I spent a couple of days of spring break reading a new book called Crazy U .  The book recounts one father’s experience trying to get his first child into a good college.  The author also happened to be an investigative journalist, so he manages to dig deep inside the many stressful elements of applying to college including the marketing game, college rankings, the SATs, FASFA, etc. 

Apart from this being a really good read and fairly enlightening, there was one passage that caught my attention.  During a conversation with a university official, the question came up of whether students were consumers.  Though not explicitly said, the impression you get was that students were disciples of education who should want what the elite professor has to offer. The best thing in the world for public, private, and higher education would be for students to begin acting like a customer.  

This kind of outlook by university and some public school officials has given us a university system that has severly inflated prices while providing a worse product, and has given us secondary schools that have not raised standards to address the needs of a 21st century world.