Market-Based Education: What can We Learn from Universities‪?‬

There is a widespread perception that American universities are the best in the world, dominating the Nobel laureate affiliations and luring foreign students from throughout the world. Yet virtually no one claims America has the best K-12 educational system in the world. Indeed, many writers, citing international test results, complain that our schools are fairly mediocre relative to overseas counterparts. Why are American universities perceived as being of high quality compared with primary and secondary schools? Two differences between K-12 and higher education are worth noting. First, American higher education is far more privately controlled than primary and secondary education. Roughly double the proportion of college students attend private institutions compared with the K-12 level. Even "state" universities are far less completely governmentally controlled than the typical government primary or secondary school. State universities typically resemble true public charter schools operating at the K-12 level, with a much higher level of independence of central governmental authority than is typical at the lower levels of education, although there are exceptions to this generalization.