What's the Future of Public Higher Education? A Review Essay on Gary C. Fethke and Andrew J. Policano's Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America's Public Universities

Gary Fethke and Andrew Policano's book "Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America's Public Universities" paints a picture of a future for public research universities that is very different than what many people will want to see. Their message is that the financial and governance models under which public universities have operated have broken down and that new models are required. While I do not always agree with their prescriptions, I argue that private research universities face many of the same issues as their public counterparts and that this book deserves to be widely read by all people concerned with the future of American higher education. (JEL H75, I22, I23, I28)