There are cries for institutions of higher education to control ambition, contain costs, constrain tuition increases, and make the curriculum more responsive to societal needs. Due to competition in other areas for public monies, it would seem that public funding for higher education must remain limited. However, economic growth, national competitiveness and the supply of faculty and scholars are connected, and colleges and universities can contribute toward these goals by increasing and strengthening school-college partnerships, giving better attention to undergraduate teaching and learning by full-time faculty, making better connections between undergraduate and graduate education, and restructuring graduate education in order to increase certainty in the length of Ph.D. programs. The Federal Government has a role to play in these initiatives. In particular, federal assistance is needed in the following areas: in student aid making higher education accessible, in student employment and pre-college intervention which reinforce classroom learning, in developing undergraduate instruction with a common vision which prepares students for an interdependent and multicultural world, in facilities development (debts for repair or construction often directly raise tuition), and in rethinking methods for tuition financing. (22 references) (JB)