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  • The True Genius of America at Risk: Are We Losing Our Public Universities to De Facto Privatization?
  • Christopher C. Morphew (bio)
Katherine C. Lyall and Kathleen R. Sell. The True Genius of America at Risk: Are We Losing Our Public Universities to De Facto Privatization? Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. 232 pp. Cloth: $34.95. ISBN: 0-275-98949-6.

It's no secret that the privatization of higher education has captured the attention of higher education scholars and policymakers. It is within the larger discussion of the role that the state plays—and should play—in funding and managing higher education that Lyall and Sell write. Their goals are to describe the changing relationship between state governments and higher education and to identify solutions that preserve the unique, important qualities of public universities, assuming that this trend continues. This text goes a long way toward accomplishing the former goal while the latter remains a work in progress.

Unfortunately, this book starts off badly with a title that screams, "The sky is falling!" They do not, in fact, take a Chicken Little approach to their discussion of privatization, although exaggerations and inaccuracies sometimes weaken their arguments. For example, they imply in their introduction and in several other places that Cornell University's unique public-private divisional form is evidence of privatization at work and cite St. Mary's College in Maryland as a case of "outright privatization" (p. xvi). Both statements are misleading at best. Cornell was organized with both statutory and endowed colleges from its beginning in 1865 and, according to the institutional research office at the college, appropriations from the State of Maryland constituted 33% of St. Mary's operating budget in fiscal 2004.

True Genius begins with the authors making a strong case detailing how public higher education in the United States has become increasingly privatized. They demonstrate that state governments are appropriating considerably fewer dollars for higher education, both in terms of budget share and appropriations per capita. Moreover, they argue that the pressure on states to continue to squeezing higher education will continue and even strengthen. This section of the book reads like a series of Thomas Mortenson's Postsecondary Education Opportunity issues, with tables comparing annual state appropriations by state and across states. These data are not new. Similar arguments have been made in other venues by researchers like Harold Hovey (1999), but the authors provide a useful service in bringing together data from diverse sources to make their case. What might be new to the reader of this chapter is a (too) brief discussion of the lack of fungibility of higher education dollars. Here, the authors use data from their experience in the University of Wisconsin system to demonstrate that "a dollar is not a dollar." This point is an important one and deserves more space than it receives here.

The next several sections of the book offer a context for thinking about privatization. The authors provide multiple examples from states that describe the diverse ways in which states are thinking about privatization, including straightforward quid pro quo (less money for increased autonomy) arrangements in Virginia and tuition deregulation (e.g., Texas and Wisconsin). After describing both successful and failed attempts at moving toward more flexible funding models that embrace privatization, the authors attempt to conceptualize the privatization process. They discuss political, moral, and operational factors and provide an international context.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Lyall and Sell identify solutions to the dilemma represented by state funding of higher education. They detail the messy and irrational ways in which states fund higher education and describe such funding strategies as "jerk and fit," because they are too often short-term, cynical attempts to gerrymander budgets and one-time revenues (e.g., tobacco settlements) to meet budgetary needs for a single year. The result of these tactics is easy to predict: Public colleges and universities are asked to make changes in spending mid-year or with little connection to public needs. Simultaneously, states are loath to remove these institutions from state regulations regarding purchasing or the specific use of state appropriations, leaving them at a competitive disadvantage with their private counterparts. [End Page...

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