The Case Against Higher Education Reform (Glen McGhee)

For decades, critics and policymakers have argued that American higher education could be “fixed” through better management, new credentials, accountability systems, or market competition. But the evidence now points to a sobering reality: the time for meaningful reform has passed. What remains is a structurally inert system staggering toward collapse, incapable of adapting in ways that would meaningfully serve students, faculty, or the broader society.

Too Late: The System Has Already Crystallized

Sociologists Michael Hannan and John Freeman warned in 1984 that organizations often fall prey to “structural inertia,” creating a form of lock-in that makes real transformation virtually impossible. Today’s higher education sector exemplifies their theory.

Since 2010, undergraduate enrollment has declined by more than 15%, representing 2.7 million fewer students nationwide. The FAFSA fiasco of 2024–25 alone is expected to result in hundreds of thousands fewer freshmen, according to Brookings. This is not gradual adjustment but systemic breakdown occurring within institutions whose structures are too rigid to respond.

The so-called “demographic cliff” beginning in 2025 will accelerate these failures. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve predicts that 1 in 10 U.S. colleges faces “significant financial distress” in the next decade. Closures are already mounting: Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama shut its doors in 2024 after 168 years, despite political lobbying and emergency funding attempts. In Vermont, the Vermont State Colleges System closed three campuses in 2020, citing declining enrollment and unsustainable costs. In Massachusetts, Mount Ida College collapsed in 2018, leaving students stranded. These are not isolated cases—they are signs of a broader unraveling.

No Power, No Resources: Reform Advocates Lack Institutional Leverage

Those demanding reform—students burdened by debt, adjuncts trapped in precarity, or concerned citizens—lack meaningful power within entrenched governance structures. Administrative hierarchies create what organizational theorists call “hierarchical inertia”: resistance to bottom-up change.

Between 2010 and 2018, spending on administrative services grew by 25%, compared with only 16% growth in instructional spending. Administrative salaries rose faster than faculty pay, and presidents of elite private universities now routinely earn over $1 million annually, while the median adjunct pay per course hovers around $3,500.

Meanwhile, the faculty workforce has stratified into a rigid caste system: 48% of all faculty are adjuncts, compared with only 33% who are tenure-track. Nearly one in four adjuncts qualifies for some form of public assistance, according to the American Federation of Teachers.

Higher Education as a Caste System

The metaphor of higher education as a caste system is not rhetorical exaggeration—it is sociological description.

• Academic labor: Adjuncts teach 60–70% of all undergraduate courses at some public universities, yet lack benefits, job security, or office space.

• Institutional prestige: The top 20 U.S. universities control nearly $400 billion in endowment wealth, while the median endowment across all institutions is less than $200 million—a disparity that drives inequality in faculty hiring, research opportunities, and student aid.

• Student access: Federal data show that students from the top income quartile are five times more likely to attend a selective university than students from the bottom quartile.

As one adjunct professor bitterly described it: “I guess I am in the Sudra—servant—class.”

Path Dependence and the Logic of Lock-In

American higher education is path dependent: historical decisions have created self-reinforcing mechanisms that are now nearly impossible to undo.

The feedback loops are obvious. Average tuition has tripled (in real dollars) since 1980, while total student loan debt now exceeds $1.7 trillion, owed by more than 43 million borrowers. Tuition hikes fuel administrative growth, which requires even higher tuition. Federal student loans underwrite rising costs, which then justify further loan expansion.

Even when institutions attempt reform, history traps them. Consider New College of Florida, a small public liberal arts institution: under political pressure in 2023, its governance was remade to align with a conservative ideological agenda. The result has been turmoil, plummeting enrollment, and national headlines—but no structural fix to the deeper financial instability.

The sector has reached what economists call “quasi-irreversibility”: a point beyond which reform cannot meaningfully occur without collapse.

The Futility of Cosmetic Solutions

The reforms most commonly floated today—cost containment, program elimination, or alternative credentials—misunderstand structural inertia.

In 2025, West Virginia University cut 28 academic programs, including its entire foreign language department, as part of an effort to address a projected $45 million deficit. Dozens of other universities, from regional publics to small privates, have announced similar cuts. These moves balance budgets temporarily but hollow out educational missions.

Calls for universities to spend more of their endowments overlook the fact that even elite institutions already average spending rates around 4.5%, which is close to what financial managers consider sustainable. Meanwhile, 90% of U.S. colleges have endowments under $100 million, meaning they cannot rely on them for meaningful financial rescue.

Alternative credentials face similar structural limits. A 2022 SHRM survey found that while 48% of employers expressed interest in microcredentials, only 20% actually considered them in hiring decisions. Applicant tracking systems are built to screen for traditional degrees, not experimental certificates.

The Iron Law of Institutional Preservation

Sociologists describe “institutional isomorphism”—the tendency for organizations to mimic each other in ways that resist innovation. In higher education, this has created an “iron law” of institutional preservation.

When faced with crisis, universities respond with defensive maneuvers: hiring freezes, program eliminations, and lobbying for more federal support. In 2025 alone, more than 100 institutions announced cuts to majors, from classics to physics, while maintaining administrative and athletic spending.

The overriding purpose of universities is no longer the pursuit of knowledge or the education of students, but the preservation of their own bureaucratic forms.

Collapse Before Reform

The conclusion is stark but unavoidable: American higher education has passed the point of meaningful reform. Its rigid hierarchies, path dependence, and preservation instincts make internal change impossible. Demographic decline and financial pressures will likely force widespread collapse before adaptation occurs.

Hannan and Freeman’s theory predicted this outcome: organizational change is rarely the product of internal reform. Instead, it comes through environmental selection—the replacement of existing institutions by new ones better suited to survive.

The American university may not disappear entirely, but the form it has taken since the mid-20th century is unsustainable. Collapse is not only likely—it may already be underway.

---

Sources:
Hannan & Freeman (1984); BestColleges (2025); Brookings (2025); Philadelphia Fed (2024); Forbes (2025); Inside Higher Ed (2023); Academe Blog (2013); Governing (2023); AFT (2020); SHRM (2022); Al Jazeera (2025); ERIC (2020); Birmingham-Southern (2024); WVU (2025); Mount Ida (2018); Vermont State Colleges (2020).