DEVELOPING BOTTOM-FEEDING STRATEGIES? A Philadelphia Inquirer report sees strategic planners in higher education anticipating the next enrollment crunch.

"Some institutions are going to struggle to find students," said Brian Prescott, a researcher for the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a policy organization created by the legislatures of 15 states. It has projected the number of high school graduates nationwide since the 1960s.

Traditionally, public institutions and elite private universities have so many more applicants than available seats that they should be able to weather the downturn without much trouble. Harvard, Prescott said, will still be Harvard.

"But an average private college in Pennsylvania may not be able to maintain the same level and quality of students, while their competitors in the Southeast or the West may be OK," Prescott said.

Perhaps there's a way out of the social waste inherent in remediation, which the Cincinnati Enquirer (you say "inquirer," I say "enquirer," let's call the whole thing off???) suggests is a non-trivial waste.

Education experts say this isn't just about a student taking a few extra classes. Remediation, which often affects minorities from poor families in low-income public districts, has an impact that stretches from families to schools to taxpayers.

Remedial needs strain the student, who might pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for classes that don't count toward a degree.

"At first I thought it was going to hold me back," said Daniel Williams, 18, a 2006 Woodward graduate who'll be in a remedial program at the University of Cincinnati when fall classes start.

They strain colleges, too, which devote instructors, classrooms and supplies to classes that ideally wouldn't be necessary.

And they strain the state - in essence, taxpayers - to the tune of about $30 million a year in remedial costs. While that's less than 2 percent of the overall higher education budget, "We would never say that $30 million isn't a lot of money," [Ohio Board of Regents staffer Darrell] Glenn said.

"It would be really good if we could take that $30 million and use it for something else."

But perhaps the greatest problem is what so often happens to students who require remediation: They struggle. They fail. They drop out. They lose the earning power of a college degree.

The state tracked a group of students for six years and found that among the remedial students, only 15 percent earned a bachelor's degree in that time; nearly three times as many nonremedial students received their degrees.

"The biggest effect of having 40-something percent of students not ready for college is that, lo and behold, the ones not ready when they start are much less likely to get a degree," Glenn said.

But apparently the state universities would like to have the enrollments, Mr Prescott's suggestion that the enrollment downturn is going to bite at the less-famous private colleges first.

"I think there is a mindset in Ohio that college is a luxury, not a necessity," said Jonathan Travel, the Regents' vice chancellor for educational linkages and access. "To me, it's a whole system, and it's easy to blame the whole system, too ... (but) we're all in this together."

Might it help to think of higher education as conferring primarily private benefits (that can be appropriated by the degree-holder) and ending the fiction of large spillover benefits from spending money on remediation and climbing walls and subsidies for football fields? Harder question: what is the social waste in the less-known private colleges taking up the remediation cause as a way of keeping the buildings full?