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324Conversation What Is the Future of Higher Education?third and demonstrate that the fourth is non-negotiable.The democratic principle has triumphed: More Americans than ever before have been to university. But this triumph has exacted a heavy cost not only in college debt but in the neglect of non-college paths to success. In Germany, practical-minded children have a clear road to success through technical colleges and apprenticeships. In America, they are increasingly left with nowhere to go. Thirty-nine million Americans drop out of college without finishing their degree, leaving them in the worst of both worlds%u2014student debt without a sheepskin%u2014and suggesting that college-for-all is an inherently foolish idea.Defenders of the current universityfocused system point out that US universities contain all manner of vocational schools under their capacious roof. But is it sensible to put vocational education in a realm where many practical-minded students fear to tread and where professors are chosen for their publication record rather than their teaching ability? Democratization may have been an excuse for bundling up lots of different educational functions that might be better off delivered through diverse and dedicated institutions, as in Germany. It%u2019s time at least to experiment with a new model.The traditional counterpoise to democratization was marketization, which was supposed to help pay the bills while keeping the Ivy Towers rooted in the ground. Marketization has certainly paid big dividends: The US model of linking the universities to local tech industries, pioneered by Stanford, is envied and imitated across the world. But it has also generated waste%u2014universities compete to build expensive sports complexes or hire star professors (who are always on sabbatical) in order to attract customers and boost their rankings. US universities have also imported some of the worst qualities of mature companies: exorbitant CEO pay, a bloated middle-management, a habit of treating nontenured faculty as precarious workers rather than candidates for membership of a learned society, and, to the chagrin of conservatives who naively imagined that marketization might tame the tenured radicals who dominate the faculties, all the expensive paraphernalia of the woke corporation. The number of administrators has grown with a speed that would astonish even GM%u2019s middle-managers of the 1970s: Stanford%u2019s army of managerial and professional staff leapt from 8,984 in 2019 to 11,336 in 2021. . . .The combination of democracy and marketization is weakening a third defining principle of a successful university%u2014meritocracy. Elite universities continue to favor the offspring of donors (actual or prospective) by providing preferential admissions for the children of alumni or practitioners of plutocratic sports such as fencing or lacrosse. At the same time, they favor certain ethnic groups through policies of %u201cdiversity, equity and inclusion.%u201d Worryingly, a growing number of universities are making SAT tests, which were introduced in the 1930s in the name of meritocracy, optional while keeping legacy preferences intact.SAT tests are a valuable way of discovering hidden talent in poorer children from nonacademic backgrounds. True, elite parents can improve their children%u2019s SAT scores through coaching. But you can address this problem by providing coaching for everyone or by using SAT tests to compare people from similar economic backgrounds. Giving more emphasis to more subjective measures such as academic grades, extracurricular activities and teachers%u2019 reports invariably tilts the selection process in favor of richer students and favored ethnic or social groups. . . .5Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.