After the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the unsustainability of our public higher education system, an author and educator maps out a path for change.

In 1983, U.S. News and World Report started to rank colleges and universities, throwing them into competition with each other for students and precious resources. Over the course of the next thirty or so years, a Reagan-era ethos of privatization and competition transformed students into consumers and colleges into businesses.

Now, tuition is unaffordable. Student loan debt is more than $1.6 trillion, and most college faculty work in adjunct positions for low pay and with no job security. Colleges seem to exist only to enroll students, collect tuition, and hold classes. When learning happens, it is in spite of the system, not because of it.

In Sustainable. Resilient. Free., John Warner envisions a future in which our public colleges and universities are reoriented around enhancing the intellectual, social, and economic potentials of students while providing broad-based benefits to the community at large. As Warner explains, it’s not even all that complicated. It’s no more costly than the current system. We just have to choose to live the values we claim to hold dear.