For most of the past 25 years, the "sticker price" of a college education has been rising steadily, outpacing the consumer price index.

We in higher education have developed a plausible explanation of why this is so, and we also point out that the net costs to the student (that is, tuition minus financial aid) have remained at or below the general level of inflation.

But all of this has fallen on deaf ears in Washington, where lawmakers are now considering a bill that would introduce caps on tuition increases. In anticipation of federally mandated tuition price controls, I've decided to do my part to make a Johns Hopkins education more cost-effective by borrowing ideas from other sectors of the economy.

When slashing costs, productivity improvement is the name of the game, so herein follows some proven business practices that are examples of the changes I propose.

From Ikea, I learned (the hard way), that one powerful secret to lowering cost is called buyer assembly — more commonly referred to as "some assembly required." This innovation could certainly be applied to our Hopkins "hand-tooled" education to effect tremendous savings. In this case, our students will have to provide their own learning tools: We will simply hand out the textbooks and the course syllabus at the beginning of the semester and expect the students to show up at the final exam with the finished product.

Voila! Hail the do-it-yourself bachelor's degree with an easy 30 percent reduction in tuition costs.

IBM has demonstrated that we can outsource much of our intellectual capital from lower-cost countries with an abundance of bright, unemployed Ph.D.'s — places like India and China. Hopkins will hire nontenured faculty members in Deli or Beijing, and let them conduct research studies at a fraction of the cost of our Baltimore-based faculty. Further, we can have them teach some of our lecture courses via video teleconferencing or on DVD's. Another 10 percent or 15 percent comes off the sticker price.

Black & Decker has set up manufacturing plants in Mexico to lower their cost of production. With real estate prices in Baltimore and Washington rising relentlessly, we will relocate our remaining tenured faculty to lower-cost locations outside the United States — and cut salaries by at least a quarter. Students will be overjoyed to schedule meetings with their faculty advisors in Cozumel or take organic chemistry in Mazatlan, especially in the winter months.

From Wal-Mart, I know that we can import goods from developing countries much less expensively than buying U.S.-made items. In addition to Hopkins sweatshirts from Indonesia, why not purchase textbooks and scientific journals from Malaysia or Argentina where they don't pay copyright fees?

Finally, we will adopt strict financial measures for each of our majors and make decisions accordingly. Some, like history and psychology, look like they can provide 10 percent to 15 percent per annum earnings growth. Others, such as biomedical engineering, are so resource-intensive that they operate at a loss.

In order to improve our financial performance, I think we will have to eliminate many of our courses in the sciences and engineering for needlessly boosting tuition and placing too much drag on the bottom line. Wall Street will no doubt applaud our financial performance if we get rid of these resource-intensive, cash-consuming majors.

The new Hopkins will operate so efficiently we will no longer have need for the large investment in bricks and mortar already assembled here in Baltimore for our undergraduate programs. No problem. Why not reconfigure the Homewood campus into a college for seniors — those over 65 who want to go back and experience the college life perhaps they never had? The golden years group will not be as concerned about tuition costs. And to build business synergies, we can upscale the dorm rooms to include full nursing care, a definite growth industry in the coming decades.

It's true. Higher education can learn many important lessons from the corporate world.

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William R. Brody, president of Johns Hopkins University.
Copyright © 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.