While Yale students party themselves into oblivion at Spring Fling today, University President Richard Levin will be debating the health of higher education in Washington, D.C.

The debate, sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, will take place at the National Press Club. It will be broadcast live on the Web at www.millercenter.org, and will seek to address whether the current business model for University funding is effective. In the past three decades, state funding for higher education has shrunk, and students have been responsible for increasingly enormous tuition prices.

Arguing that “the business model of higher education is broken” will be Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens, and William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland. Levin and Daniel Hamburger, president and CEO of the global education program DeVry Inc., and PBS senior correspondent Ray Suarez will moderate. PBS will air a special structured around the debate at a later date.

The debate will begin at 7 p.m.