If you want a glimpse into what has gone wrong with higher education in America, look no further than the brilliant career of E. Gordon Gee, who as of July 1 will be the ex-president of Ohio State University (and of Brown and Vanderbilt, as well as the flagship public universities of Colorado and West Virginia). If he had been born at another time, Gee might have sold patent medicines or swampy real estate or a new political party. Instead, he spent the past three decades selling the ever bigger business of American higher ed. (MORE: Yes, Really: Private Colleges Offering More Financial Aid Than Ever) Gee had a talent for, in the jargon of our business schools, finding ways to monetize synergistic brand relationships in the context of a dynamic marketing environment. Translation: he raised a lot of money, mainly by doing things like jacking up tuition (Ohio residents now pay 150% more in real inflation-adjusted dollars to attend OSU than they did when Gee first became president of the school in 1990), “privatizing” university parking and getting well-heeled alumni to cough up ever larger sums of cash, in the form of tax-deductible donations. All this made him, in the eyes of politicians in state houses and on boards of regents, a great success. After all, if higher education is really just another business, then it ought to be evaluated in terms of revenue and earnings, and balance sheets, and profit-and-loss statements. When OSU hired Gee, it was also in full awareness of his propensity to spend lavishly to meet those business goals, as he did when he was a “star” chancellor at Vanderbilt. (MORE: Money Talking: Is College Worth It?) One thing that rarely gets asked in the context of all this getting and spending is, What exactly is that money supposed to be for? In theory, of course, it’s for “education.” In practice, a whole lot of it goes directly into the pockets of a metastasizing cadre of university administrators, whose jobs, as nearly as I’ve been able to determine after … Continue reading The Lessons of the Megalomaniac University President