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Capitalizing on College goes inside tuition-driven colleges and universities to show how the competition for students led to an unsustainable building boom--and what colleges did to pay for it. Forced to innovate, schools adopted enrollment strategies that led them to view the marginalized students they were supposed to be helping as dollars. Through over 150 candid interviews with university leaders, the book offers a timely and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the financial challenges facing higher education and what the future holds for colleges and universities.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: "We Have to Grow, or We're Going to Die"
- 1. The Traditional Strategy: "You Come . . . to a Tradition"
- 2. The Pioneer Strategy: "We Build With Adult Money"
- 3. The Network Strategy: "In Growth We Trust"
- 4. The Accelerated Strategy: "More Money Than God"
- 5. A Sector of Schools: "We're Here to Make Money"
- Outtakes: "These Are Things I Wish I Could Tell Somebody Someday"
- Methodological Appendix: "I Am Probably Being Too Candid Here"
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Joshua Travis Brown is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership in Education at Johns Hopkins University and Fellow at the Center for Skills, Knowledge, and Organizational Performance (SKOPE) at the University of Oxford. His research is positioned at the intersection of public policy and organizational theory and examines how economic policies have incentivized colleges and universities with limited resources to pursue margins in new markets at the expense of their educational missions. His work has been featured and discussed in
The Wall Street Journal,
NPR,
USA Today, and
The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Summary
In Capitalizing on College Joshua Brown skillfully illustrates how tuition-driven colleges and universities have been forced to innovate and adopt market-driven financial strategies. These institutions have longstanding commitments to offering access and opportunity to marginalized students, but the promise of improved educational outcomes stemming from federal policy changes aimed at increasing market competition never materialized. Instead, as a result of demographic shifts and the privatization of higher education, competition for tuition dollars meant these colleges had to adopt new strategies to find more students in new, uncharted peripheral markets to offset losses stemming from their legitimizing residential campus experience.
Capitalizing on College reveals how three of the strategies these schools adopted--growing a traditional endowment, pioneering a periphery market, or even creating a network of multiple markets--were initially successful but ultimately fell short in raising enough revenue to support operating a residential campus. Only a fourth accelerated strategy of going to scale raised the necessary funds--but at the cost of undercutting their mission by leading them to view students as dollars.
Through a vivid and compelling narrative that weaves together candid interviews with over 150 university leaders, Capitalizing on College reveals the untold story of the missing middle--what market competition has wrought on higher education from the inside vantage point of the colleges themselves. It shows how the unanticipated consequences of federal policy changes have ultimately distorted the values of mission-driven schools. Capitalizing on College offers a timely and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the changes shaking higher education and what the future holds for colleges and universities in this new financial climate
Additional text
In tackling the most pressing topics in contemporary higher education, Brown has done the essential and the unusual: rather than prescribe 'solutions' from the vantage of elites, he has instead talked with a wide range of college and university leaders to understand the nuances and complexities of decision making in our market-driven institutions. His awareness of the important role of mission-driven institutions in the higher education landscape is welcome, and his analysis is trenchant and insightful. This book is essential reading for those who care about higher education as an avenue to opportunity and transformation for our students, and indeed for our society.
