New book examines funding fate of public universities

A perfect storm of fiscal and political trends is rapidly forcing the privatization of America’s public universities, according to a recently-released book authored by UW System President Emeritus Katharine Lyall and Kathleen Sell, the UW System’s former chief budget officer.

In “The True Genius of America at Risk: Are We Losing Our Public Universities to de Facto Privatization?” Lyall and Sell respond to these trends by opening a candid public policy discussion about the future of public higher education in America.

They describe the market forces that are eroding the traditional partnership between states and public universities and explain how the search for new revenue sources is refocusing the basic mission of these schools. The authors also clarify what can be done to save these valuable institutions with an in-depth examination of state experiments in higher education funding systems and structures.

“Wisconsin is participating in these national trends, but is not alone in facing some unintended, but troubling, effects,” says Lyall, currently a senior visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Sell, a political philosopher, is a senior lecturer in the department of integrated liberal studies. She is also senior staff affiliate at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE), a UW–Madison center that seeks to engage researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in an ongoing dialogue about postsecondary education in order to improve decision-making and leadership practices.

The authors were able to complete research forming the basis of this book with sponsorship from WISCAPE.

The book is published by the Greenwood Publishing Group as part of the American Council on Education (ACE)/Praeger Series on Higher Education and includes a foreword by UW–Madison Chancellor Emeritus and ACE President David Ward. Details and purchasing information are available online.