It’s pretty rare to find a higher-education insider who is both aware of the grave problems with our system and is willing to talk about them in public. One such individual, however, is former University of Toledo president Daniel Johnson, who has recently written a book entitled The Uncertain Future of American Public Higher Education.


In today’s Martin Center article, I discuss the book’s strengths (many) and weaknesses (a few).

Where Johnson really nails the truth is in his analysis of the ways colleges and universities waste money on non-educational things including sports, needless campus construction and under-utilization, the faculty and the tenure system, outmoded instruction, and the way we reward students for seat time rather than their learning progress.

Where the book disappoints is the author’s treatment of accreditation (Johnson does little more than advert to its uselessness) and his complaint that states are doling out less money to their higher education systems than they once did. Given the endemic wastefulness of public colleges and universities, what sense does it make to demand more taxpayer dollars for them?

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