One of the great barriers to increased student success – meaning not just degree completion but also high quality learning outcomes – lies in the negative funding trends affecting higher education. Across all institutions, prices (tuitions) are increasing even as costs (spending per student) are being cut. Student access and affordability are at risk and so is quality. Examples will be given of recent trends in revenues and spending and projections of where funding is likely to go in the future, which (no surprise) are likely to be more of the same. While more can and should be done to make the case for changes in state fiscal policy to put money back into higher education, we can’t wait for new revenues to solve the cost/price problem. Continuous attention to both cost management (reducing spending where possible) and cost effectiveness (putting new money into areas that pay off in quality and learning) will be needed more than ever. To do that, we will need to be very intentional about the relationship between spending and effectiveness. This will require more fiscal literacy from academic decision makers, and more academic literacy among budget officers. This session will discuss what that means in practical terms, using examples of ways to think about cost effectiveness from work on high impact practices, as well as ways to cut budgets that do the least harm to quality and access. The session will conclude with suggestions about near term strategies that can be effective at the institutional level, as well as those that need to be addressed in public policy by states and systems.