During the half-century since World War II, American colleges and universities have been education's Emerald City, not only for Americans but for millions of others who have followed the yellow brick road from abroad. No matter what ups and downs have afflicted the economy, no matter that the stunning mediocrity of our primary and secondary schools has been recognized as a national crisis--through all this and more, higher education has grown in scale, in wealth, in allure and, at least until the very recent past, in stature. That growth has been a marvel to behold. Before World War II, 1,700 institutions enrolled 1.5 million students, employed 147,000 faculty, and spent $675 million, or about $450 per student per year. After the war, the GI Bill of 1944 underwrote a huge expansion, and the postwar economy's appetite for skilled labor placed an ever-greater premium on a college degree. Regional colleges went national. Community colleges--an American innovation--spread like the ivy that seldom graced their walls. Dozens of new (mostly state) campuses were opened. No longer was the university merely a place of teaching and learning. Now it was an engine of economic growth and a source of technological and scientific progress. It was looked to for defense preparedness, cultural enrichment, and policy ideas about everything from poverty to air pollution. Corporate investment and high-tech jobs gravitated to communities with research facilities and a supply of educated people. By 1960, there were 2,000 institutions; by 1980, 3,150. Still the growth continued. Today, the United States is indisputably the world's postsecondary superpower. There are nearly 3,700 colleges and universities in the United States. They enroll 14.4 million people, about 22 percent of all "tertiary" students on the planet. (The student body includes some 440,000 citizens of other countries, an "export" that adds about $7.1 billion to the plus side of our annual balance of payments.) The faculty has ballooned to 833,000. Higher education in America is a $213 billion industry, roughly equal in size to the gross national product of Belgium.

But it is an increasingly troubled enterprise. Except at the top, it has grave quality problems. Nearly 50 percent of the freshmen in the California state university system are enrolled in remedial English and mathematics classes. Higher education's problems are beginning to receive the attention of government officials at the highest levels of power and influence. Speaker of the House (and ex-professor) Newt Gingrich writes that higher education "is out of control [and] increasingly out of touch with the rest of America."

The American public has always had mixed feelings about the university, sneering at the "ivory tower" life while according the professoriate an exaggerated respect. Now, however, a new combination of factors is tilting the balance of opinion against higher education. While among policymakers there is growing concern about the shoddy quality of much higher education, the broader public feels increasingly oppressed by soaring prices. During the 1980s, health care costs increased 117 percent and there was talk of a national crisis. The price of new cars rose 37 percent. But the average cost of attending a public college increased by 109 percent, and the price of an education at a private college jumped by 146 percent. Every other major purveyor in the United States, from Bethlehem Steel to Wal-Mart, has been forced in recent years to hold down or even cut prices. But higher education has done practically nothing to end its decades-long spree of escalating charges and expenditures.

Today, annual tuition and fees at public four-year institutions equal nine percent of the median American family income; the proportion for private institutions is 38 percent. As recently as 1991, the comparable figures were six percent and 27 percent. (In 1980, they were four percent and 17 percent.) Obviously, this can't continue forever.

One saving grace of the "ivory tower" idea was always the public's sense that, however alien university life might seem to an outsider and however much it might cost, it was redeemed by the higher purposes that informed its existence. But the university is losing that precious public trust. There is a sense, in the mad proliferation of course offerings, the embarrassing deficiencies of many graduates, and higher education's embrace of political correctness and other ideals, that perhaps the university has lost sight of its higher purposes. Fifty-four percent of Americans believe that higher education in their state needs a "fundamental overhaul," according to a 1993 poll conducted by the Public Agenda Foundation. By margins of seven or eight to one, the public says that college is not a good value for the money--and is fast pricing itself out of reach.

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