Higher education in America is in crisis. Costs are too high, learning is too little, and the payoff to students and society is increasingly problematic. In Restoring the Promise, Richard Vedder shows how the precarious position of colleges and universities results from a mostly unsuccessful expansion of governmental involvement in the academy, especially at the federal level.
The book examines today’s most serious issues in higher education, including free speech and academic freedom; tuition and other costs; culture and curricula; governance; gender, race and diversity; due process; admissions; student loans; and much more. It diagnoses problems and identifies solutions.
For example, the total cost of college per student in the United States is now higher than in any other country. When combining the monetary costs of college with the opportunity costs of losing years of labor to the economy, the true cost of higher education to American society well exceeds one trillion dollars annually. Yet, despite American higher education’s immense price tag, students are learning less than ever before and continue to be underemployed.
The book discusses the three “I’s” of university reform: information, incentives, and innovation. Without information, it is impossible for taxpayers and governing authorities to ensure that public education spending truly furthers the broader interests of society rather than the narrow interests of faculty and administrators.
Shaping incentives for management would help to reduce costs and improve quality. Business practices such as Responsibility Centered Management (RCM), for example, allow profit to motivate efficiency and encourage learning outcomes.
And expanding the use of innovation in technology and open online courses, along with relinquishing old rules such as tenure and three-month summer vacations, offer new hope for institutions of higher education.
The book discusses such additional reforms as the following:
- Ending or revising the federal student financial aid program
- Giving departments or even professors a share of overall revenue based on student enrollments in their classes. Departments or professors would then be required to pay their share of travel, building rental, maintenance, utilities, and other such costs from the revenues they receive
- Providing earnings data on former students by college five, ten or fifteen years after matriculation. Prospective students (and parents) as well as lawmakers and oversight officials would be assisted regarding school successes and failures
- Increasing faculty teaching loads
- Instituting three-year degrees and year-round instruction
- Ending discrimination against for-profit schools
- Ending grade inflation
- Ending speech codes and other barriers to academic freedom
- Ending affirmative action and related diversity programs
And more...
| Introduction |
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Part I Higher Education's Triple Crisis |
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9 | (78) |
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1 Why Go to College Anyway? |
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13 | (16) |
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29 | (16) |
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3 Students Aren't Learning Critical Knowledge and Employable Skills |
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45 | (24) |
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4 College Graduates Are Underemployed |
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69 | (18) |
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Part II How Did We Get Here? |
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87 | (78) |
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5 Nearly Four Centuries of Higher Learning |
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89 | (14) |
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6 Why Fees and Costs Are Rising So Fast |
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103 | (20) |
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7 Why Endowments Don't Lower the Cost of Tuition |
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123 | (20) |
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8 The Federal Student Financial Assistance Debt Crisis |
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143 | (22) |
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Part III Where Does All the Money Go? |
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165 | (68) |
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9 Universities' Spending Perversities 169 10 Nonacademic Activities and Rip-Offs |
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189 | (16) |
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205 | (12) |
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12 The Costly Enterprise of Intercollegiate Athletics |
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217 | (16) |
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Part IV Is Educating Students a Top Priority? |
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233 | (68) |
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13 The Conundrum of Research |
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235 | (18) |
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14 The Academic Cartel of Accreditation |
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253 | (16) |
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15 The Scandal of Diversity |
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269 | (18) |
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16 The Weaknesses of Current University Governance |
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287 | (14) |
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Part V Where Do We Go from Here? |
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301 | (56) |
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17 The Three I's of University Reform |
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303 | (16) |
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18 The Failure of Government Higher Education Policy |
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319 | (14) |
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19 Reforming Higher Education |
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333 | (24) |
| Notes |
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357 | (22) |
| Selected Bibliography |
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379 | (8) |
| Index |
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387 | (13) |
| About the Author |
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Richard K. Vedder is Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute and Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Economics and Faculty Associate, Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University; and he is the Founding Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, DC. He has been Senior Economist at the U.S. Joint Economic Committee and Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, and he has taught at the University of Colorado, Claremont Mens College, and MARA Institute of Technology. He is the author of Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much, The American Economy in Historical Perspective; Poverty, Income Distribution, the Family and Public Policy (with L. Gallaway); Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History; Essays in the Economy of the Old Northwest; Economic Impact of Government Spending: A Fifty State Analysis; and Variations in Business and Economic History. Professor Vedder is co-author (with Lowell Gallaway) of the Independent Institute book, Out of Work, the recipient of both the Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award and Mencken Award Finalist for Best Book, and the Institute monograph, Can Teachers Own Their Own Schools? Professor Vedder received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois. His hundreds of articles and reviews have appeared in numerous scholarly journals as well as such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, National Review, Washington Times, and Investors Business Daily.
