The New England Board of Higher Education’s conference next Friday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, “Higher Education in a Troubled Economy: How New England’s Colleges and Universities Can Survive the Downturn and Prepare to Thrive,” is very timely, what with tanking endowments and surging tuitions.

But will the parley also discuss such embarrassing topics as soaring college executives’ compensation, the proliferation of programs of dubious intellectual rigor or even economic utility and all-around empire building at some institutions with no apparent academic benefits for students?

As college presidents’ salaries suggest, colleges and universities have become big businesses but their managements have not come under the sort of public scrutiny that many large corporations have lately. With the aforementioned surging tuitions, even with overall U.S. prices dropping, and with vast sums of government and philanthropic money coursing through many colleges, it seems past time for that scrutiny. The boards of trustees have long been the secretive recipients of most of that information.

Higher education is arguably the region’s most important and successful cultural/economic sector. It’s certainly what much of the world thinks about when it thinks about New England. How it gets through the recession should mean something to all of us. For more information, call (617) 357-9620 (extension 105) or look at http://www.nebhe.org/content/view/304/135/.