The Heritage Foundation’s Higher Education in America: It’s Worse Than You Think (2026) proclaims in its subtitle its intended audience: policymakers, staffers, donors, and interested citizens unfamiliar enough with higher education that this report on our colleges and universities will indeed reveal that it is worse than they think. The book is an accurate summary of the state of our colleges and universities, with sensible suggestions for reform. Little it suggests will be new to audiences who have followed higher education policy in detail, but Higher Education in America aims instead to communicate the conclusions and recommendations of the higher education reform world to a broader audience. It succeeds admirably in that mission.

Heritage divided the 19 chapters of Higher Education in America into four parts: The Economic Model, The Bureaucracy, The Leftist Dominance, and Where Do We Go From Here? This structure nicely conveys how higher education policy reform needs to be framed.

One part needs to address the larger economic framework, above all, the dysfunctional effects of the accreditation system and of federal and state subsidies, especially student grants and loans.

One part needs to address the nuts and bolts of how the administration and the faculty (mal-)administer the university.

One part needs to focus explicitly on the malign effect of a radical leftist monoculture on America’s colleges and universities.

One part, finally, needs to look forward to the strategic goals of higher education reform—keeping in mind both the extraordinary successes of the first year of the Trump administration, which provide an excellent foundation for future education reform, and the ultimate vision of what America’s colleges and universities should be.

All the chapters are good. The most interesting are those that push beyond questions of finances and administration to more “cultural” analyses, and those with particularly incisive practical solutions.

Inez Feltscher Stepman’s “How Colleges Undermine Men and the American Family” is particularly good. So too are Jay P. Greene’s “The Donor Problem: Your Help Is Hurting” and Patrick J. Deneen’s “Faith and the University.” These push Higher Education beyond simply surveying the current landscape of higher education reform.

The emphasis of this collection is on reforming our existing system of higher education. It does not emphasize the complementary task of higher education reform: building a new system of higher education to replace the old one. That goal underlies the work of Hillsdale College, the University of Austin, the new network of autonomous civics schools at public universities, and efforts to reform General Education Requirements. Heritage might usefully commission another volume of essays devoted to that goal.

To ask Heritage to do more is also to say that Heritage has already done well. Higher Education in America is a solid, well-crafted collection of articles. It should do much to advance the cause of higher education reform.

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