At the start of the third decade of the 21st century, the United States is entering a period of unprecedented demographic shifts affecting higher education. Not only are many states already seeing fewer high-school graduates, with more facing this trend as the decade progresses, but in all but a few regions overall population growth will level and then decline. In response to these trends and exacerbated by limited or declining state support, public higher education systems and their constituent institutions are implementing various ways to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and ultimately enhance the quality and availability of educational services. In doing so, these efforts often have the effect of limiting or eliminating entirely the autonomy of individual institutions by aggregating both functions and authority. A parallel trend, with similar effect, is the increasing reliance on external providers for services once considered core to the institutions.