Bret Devereaux

...because you've been competing on everything *but* the education for the last twenty years! Moreover, the cost of all of those other things is paid for by fees - if you waive the fees, you still have to do the upkeep and the whole thing crumbles. 28/41

And even in normal years, the public funding has slowed to a trickle - in a pandemic, it might as well stop. Calling a halt to university operations, or doing everything online and waiving the on-campus living fees is financial suicide. It was the *right* course...29/41

...and at the same time, one that the reckless, ruinous system could *never* take. At the same time, even without Pestilence, the system is still broken. Demanding that universities 'run like businesses' to save the public money just doesn't work. 30/41

Now don't get me wrong, I am an ardent capitalist. Like, really very much so. Like - it irritates my colleagues. But just because markets work in *some* things doesn't mean markets work in *everything*...31/41

Almost no one suggests, for instance, we should have for-profit fire departments (M. Licinius Crassus not withstanding). Or for-profit churches. And here's the thing: there is a large for-profit college sector in the United States. And it is *terrible* 32/41

Default rates on student loans at for-profits are 3-4 times higher than traditional colleges; the quality of the education there is well known to be garbage - and despite basically being sham-schools, many of them still run out of money and fail. 33/41

*That* is why US colleges were so fragile going into COVID that they really had no good options. So what about solutions? We should start with the big public universities. Step 1: After COVID has passed, states need to reverse the endless budget cuts...35/41