More Wisdom from NAIS

The National Association of Independent Schools is the preeminent organization of independent (private) schools in the United States. NAIS's president, Patrick Bassett, writes a column, and lately he's been focused upon the effect of the present economic situation on independent schools.

In his most recent column Bassett points out that schools are getting a wide variety of advice about how to handle tuition issues. Bassett opines that school will only succeed if it can set its tuition level such that it presents the best value (i.e., people believe that the education is worth the price) for parents. Simply demanding higher and higher tuition fees is not enough.

This is a potentially seismic shift in the thinking about private school tuition. The present economic crisis is forcing schools to innovate in their financial management and funding methodologies. Previously, the conventional wisdom encouraged schools to raise their tuition every year because the reality is that a good education costs a lot of money. This model no longer works. Schools cannot simply continue to raise their prices and hope that their stakeholders will find a way to pay for it, because the stakeholders can't and they won't. As Bassett notes, such a model is simply "unsustainable."

And so last night Kadima made a huge step in this direction. By reducing the tuition--essentially providing financial aid for everyone--but also encouraging and demanding its stakeholders to help make it work, either through direct support or working hard to increase enrollment--Kadima is truly engaging in the kind of forward thinking and creative action espoused by the experts at NAIS.