From a recent Chronicle of Higher Education daily alert ($$$ req'd):
Colleges and universities are not afraid to let outsiders run their bookstores, dining operations, or janitorial services, but many struggle with outsourcing other functions out of a feared loss of identity, community, and collegiality, according to a report released on Monday by the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
The report, "Is Outsourcing Part of the Solution to the Higher-Education Cost Dilemma?," examines institutions' attitudes toward hiring a third party to provide a traditional campus function or service and is intended to begin a dialogue on whether colleges should look to outsourcing to cut costs that are inevitably passed on to students.
"The thing that struck us was the fact that outsourcing can clearly be part of the discussion about costs and finding ways to better control costs, but it hasn't been a proactive part of the conversation," said Jamie Merisotis, president of the institute and an author of the report. "We want to simply continue to engage in this national debate about costs, and outsourcing needs to be a part of it."
On my campus, we have the Barnes and Noble bookstore. We also have food provided by Taco Bell and Chick Fil-A (yum!). I imagine that if university officials felt they could do what these companies do at a lower cost, they would do it.
Some may decry this stuff as the university as selling out to corporate interests. But why did these companies grow so large to begin with? It's because they provided something of value to people that their competitors didn't.
In a competitive marketplace, competition between sellers forces them to provide value to their consumers by seeking to provide products and services at lower costs and/or by seeking to provide higher quality products and services. Outsourcing is simply a fancy (and feared) term that people have been employing for centuries: having someone else do something for you that he can do at a lower cost. If colleges and universities are truly concerned about the rising cost of college (and I believe they are), one way is to outsource various university services.
Here is the link to the entire report.