Abstract
Once upon a time, not too long ago, we understood social organization. Parents ran their families. The principal governed the local school with an iron fist and a velvet glove; the school board controlled the principal. People turned to religious leaders for guidance and respected their views. We knew that the President had a private life, but did not find it necessary to read daily press speculations about that life. Greedy bosses exploited professional athletes, studios extracted life-time servitude from performers, and the three television networks controlled access to popular information and entertainment. Every social institution discriminated against women and minorities with impunity, and no one even noticed when older citizens or disabled people were treated badly. The United States fought communism everywhere on the globe. And, public universities served on function; private universities served another.
That was then; this is now. People question the hierarchy if every institution and demand greater equality in governance, creating new instability where once there was brutal certainty. We hold parents, religious leaders, politicians, and all public figures to high standards, subject them to daily scrutiny, and place them on lofty pedestals, only to bring them down. We expose social and political institutions to harsh criticism for their foibles, making them accountable, but pander to our culture’s taste for the sensational. Greedy Athletes join their bosses, much to the disdain of the common fan who can no longer afford to attend sporting events. Studios buy talent with the highest bid, and now “we’ve got one hundred channels, but nothing on.” Society empowers women, minorities, senior citizens, and the disabled, permits and even encourages them to challenge inequality, yet continues to allow their suffering and mistreatment. Worse yet, every move toward greater equality seems to spur a new orthodoxy and raise the specter of political backlash. The free world vanquished communism, only to replace it with ethnic and regional hostility. And, these days, publics are private and privates are public.
While being a social critic is fun, and being a pundit is even better, I will forego commenting on our emerging social structure, other than to say: “Michael Jordan is worth every penny he can extract!” No, this has a much narrow focus: identifying the distinctions that remain between public and private higher education as the lines between the two blur and differences disappear. First, I explore stereotypes of public and private education, focusing on both economic and social factors that seem to characterize them. Next, I argue that these factors are converging: publics look and fee
Recommended Citation
Richard A. Matasar,
Private Publics, Public Privates: An Essay on Convergence in Higher Education,
10 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y
(1998).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jlpp/vol10/iss1/2