It’s Past Time We Let Our Universities Perish

The ‘creative destruction’ working so well for American business holds promise in enacting reforms

Letter to The WSJ. 

"In critiquing my concern about the lack of intellectual diversity in universities, Prof. Nicholas Barry Creel asserts that the political orientation of professors is irrelevant in pursuing vocationally oriented college degrees like accounting (“Who Cares About ‘Diversity’ in Math Class?,” Letters, March 10). This ignores that many college students aren’t majoring in such subjects, that nearly 40% of full-time four-year college students fail to graduate within six years and that roughly the same proportion of graduates are what the New York Federal Reserve Bank appropriately calls “underemployed”—taking jobs not requiring college-level skills—for significant periods after graduation.

Mr. Creel opines that “we should focus on restoring public investment rather than imposing arbitrary market mechanisms on institutions whose primary mission is education, not profit generation.” American “public investment” has led to costs per student far higher than in comparable industrial democracies like the U.K., Germany and Canada. Such investment, mainly through federal student-loan programs, has contributed to costly administrative bloat, leading universities to pursue agendas crowding out an emphasis on job No. 1: the discovery and dissemination of knowledge and creative ideas.

“Thoughtful stewardship” of which Mr. Creel speaks is often absent in America’s universities today, so some harsh lessons need to be taught. The “creative destruction” working so well for American business holds promise in enacting reforms and being a useful teacher.

Em. Prof. Richard Vedder"