than 2 million acres of lodgepole pine trees in Colorado and Wyoming was still relatively unknown in 2001 and that temporary logging roads are needed to thin dead and dying forests.

One concession of the plan submitted to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack last week was to take the road-building exemption in and around communities down from a 1.5-mile radius to just half a mile. That’s still too deep into the woods, some experts say.

“If the goal is to protect homes, I would focus the creation of the defensible space very locally. I know of no evidence that would argue that it needs to be more than a mile or beyond 40 meters for that matter,” said Dr. Barry Noon, a professor of wildlife ecology at Colorado State University.

“I have a cabin, for example, in the Roosevelt National Forest, at 8,600 feet, that’s surrounded by a lot of dead lodgepole, and I’m simply going to thin my forest out to about 100 feet.”

But wildland firefighting crews on the Western Slope wouldn’t mind have a little more elbow room to battle blazes in and around towns, pointing out that a fire in Glenwood Springs a few years ago jumped Interstate 70 and the Colorado River. In Vail, firefighters are trying to clear a 150-foot buffer zone around the entire town.

“Localized treatment of bug-infested stands makes sense to me,” Noon said. “What doesn’t make sense to us is the proposals to harvest bug-infested stands or thin them at broad spatial scales, and particularly if doing that requires the building of new roads. There is an extensive scientific literature documenting the negative effects of roads on ecosystems.”

Sen. Mark Udall told the Colorado Independent he backs the state rule, which was crafted in a laborious process that began during Republican Gov. Bill Owens’ administration and was continued by Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.

“I support the roadless proposal that the governor and the previous governor and a team of citizens from across the political spectrum have designed,” Udall said. “Not everybody agrees with every single element in the roadless plan, but I would like to see it applied to Colorado so that we can protect those landscapes that are roadless for their water and air and wildlife values.”

Asked specifically about a recent report co-authored by Noon and concluding that beetle-killed forests aren’t necessarily more susceptible to wildfire, which is mainly driven by drought, Udall said mountain communities and Front Range water supplies are clearly in danger.

“Those studies are certainly worth considering and drought certainly plays a role in the potential for wildfire, but at the same time when you have standing trees that are all dead, particularly before they cast all their needles, you’re really playing with fire if you let them stand in close proximity to communities or reservoirs or water treatment systems,” Udall said.

Udall has introduced the National Forest Insect and Disease Emergency Act, which would provide more funds to the Forest Service to mitigate the fire danger posed by the bark beetle epidemic.

State Rep. Christine Scanlan (D-Dillon), whose district includes some of the counties hardest hit by the beetle-kill outbreak, praised Ritter’s plan for dealing with the wildfire danger head-on.

“Colorado industries that depend on development in wilderness, such as mining and skiing, would be equally ravaged were this proposal to completely prohibit development in roadless woodland,” Scanlan said in a prepared statement.

“Gov. Ritter’s proposal resolves these conflicts by allowing limited expansions to meet pressing needs for beetle response, ski slope expansion and coal mine operations. This proposal ensures that all animals – both those who live in the woods and those who merely work or relax there – can fully appreciate Colorado’s natural splendor.”

Dr. Stuart Pimm, chairman of Duke University’s Department of Conservation, disagrees wholeheartedly. He sent a letter to the Obama administration late last year urging a reversal on the apparent federal acceptance of the Colorado plan.

“Large blocks of forests protect watersheds and biodiversity, while their destruction massively contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and consequent climate disruption,” Pimm said. “It is essential that we keep these forests intact and not sacrifice the ecosystem services they provide for the short-term profits of special interests.”

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Reps. Jared Polis and Jason Chaffetz

“We talk a little bit too much about what I’m eating at night,” Chaffetz said of the show that also features Democrat Jared Polis of Colorado’s Second Congressional District, where the Utah Republican graduated from high school in the mountain town of Granby.

A placekicker for Granby’s Middle Park High School back in mid-80s, Chaffetz badly wanted to play for the University of Colorado. He sent tapes to then-Buffs-coach Bill McCartney but never heard back from the future founder of the men’s ministry, Promise Keepers.

So Chaffetz landed a scholarship at Brigham Young University in Provo, where the former Democrat (he was Utah co-chair for Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign) would convert to Mormonism and later the Republican Party.

And 1988 was also the year Chaffetz kicked the winning field goal for BYU in the Freedom Bowl against CU. He ran off the field pointing at Coach Mac in the ultimate act of recruiting revenge.

Now Chaffetz has it out for the NCAA. He’s patiently watching a bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee that would force a playoff system in major college football. Although he doesn’t sit on the committee, Chaffetz thinks it’s flat wrong that schools like BYU (and 14-0 Boise State this season) no longer have a realistic shot at a national title.

