In February 1987, Bill Bennett, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education, started a national debate by questioning the cost and value of private higher education in the United States. When Bennett published in The New York Times an op-ed piece entitled “Our Greedy Colleges”, Washington College president Douglass Cater, like almost every other college leader in the country, was outraged at Bennett’s dig at the country’s private schools. But, unlike most college presidents, Douglass Cater rather enjoyed a good fight, particularly on a national level.
Pulled from the C-SPAN archive, here is Douglass Cater in rare form providing testimony to a Congressional hearing on the cost of college tuition and a report completed by Chester Finn, Secretary Bennett’s Assistant Secretary for Research. The program lasts 13 minutes.
Sherry Magill says
I was Doug Cater’s executive assistant and remember full well the events that followed his testimony. When returning to the college, he told me to get ready. He had challenged Secretary Bennett’s bean counters to include Washington College in the Secretary’s study of “fraud and abuse on college campuses”. They were coming and I was not thrilled. But, true to form, the Cater administration and the College performed admirably under Bennett’s scrutiny. The final report declared that not only was the College not guilty of fraud and abuse, but it was exceptionally lean and efficient. We know why. It was led by and staffed with professors and staff alike who love the place, teaching students everyday to do their best and be the best they can be.
Thanks much for the Cater in full form visual memory. He was one of a kind, a voice not only for Washington College but for private higher education everywhere. I miss him.