Let Colleges Fail - by Richard K Vedder (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Daring in its analysis, practical in its problem-solving, and thoroughly readable in its prose, Let Colleges Fail is indispensable reading for those who want America's colleges to thrive once again"--

Book Synopsis

Everyone knows American universities are more expensive and less impressive than ever. But no one has come up with a plan to fix them.

No one...

Until now.

Let Colleges Fail: The Promise of Creative Destruction in Higher Education is the hard-hitting instruction manual America needs in order to save its institutions of higher learning.

The solutions proposed herein are unorthodox. They're stern. They're tough.

To some, they might even sound utterly shocking.

But they're bound to work.

Richard Vedder, Senior Fellow at Independent Institute and Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University, asks the forbidden question:

Why do we subsidize universities through taxpayer-provided grants and private donor gifts when the institutions are so obviously failing America's youth?

How can we justify this special status, while businesses offering far more useful goods and services are punished by confiscatory taxes--for simply turning a well-deserved profit?

The history behind these questions is long, winding, and complicated.

But the solutions to our current crisis are not.

In fact, they're as time-tested as the study of economics itself.

Vedder reminds Americans of the concept of "creative destruction" (famously introduced by economist Joseph Schumpeter)--the idea that, because markets threaten to reallocate resources from unproductive to productive uses by "creatively destroying" failing businesses, markets actually help failing businesses adapt to the market's ever-changing needs and realities.

It's sink or swim.

And in the face of necessity, most businesses--or at least, those worth their salt--learn, however painfully, to swim.

And if universities want to survive, says Vedder, they must learn to swim, too.

But because we have cushioned them from the demands, necessities, and realities of public life, American colleges are weak, woke, and unforgivably obtuse. Their eye-stretching price tag just adds insult to injury.

Read this book and discover:

• what universities can--indeed, must--learn from the profit-making private sector;
• why big government needs to get out of the student loan business yesterday ... and what will happen if it refuses to do so;
• why accreditation, though infrequently questioned or critiqued, might actually be unnecessary ... or even bad;
• how privatizing state universities could actually open newer and more affordable finance options;
• what a healthy voucher/scholarship arrangement could look like;
• and much, much more ...

Daring in its analysis, practical in its problem-solving, and thoroughly readable in its prose, Let Colleges Fail is indispensable reading for those who want America's colleges to thrive once again.

Review Quotes

"Richard Vedder's Going Broke by Degree was the national wake-up call that higher ed slept through. His Thirty-Six Steps was a survival manual that too few in the sector followed. Now he has given us a must-read depiction of the consequences of complacency and the upheaval for which many once proud institutions are headed."
--Mitch Daniels, distinguished scholar and senior advisor, Liberty Fund; former president, Purdue University

"Richard Vedder continues to be our most astute diagnostician of the structural, economic, and functional catastrophe of American higher education in the twenty-first century. He makes a wholly compelling case against further bailouts of a failing system and for allowing bad models to suffer insolvency, leading to creative destruction and to innovations. Vedder is a clear and convincing voice in the midst of our national confusion."
--Alan Charles Kors, Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History, University of Pennsylvania; cofounder, FIRE

"Eighty years ago, there was strong case for mass subsidies for higher education. In Let Colleges Fail, Richard K. Vedder proves that the facts have changed and the old argument no longer applies. The time has come to hold universities to the same standards we hold other corporations. Vedder shows that today most universities are run for the benefit of their staff and faculty at the expense of students and society at large. Far from producing significant positive benefits, many colleges create net losses. But while many experts complain about the state of higher education, Let Colleges Fail is unique in offering a wide range of feasible reforms, big and small, that can cure higher education's diseases without killing the patient. Let Colleges Fail is the blueprint for building higher education back better."
--Jason Brennan, Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University

"Colleges routinely fail to educate their students, produce valuable research, or foster critical discussion, but--thanks to government support--they almost never fail to survive. In Let Colleges Fail, Richard Vedder, one of the world's greatest collegiate whistleblowers, courageously calls for accountability. If schools can't pass the market test, government can and should let them go out of business. Letting failed institutions die, though rarely popular, is immensely beneficial for society. And few institutions have failed society more egregiously than higher education."
--Bryan Caplan, professor of economics, George Mason University

"Failure is an essential part of the process of improvement in any industry. Higher education is no exception. Eliminating the possibility of failure, especially when combined with the federal government's cartel-like regulatory regime that promotes mediocrity and uniformity, is a recipe for stagnation. Professor Vedder, long recognized as the most creative and bold economist of higher education, has done it again--calling for a more innovative and competitive market for higher education providers that can finally drag higher education into the twenty-first century."
--Todd J. Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University

About the Author

Richard K. Vedder is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Economics at Ohio University; and he is the Founding Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Restoring the Promise: Higher Education in America and co-author (with Lowell Gallaway) of Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America.