Early in an hourlong discussion, “Higher Education, Rising Costs: What Does the Future Hold?” participants stopped trying to predict the future. Instead, four panelists in the Trustee-Council Annual Meeting session Oct. 24 in Statler Auditorium brainstormed ideas to change things for the better.

“Wasn’t it Yogi Berra who said, ‘Prediction is always difficult, especially when it involves the future,’” said panelist Rana Glasgal ’87, M.Eng. ’92, a Cornell alumni-elected trustee and member of the University Council who is Stanford University’s vice president for reporting and analytics.

Other panelists in the discussion, moderated by Cornell Board of Trustees Vice Chair Robert J. Katz, were Provost Kent Fuchs, ILR Professor Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute and a State University of New York trustee, and Michael Lovenheim, assistant professor of policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology.

While agreeing that elite institutions like Stanford and Cornell should retain “need-blind” admissions policies and make college more affordable for students from financially squeezed middle class families, most brainstorming ideas focused on raising revenues to bolster financial aid, student services and faculty excellence.

“How do we generate better revenue streams?” Ehrenberg asked. “Let’s use technology to reduce the costs and improve the quality of the education we deliver to students.” But Glasgal, the Stanford administrator, worried about costs and risks to a futuristic institution’s IT infrastructure. “Already we’re seeing a million hacking attempts at Stanford every day.” When a persistent hacker succeeds, she said, costs to the university are enormous.

One Class of 1961 engineering grad with revenue enhancement on his mind rose to ask: “Are we getting as much of a payoff as possible from technology transfer?” And what about better use of a partially idle campus in the summertime, he asked, suggesting a “year-round university.”

Fuchs responded that patent income to research universities – even to places like Stanford that are famous for their enterprising inventors – is pretty much maxed out, and will always be a small percentage of revenue from funded research (currently about $800 million a year at Cornell).

But better, year-round use of the Cornell campus? That’s an idea, Fuchs said, that is under active consideration. And while the number of full-time Cornell students might remain capped at around 21,000 (on the Ithaca campus), ways could be found to enroll more part-time students, he hinted.

Lovenheim, the PAM faculty member and researcher, had an idea to add value to a university education: “Give students more access to research faculty,” he suggested to murmurs of approval from trustees and council members in attendance.

The most empathic applause, however, went to one alumna whose career in academia placed her firmly in the middle class – paying the full “sticker price” for a daughter now attending Cornell, without hope of financial aid. “My daughter turned down several full-freight scholarships to come to here,” the alumna-mom said. “You need to start more conversations with parents paying full sticker price.”

No one disagreed with that, including the panel.