Is More Competition Really Good for Higher Education?

By Jeff Selingo. In many industries, competition lowers prices, promotes innovation, and often leads to product differentiation. But even with 4,500 colleges and universities, American higher education seems to defy those rules. Prices rise faster than inflation, colleges are seen as resistant to change, and there is a sameness to many institutions, despite all the rhetoric about the diversity of our higher-education system.
Few colleges want to be seen as “stepping away from the herd in meaningful ways” because they are so obsessed with moving to the next level, maintains the late J. Douglas Toma in a recent book, The Organization of Higher Education. More...