The decline of American higher education is a common yet existential conversation.

Every persuasion has its critique: college is getting too expensive yet increasingly unproductive. Elite academia is overtaken by radical Leftists. Elite academia is inaccessible to minorities. American colleges continue to bow to extreme student activists. American colleges refuse to make substantive changes to serve the demands of students.

Ultimately, we are presented with a problem that must be confronted. Higher education is essential for fostering bright minds to lead society into the future, providing the necessary skills to power an advanced economy, and teaching the core values of our civilization. However, academia, like any institution, is filled with self-interested stakeholders and conflicting incentives that lead to mission drift and corruption. This begs the question of whether American higher ed can be reformed or is it drastic action needed.

Phil Magness is a coauthor of the book Cracks in the Ivory Tower, where he applies a public choice analysis to American higher education to highlight its critical, self-destructive tendencies. He explains from a realist, analytical perspective the incentives powering certain trends, such as skyrocketing tuition, falling academic rigor, and ideological uniformity.

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