Capitalizing on College : How Higher Education Went from Mission Driven to Margin Obsessed

Capitalizing on College goes inside tuition-driven colleges and universities to show how the competition for students led to an unsustainable building boom--and what colleges did to pay for it. Forced to innovate, schools adopted enrollment strategies that led them to view the marginalized students they were supposed to be helping as dollars. Through over 150 candid interviews with university leaders, the book offers a timely and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the financial challenges facing higher education and what the future holds for colleges and universities.

In Capitalizing on College Joshua Brown skillfully illustrates how tuition-driven colleges and universities have been forced to innovate and adopt market-driven financial strategies. These institutions have longstanding commitments to offering access and opportunity to marginalized students, but the promise of improved educational outcomes stemming from federal policy changes aimed at increasing market competition never materialized. Instead, as a result of demographic shifts and the privatization of higher education, competition for tuition dollars meant these colleges had to adopt new strategies to find more students in new, uncharted peripheral markets to offset losses stemming from their legitimizing residential campus experience. Capitalizing on College reveals how three of the strategies these schools adopted--growing a traditional endowment, pioneering a periphery market, or even creating a network of multiple markets--were initially successful but ultimately fell short in raising enough revenue to support operating a residential campus. Only a fourth accelerated strategy of going to scale raised the necessary funds--but at the cost of undercutting their mission by leading them to view students as dollars.Through a vivid and compelling narrative that weaves together candid interviews with over 150 university leaders, Capitalizing on College reveals the untold story of the missing middle--what market competition has wrought on higher education from the inside vantage point of the colleges themselves. It shows how the unanticipated consequences of federal policy changes have ultimately distorted the values of mission-driven schools. Capitalizing on College offers a timely and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the changes shaking higher education and what the future holds for colleges and universities in this new financial climate