The Independent Review

In describing the state of American higher education today, it is hard to improve upon Charles Dickens’s memorable opening lines in A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of

We live in an era fraught with challenge. From a global pandemic to rising authoritarianism and a European war, the world is as fundamentally unsettled as it has been in nearly a century. Domestically, Americans face rising levels of polarization and

Can anyone remember what the telecommunications industry was like forty years ago? That might be difficult, and for younger readers perhaps impossible, because there has been so much change. In brief, however, the industry used to be a staid, regulat

Visit the website of any major selective American university or college and you’ll see promises not just to make students more economically productive, but also to make them into better citizens. Harvard College aims “to educate the citizens and citi

“College is so expensive these days!” This statement or something like it has become a common refrain over the last few decades. Public and nonprofit private four-year institutions have seen tuition and fees rise by 13 to 18 percent in constant dolla

Higher education in America faces the twin problems of ever-rising costs and a loss of relevance to the various stakeholder groups—students and parents, taxpayers, alumni, and trustees—the industry serves. The cost of a college education—tuition, boa

Higher education is at an inflection point. Tuition and room and board at state-supported higher education institutions has more than doubled in real terms since the late 1990s (Webber 2018). The college wage premium, which had risen substantially fo

Which college professors do you remember most vividly and with the most respect? I suspect many of us think back to the best lecturers—the ones who captivated us and entertained us while sharing their expertise. I have nothing against charisma or a c

Last year marked the centenary of the publication of Frank Knight´s magnum opus, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, which entails important and still neglected insights from a comparative economic point of view. Knight ([1921] 1957) famously discusses the

In the aftermath of Ukraine’s declaration of independence on August 24, 1991, the Yeltsin administration issued a statement claiming Russia’s right to raise territorial issues with ex-Soviet countries with substantial Russian minorities, including so

At 5:00 a.m. on Sunday, the sleeping prisoners of war were surprised by the glare from searchlights mounted on tanks surrounding their compound. Soldiers barged into the barracks, and the prisoners were dragged outside, lined up, searched, and eventu

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2022. Pp. viii, 443, $35 hardcover. For those who care about freedom, these are difficult times. Whether it has been the extension of state power courtesy of COVID or the sense that economic liberty is und

Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2022. Pp. xxi, 222. $34.95 hardcover. In the late 1930s, during the worldwide Great Depression and as the totalitarian threat loomed large, a group of scholars gathered in Paris to discuss the fate of liber