“I worry that there are anti-trust violations and we’re using a lot of federal taxpayer dollars to fund these schools, so we have a rightful role in reviewing this,” Chaffetz told the Colorado Independent Friday. “This is a scam.”

If a meaningful bill doesn’t come out of Energy and Commerce, Chaffetz said he will consider pursuing the demise of the current Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in one of two committees he does sit on — Judiciary or Oversight and Government Reform.

“Ideally the NCAA will recognize where Congress is going with this and deal with it themselves, but if they refuse to do so, then I think it’s time to enact some legislation,” he said. “And it always helps to have the president on your side, and, yeah, he’s not a fan [of the BCS].”

President Obama on the campaign trail in 2008 talked about “throwing his weight around” to scrap the BCS, which matches up the nation’s top two teams based on a complex and somewhat arbitrary ranking system. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch in October called on Obama to launch a Justice Department investigation into NCAA anti-trust violations.

“Mr. President, as you have publicly stated on multiple occasions, the BCS system is in dire need of reform,” Hatch wrote. “Some may argue that the college football postseason is too trivial a matter to warrant government involvement. However, given the amount of money involved in the BCS endeavor and its close relationship to our nation’s institutions of higher education, it is clear that the unfairness of the current system extends well beyond the football field.”

Boise State (Western Athletic Conference) and Texas Christian University (Mountain West Conference) are both from non-BCS conferences and undefeated headed into their matchup Monday night. Neither school had any shot at the national title, which was won by major conference Alabama over Texas Thursday night.

BYU, the last non-major school to win a national title – in 1984, well before Chaffetz’s glory days – now plays in the Mountain West Conference, as does Colorado State University in Fort Collins. BYU in-state rival Utah also plays in the Mountain West and finished undefeated last year, including a convincing bowl victory over Alabama, but was snubbed by the BCS.

Powerful forces have aligned to maintain the status quo and keep schools from the mountain west and hinterlands of Texas and other wide-open states in their place, and long-term deals are being struck with the current and historically entrenched bowl games, but Chaffetz is confident he’ll one day be able to wag a vengeful digit in the faces of the college football powers that be.

“Everybody loves a Cinderella story, but it’s not possible in the current system,” he said. “It’s an issue of fairness and opportunity, and ultimately I think we’re going to see a change.”

Would it be as dramatic a change as the one that sent a mountain kid with gridiron dreams to Provo instead of Boulder, then more than two decades later landed him on a national TV show as the conservative foil to an openly gay, ultra-liberal congressman from Boulder (Polis)? Undoubtedly, a national playoff would be life-changing for some kid somewhere. Doubtful it would be that seismic.

McClung isn’t the first member of the town leader to fall victim to the economy. John Loschke, former Mayor Pro Tem, who had worked in the energy field, also recently left town for another job.

A consultant for energy companies, Mayor McClung saw the need for his services grind to a halt last summer, according to the Grand Junction Sentinel:

“From April to August, I didn’t have anything going on,” he said.

Recently, he and his wife shut down their nonprofit child care—formed to meet the growing demand for child care in the region during the energy boom.

“We just lost all the kids,” he said.

Mainstreet Parachute: nobody

Now Mayor McClung and his wife plan to head to the Front Range for more schooling. He’ll pursue and engineering degree at Colorado State University, and his wife will study nursing at Front Range Community College.

McClung’s decision leaves the town trying to replace its leaders from the dwindling pool of residents who haven’t left. According to several recent stories in newspapers across the United States, that might not be so easy. As the act of running a small town has grown more difficult, wrote the L.A. Times recently, it’s become harder to find volunteers willing to make the hard decisions—even in towns that aren’t experiencing an exodus.

The current mayor pro tem will take McClung’s place when he leaves, and the Town Council plans to decide soon if it will appoint a new councilmember or wait until the next election.

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Judge Stephen Schapanski’s ruling comes in a case brought by The Colorado Independent, the Fort Collins’ Coloradoan and the Pueblo Chieftain, which argued the university violated state open-meetings laws in its search for a chancellor.

On request of the media organizations, Schapanski first considered whether there was sufficient reason for him to review the complete May 5 meeting recording to decide whether the board’s discussion should be entered as evidence in the case. CSU fought against the “in camera” review and lost.

Today’s order to release an additional 95 minutes of the board’s recorded discussion on Blake’s candidacy — in addition to the hour already made public — comes as a result of the “in camera” review. Schapanski methodically dismissed arguments made by the university attorneys — arguments the Colorado Independent characterized as “lawyerly” when they were filed.

