The True Genius of America At Risk

University Business, April, 2006 by Tim Goral

THE TRUE GENIUS OF AMERICA AT RISK By Katharine C. Lyall and Kathleen R. Sell Praeger Publishers, www.praeger.com; 2005; 232 pp; $44.95

ARE PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES HEADED TOWARD de facto privatization? White the authors say such a path may be unavoidable, they also suggest ways to survive that eventuality. As state and federal aid continues to erode, public universities are, out of necessity, turning to other sources for funding. (Public funding of higher education stands at around 30 percent today, compared with 50 percent in the 1970s.) As a consequence, however, lower income students are being shut out of higher education, and the country's economic health will suffer in turn.

Lyall and Sell examine ways to restructure higher education if states remain minority sharehoLders, and then propose a new modeL for the "public purpose university" that can maintain excellence even as funding and governance sources change. The time for public dialog is now, they say, before it is too late.

The authors present their case from the perspective of experience. Lyall served as president of the University of Wisconsin system from 1991 to 2004, and was assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter administration. Sell served as the University of Wisconsin system's chief budget officer from 1987 to 2002, and in the state's budget office prior to that.