Bret Devereaux

The UNC system is pretty clearly a good investment for the state in the long run. We need to be defending it on those grounds because we can't rely on 'elite consensus' about the value of higher education to get funding anymore. 24/25

And that is my long-winded point: the glory days of research being funded because the state and elite wanted it are 1) not that glorious and 2) over. We need to focus on building public support, which means explaining the value to folks who will not attend out schools. end/25

Very interesting points! Agree on the shift back from elite. Disagree that we need to play by market rules and when it comes to rankings. They rarely reflect the actual value of research and teaching and are a byproduct of marketization and thus not suited to measure its impact.

Alternatives with no or minimal tuition exist and while flawed the flaws of those systems (like the German one for example) are exacerbated by attempts to hybridize them and push them towards the market model.

Of course there are no completely „free“ systems i.e. the ones without tuition are sustained by tax money. I appreciate the call for practical alternatives though! For a long time I have been a proponent of transplanting the Lange-Lerner model into the HE sector.https://twitter.com/Calthalas/status/1265972360273936384 …

What would the implementation of that system look like in the higher education context? How would it be distinct from simply nationalizing the higher education sector and putting it under a state minister or board? Genuinely curious what the model would look like in practice.

Very shortly put, nationalization is key, but that is a feature of many already existing HE systems. Universities are funded by a state grant, but operate under full research autonomy. They practice direct allocation of resources, thus providing long-term stability of research.

Education and research output are in this system social dividends: a part of what the society gets as a public service. „Stagnation“ of research if funded by the state (so: us)? Enough to look at the drive for corona vaccination where the state that provided the main impulse.