The CSU attorneys claimed that the May 5 private executive session did not violate state open-meeting laws because the board was merely discussing legal matters and that Blake had recused himself a few days earlier from his position as vice chairman of the board.

“The Court finds that the Defendant Board did deliberate on the candidacy of Mr. Blake for the Chancellor’s position during the May 5, 2009 executive session. The Court further finds that such deliberation does not constitute the Defendant Board’s receiving legal advice from its attorney on a specific legal question… Since Mr Blake was a member of the Defedant Board at the time of the May 5, 2009 executive session, the Court finds that the Defendant Board’s deliberation of Mr. Blake’s candidacy could not properly be closed to the public, and that any such deliberation in executive session violated [the state's open meeting laws].”

The judge described the board’s public meeting as merely perfunctory, saying it was a formality held to codify the Blake hiring, which had been decided upon in secret.

The [recording] makes it abundantly clear that the Defendant Board adopted the proposed position of selecting Mr. Blake as the sole finalist for the Chancellor’s position during the May 5, 2009 executive session. … The public vote, without any further discussion or deliberation, was nothing more than a “rubber stamp” of the decision already made in executive session.”

Michele McKinney, spokeswoman for the Board of Governors, said in a terse statement: “The Colorado State University System Board of Governors is reviewing the judge’s order and will be considering its options in the next few days.”

The Court will deliberate in coming weeks on the larger issue of whether the CSU Board of Governors violated state transparency laws.

If CSU loses the court battle, it will likely have to pay the media organizations’ attorneys fees at a time when the university is suffering major budget shortfalls and laying off staff and faculty across departments.

CSU Board member Joe Blake, left, and board president Doug Jones congratulate a 2008 graduate. (Photo/Colorado State University)

In particular, it has done little to address demands by a coalition of state nonprofit watchdog groups — Colorado Ethics Watch, Colorado Common Cause and New Era Colorado — to cancel and restart the controversial search and to openly invite a wider range of candidates to apply for the position. The coalition also asked the board to invite members of the larger university community, including students and faculty, to participate more actively in the review and selection process.

CSU spokeswoman Michele McKinney told the Rocky Mountain Collegian that the board responded to the coalition’s demands by speaking with members of the public and asking for “feedback on how to increase transparency” and that “no one had suggestions on what could be done.”

Blake is scheduled to tour the CSU Fort Collins’ campus Engines Laboratory on Monday before being officially appointed chancellor later this month.

The CSU chancellor search attracted serious critiques and suggestions on how to increase the level of transparency even as it progressed.

At the end of April, the search prompted state lawmakers to write a bill outlining guidelines to increase transparency — House Bill 1369, the “Higher Ed Transparency Leadership Search” bill. Although H.B. 1369 was killed by its sponsors, the suggestions it made had been considered carefully and supported by the majority of lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled House.

An ongoing lawsuit filed against CSU by three media organizations — the Colorado Independent and the Fort Collins Coloradoan and Pueblo Chieftain newspapers — alleges the board violated open-meeting laws during the search. Tapes released from a pivotal closed-door executive sessions suggest the board made decisions in private that should have been made in public.

In an interview with the Colorado Independent, CSU’s McKinney elaborated on the transparency discussions. She said the board did not reach out to the public for suggestions on transparency but that individual members of the board responded to emails and calls from the public concerned about the legitimacy of the search.

“They were responding to stakeholders reaching out to them. After the [board members] would explain all the steps they took during the search, people were satisfied. They had nothing more to suggest.”

McKinney said the board related their discussions on transparency not formally but “anecdotally” in public at the board meeting held at the end of May.

But you know what they say about students at Colorado’s largest land-grant university once they experience the bright lights of a big city — the silver-haired senator doesn’t even appear to have attended his 20th reunion.

As for more current ties to the Centennial state, Ensign, who appears to have spilled the beans about his extramarital affair under threat of extortion, has been a long-time adherent of the Denver-based men-only evangelical ministry Promise Keepers (motto: “Men of Integrity”).

“Seems like he may have stumbled a bit on promise 3 and promise 4,” TPM’s Josh Marshall points out.

Those would be:

PROMISE 3
A Promise Keeper is committed to practicing spiritual, moral, ethical, and sexual purity.

PROMISE 4
A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong marriages and families through love, protection and biblical values.

Photo/Colorado State University-Pueblo

In the unforgiving crucible of free market competition, only the fittest businesses — those that deliver the highest quality products at fair market value — will survive. Of course, the seemingly endless government bail-outs following the 2008 financial crash cast a dubious light on the above claims, nevertheless, the notion that higher education should embrace a more business-like organizational philosophy remains deeply entrenched. Colorado State University’s recent hiring of its first-ever System Chancellor offers an illuminating example of this sensibility in practice.

