Higher Ed Reform Calls for More than "Perestroika"

In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, I review Professor Robert Zemsky’s book Making Reform Work. Zemsky, who served on the Spellings Commission, has been called “higher education’s best critical friend,” Unfortunately, the book  doesn’t really get at the structural problems that beset higher education, ensuring escalating costs coupled with woeful results. I liken Zemsky’s analysis to that of Soviet economists under Gorbachev’s perestroika — devising methods to make the central planning system work a little better, but not arguing that central planning itself was the problem.