The Current Situation of Cost Accounting and Costing for Higher Education Services at Training Institutions Under the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam

This chapter discusses the use of cost accounting as an important organizational tool for informing operational and financial sustainability strategies in public organizations. While the main accounting and budgetary theories tend to overlook cost accounting, the information that cost accounting provides is important for the effective functioning of both accounting and budgetary theories of public organizational sustainability. Furthermore, cost accounting informs two structural responses to sustainability challenges: contracting service delivery with private providers, and collaboration with government and nonprofit providers. In its current incarnation in the public sector, cost accounting may not be capable of addressing the large and important problem of financial sustainability of public services. As such, a systems-practices framework is developed to make a distinction between cost accounting systems from cost accounting practices. This model draws attention to differences in costing discussions and provides a basis for thinking comprehensively about how many disparate discussions of public cost accounting are interrelated.

Cost accounting and budget preparation are fundamental pillars of financial management, enabling organizations to allocate resources efficiently, control expenditures, and support strategic planning. In today’s digital age, these functions are undergoing rapid transformation driven by emerging technologies. This study investigates the impact of digital tools—such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and cloud-based platforms—on modern cost accounting and budgeting practices. Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, the research combines survey data from 350 finance professionals with qualitative insights from 25 interviews and three organizational case studies. The findings suggest that technological adoption enhances cost accuracy, reduces budgeting cycles, and improves real-time transparency. Nonetheless, issues such as complexity in integration, change reluctance, and data security remain a thorn in the flesh. The paper contains helpful suggestions to financial managers who would like to update their cost management systems by optimally integrating them with digital tools. Such revelations can assist the organizations in making informed decisions relating to investments and can also create a solid, technology-enabled financial plan for the long-term growth of the organization

In the course of the research, the scientific literature of domestic and foreign scientists was analyzed, which dealt with the problems of cost accounting in general and the budget sphere in particular. The purpose of the article is to investigate the classification of expenditures of public higher education institutions for the management accounting subsystem. Special and general scientific methods of cognition were used to ensure the effectiveness of scientific search. In particular, induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, grouping. The elaborated cost accounting provisions, taking into account the realities of the activity of public higher education institutions, including their place in the budget system, mechanism and sphere, allow to determine the following urgent problems of accounting of expenditures in public higher education institutions: clarification of the classification and composition of expenditures in the context of the main products of activity; formation of the scheme of the expense ratio in the context of accounts of class 8 Expenses. Under these conditions, the development of management accounting in public institutions of higher education will be a real opportunity, and in fact the latter will become an effective tool for managing the activities of these entities. To formulate the classification of expenditures for the purposes of management accounting of public higher education institutions, we have resorted to such approaches in the field of enterprise accounting. The development of specialized literature has made it possible to generalize the classification features and their corresponding cost groupings. Consideration of the presented positions indicates the presence of certain problematic identification approaches (defining accounting and costing as management functions), as well as some accumulation of haphazardness in the presented numbers in the formation of classifications. Based on the elaborated classifications, the classification of expenditures of public higher education institutions is proposed. In the context of the production activity of public higher education institutions, the cost elements within the management subsystem are, accordingly, presented with a corresponding nomenclature. The complex of theoretical and methodological provisions of accounting and classification of expenditures of public institutions of higher education has been developed.

