The Coming Education “Revolt”
In its January 29 edition, InsideHigherEd.com, a for-profit, Internet-based journal, reports today on the top concerns of University Trustees. Not surprisingly, the top two concerns are financial:
| Rank | Public | Private nonprofit |
| 1 | The financial sustainability of higher education institutions (25%) | The financial sustainability of higher education institutions (42%) |
| 2 | Price of higher education for students and their families (24%) | Price of higher education for students and their families (25%) |
Trustees were co-opted by tenured faculty as Progressives gained control of highter education during the Great Depression. Their principal achievement was to focus on the need for special expertise of what the late Irving Kristol called the “new class — statist intellectuals, lawyers, social workers, educators et al.”
Though powerless to hire, and limited in whom they could fire, Trustees earn prestige from “selfless” service on University Boards and can achieve some respectability from non-compensated service.
The spiralling cost of higher education was ignored for too long, however, and finally a revolt by education consumers is underway. You can read about that revolt in my 2017 book titled The Coming Death and Future Resurrection of American Higher Education: 1885–2017.
