Skip to content
LPE Originals

The Colleges are Alright

By

Despite the outsized attention they receive, “Ivy Plus” schools are ultimately a footnote in the larger story of higher education. The American system, while stratified, developed in such a way that stratification does not forestall opportunity. To understand this situation, we need to look back at a (failed) crusade to restrict access to college.
LPE Originals

Securitizing the University

By

At both the state and federal level, there are legislative efforts underway to depict students, faculty, and the university itself as potential enemies of the U.S. national security state that must be disciplined and controlled. If enacted, these laws will upend how universities function, who they welcome, and how they teach their students.
LPE Originals

How Universities Exploit the Tax-Exempt Status of Campus Land

By

Over the past few decades, universities have become some of the largest employers, real estate holders, health care providers, and even policing agents in cities and towns across the country. How did these educational institutions come to exert such power over their communities? One under-appreciated factor is the monetization of “non-profit” campus land.
LPE Originals

Seeing the University More Clearly

By

Crisis can be clarifying. Recent events on campuses across the country have forced many of us to look more closely at how our own universities work, including at the decades-long drift toward more powerful university presidents. Reversing this drift, and developing a more democratic model of internal governance, may be a prerequisite not only for rebuilding intellectual community but also for avoiding future campus conflagrations.
LPE Originals

Should Higher Education Ratify Privilege or Public Service?

By

Campus culture wars over DEI programs, gender nonconformity, and student debt cancellation might seem like distractions from the real problems facing higher education. However, they all tell us something important about the purpose of higher ed, because they all concern the central questions of hierarchy and its reproduction.
LPE Originals

The Fracturing of American Higher Education

By ,

Despite the outsized attention afforded to a handful of elite, private colleges, most students attend public institutions within 50 miles of their home. The recent curriculum wars in different states, as well as disparities in state-level funding, mean that where one lives will play an increasingly important role in both the accessibility and content of higher education.
LPE Originals

The Real Lessons We Should Draw from Claudine Gay’s Resignation

By

Free speech at universities hangs in the balance. But defending it will require much more than just resisting the assaults coming from billionaires and right-wing influencers. It will require reconnecting with the purposes and highest aims of the academy and building a political economy of higher education that can begin to truly deliver on them.