The Increasingly Private Public School

The Nation reports:

They call it a public institution and it sounds like one from its name, but 92 percent of the money to run the University of Virginia comes from private sources. At the University of Michigan the figure is 82 percent; at the University of Illinois a mere 75 percent. The privatization of the nation's greatest, once-public institutions of higher learning is well under way.

"America is rapidly privatizing its public colleges and universities, whose mission used to be to serve the public good," Katharine Lyall, president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin, told the New York Times. "Public control is slipping away." Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, blames never-ending tuition increases on "public higher education's slow slide toward privatization." (Eighty-seven percent of his budget now comes from private sources.)

We hope the Hillsdale College model is adopted everywhere.