On May 6, 2009, the CSU Board of Governors announced the hiring of Joe Blake as its System Chancellor. It is fair to say that Blake is a somewhat curious choice for CSU’s System Chancellor because, although he can brag of extensive contacts in the Denver business community — his most recent job was as president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce — his resume is conspicuously absent of academic credentials.

Indeed, it is noteworthy that, in assembling its search committee, the CSU Board of Governors intentionally excluded faculty and student representatives. In response to protests concerning the limited composition of the chancellor search committee, Michelle McKinney, a public relations representative for the CSU System Board of Governors, stated baldly, “Search committee members were chosen for their knowledge and understanding of complex, billion dollar businesses.” In other words, from the perspective of the CSU Board of Governors, Colorado State University is a business. Therefore, when it comes to choosing the University’s leaders, the CSU Board of Governors considers input from successful businesspeople to be more pertinent than the opinions of academics.

Viewing these events through the most optimistic lens, one could argue that vast changes are in the offing for higher education. In an Information Society, college degrees have become an ever more essential ingredient for success. Yet, indispensable as college degrees may be, with each passing year, students encounter more difficulty gaining access to and completing higher education. Escalating costs coupled with reduced public funding have shifted the burden of college finance onto the backs of individual students. As students face the prospect of accumulating home mortgage-sized debt over the course of their college careers, many gifted, but financially-strapped students will have no choice but to forgo higher education.

Somehow, some way educators must find a way to change that dynamic: college and university leaders must find a way to make higher education more affordable and soon! Insights from the business realm will certainly be helpful in that process. Business leaders are only too well aware of the hazards of running afoul of consumer expectations. When a valued good becomes excessively overpriced, consumers tend to take their buying power elsewhere.

As a case in point, consider the Big Three automakers. Not long ago the Big Three were the titans of industrial America, but having fallen out of step with their customers, automakers have hit upon tough times. Once again, in a free market society it behooves organizations to deliver the highest quality products at affordable prices. Consumer loyalty is not inexhaustible.

Indeed, higher education must change in order to meet the needs of its twenty-first century students. Fortunately, I am pleased to report that higher education has undertaken a variety of initiatives to achieve precisely that goal. To begin with, most colleges and universities have implemented flexible degree programs to permit students with limited time and extensive non-academic responsibilities (i.e., full-time jobs, family obligations, military service, etc.) to progress toward college degrees at a pace that suits their lifestyles. In addition, many universities have employed the latest technologies in an effort to reach out to place-bound students. Thus, many students who lack the necessary mobility and wherewithal to pursue a traditional on-campus education can still procure college degrees via online or “virtual” higher education opportunities.

Changing times have dictated that higher education must also change. Thus far, higher education has responded admirably. Yet, as with all successful institutions, to ensure ongoing success, higher education must constantly seek ways to reinvent and improve itself. Still, as planners look to the future, I believe it is important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of higher education in as broad a framework as possible.

Much as higher education can benefit from the insights of business leaders, it is essential to recognize that higher education is not a business, nor should it ever become one.

While higher education can and must synergize with business in many ways, business and higher education are distinct pursuits. Elementally, business is a for-profit activity, whereas higher education is a not-for-profit endeavor. This is the case, quite simply, because education is not a commodity; one cannot purchase an education the same way that one might purchase a pair of snow tires. Education is an investment that requires years of patience, diligence and perseverance before one can hope to reap a windfall.

Certainly, education is not cheap. It has taken an enormous investment to lay the educational foundation for the Information Society. However, I think it is fair to say that, having laid that groundwork, the dividends realized thus far have been spectacular: because of its investment in higher education, the US can claim the distinction of being the inventor of and, in spite recent setbacks, the unparalleled leader of the Information Society.

Undeniably, one way of mitigating higher education costs might be to seek new ways of transforming education into a for-profit endeavor — one would expect such initiatives to be a topic of primary interest to business leaders. However, I wonder if it is possible to extract profit from higher education without simultaneously impoverishing it?

Further, viewing higher education as a resource from which to extract profit represents the antithesis of the educational philosophy that has elevated the US to its singular position as leader of the Information Society. The US has achieved prominence in the global village by investing in, rather than siphoning wealth from higher education.

Therefore, I believe it is possible for the US to continue reaping great rewards from higher education, but only by enhancing its commitment to access-for-all, and by maintaining its philosophy of education as a long-term investment in the future. The US will remain the leader of the Information Society, but only so long as we recognize that the business of higher education is to lay the foundation upon which to build a more enlightened, democratic, and prosperous world for one and all.

Timothy McGettigan is a Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University – Pueblo.