Market Values in American Higher Education: Pitfalls and Promises

Standing apart from the spate of books on the rising cost of higher education, Charles W. Smith's provocative new book, Market Values in American Higher Education: The Pitfalls and Promises argues that current financial problems in higher education are not tied to such things as tenure, sabbaticals, overemphasis on research, and curriculum changes. Rather, they are due to counterproductive and expensive efforts to impose hierarchical corporate managerial structures, slash and burn cost reduction schemes, and costly pursuits of phantom revenue sources--be they highly visible new programs, grants, or even gifts that actually need to be subsidized by the institution. What needs to be done, according to Smith, is to reaffirm what is already known: Higher education is expensive. Market Values in American Higher Education costs out various aspects of American higher education, explores what we are willing to pay, who should pay, and lays out new and different ways of thinking about the funding of higher education for future generations.