Reviewed by: What’s Happening to Public Higher Education? Matthew R. Wawrzynski (bio) and Jody E. Jessup-Anger (bio) Ronald G. Ehrenberg (Ed.). What’s Happening to Public Higher Education? Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006. 381 pp. Cloth: $59.95. ISBN: 0-275-98503-2. Robert Ehrenberg, who serves as the director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI), noted that "public higher education appears to be in a state of crisis" (p. 1). He therefore devoted the spring 2005 (CHERI) conference to providing a detailed description and analysis of public higher education at the beginning of the 21st century. Revised papers presented at this conference by more than two dozen authors evolved into the bulk of What Is Happening to Public Higher Education?, which Ehrenberg edited. The first of the book's three parts is aptly titled "Setting the Stage." In this section, various authors provide background data on national trends occurring in public higher education, the forces that have led to these trends, and the effects of these trends on students. Each of the four chapters in this section offers a detailed, empirically based study addressing topics such as "why public higher education institutions find themselves in the precarious budget situations they are in today" (p. 3), the impact of the growth in part-time or full-time non-tenure-track faculty on undergraduate student graduation rates, the relationship between the increasing use of adjunct professors and reductions in undergraduate students' persistence from their first to second year, and the effect of institutional funding cuts on baccalaureate graduation rates. As Ehrenberg notes, the first section of the book is more technical than the other two sections; therefore those interested in only a summary of the major findings from the studies presented in the first part of the book will find the introduction beneficial. The most valuable contributions are in Part 2, "Individual State Experiences," which includes Chapters 5 through 14. These chapters provide case-study analyses of how higher education has evolved in 10 states (one chapter per state) and how public higher education in these states has been affected by these changes. The states examined are California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Chapter authors note that some states are prioritizing access despite reductions in state funding while other states are raising tuition at the expense of access because financial aid is not keeping pace with tuition increases. Similarly, although some state institutions have increased the number of part-time and full-time, non-tenure-track faculty as a cost-saving measure, other institutions are guarding the high number of full-time, tenure-track faculty and instead are cutting costs in other ways. Despite the varied approach taken by the authors, one theme that emerged from the chapters in this section is the steady decline in state appropriations for higher education and the steady increase in tuition levels. This resounding theme reinforces the magnitude of the challenges facing public higher education nationally in the 21st century. The final section of the book, "Looking to the Future," comprises Chapters 15 and 16. In Chapter 15, John Wiley, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison presents a detailed argument on the infeasibility of public universities being able to adapt to the funding structure of private universities. In the final chapter F. King Alexander, President of California State University-Long Beach, asserts that more than 40 years have passed since the last national dialogue on public higher education occurred and that the time is ripe for another one. The book's strengths clearly reside in the second section where various authors provide an overview of current economic challenges facing higher education and how individual states [End Page 490] have responded to these challenges. The unique programs that states have initiated to address student affordability issues provide snapshots of possibility for state and federal policymakers who aspire to maintain or increase access. Furthermore, the diversity of states examined provides a comprehensive look at the complexity involved with understanding public higher education at the state level, as there is great variability in how each state structures and funds public higher education. Those seeking a better understanding...

I. INTRODUCTION The much discussed and widely debated recent conditions in public higher education include expanding enrollments, flat if not declining public appropriations per resident student, and rapid increases in tuition rates. (1) To many observers, tuition policy in public higher education appears be explained as an attempt to set tuition at whatever level is necessary to compensate for shortfalls between public appropriations and instructional expenditures. Ehrenberg (2006) asserts that public higher education has been buffeted by a perfect storm, in which state appropriations to public higher education institutions have failed to keep pace with per student expenditures in private higher education because of economic recession, the priorities placed on alternative uses of state tax revenues (such as elementary and secondary education, Medicaid, welfare, and criminal justice), and efforts to reduce income and sales tax rates. A considerable empirical literature examines the relationship between tuition in public higher education and state appropriations. Koshal and Koshal (2000) identify a negative relationship between tuition and state appropriation. A study of college costs and prices, which is conducted by Cunningham et al. (2001), identifies an inverse association between tuition rates and annual budget appropriations but finds little evidence of a link between tuition and expenditures on instruction. Lowry (2001) treats state appropriations as exogenous in a resident tuition equation and discovers a significant negative relationship between state funding and tuition. Rizzo (2005) finds that increases in tuition are linked to declines in future levels of state funding, which hints at a dynamic association. Rizzo and Ehrenberg (2004), in one of the more extensive examination of the topic, treat real state appropriations per student as an exogenous variable in their resident tuition equation and find that schools that receive higher state appropriations per student charge lower tuition, though the elasticity is far from unity. Acknowledging the economic and demographic conditions of public higher education and the empirical literature linking appropriations and tuition raises a number of questions. What activities are legislatures supporting when they allocate public funds to higher education? What are the implied responsibilities for subsidizing residents versus nonresidents? How are resident and nonresident tuition rates determined, and what are the relationships among tuition rates, resident and nonresident enrollments, and state appropriations to higher education? In particular, there appears to be the need to develop a better understanding of the decision processes that determine both the public subsidy and the setting of tuition rates. A goal of this article is to develop a conceptual framework for that process. There is a widely held notion that residents should pay a lower tuition than nonresidents, and as a result of a resident subsidy, they do so in nearly all public universities. One rationale for favorable treatment is that residents and their parents pay state taxes. Another claim, which receives some support by Groen (2004), is that residents are likely to remain in the state after graduation and thus contribute future tax revenues. Although the public subsidy to higher education is justified for these, and many other economic-development reasons, some argue that the higher education subsidy is simply a payoff to special interest groups who influence legislatures and governors. Friedman (1968) and Goldin and Katz (1998) provide a general discussion of the objectives of subsidized higher education. For whatever reasons, resident students continue to receive a substantial publicfinanced subsidy, while nonresidents pay close to full cost. There are two basic arrangements for determining tuition rates in higher education: (1) institutions determine tuition rates under the direction of an independent governing board; and (2) state legislatures, who are governed by statues and budget policies, make tuition decisions. …

Reviewed by: Saving State U: Why We Must Fix Public Higher Education Michael Cohen (bio) Saving State U: Why We Must Fix Public Higher Education By Nancy Folbre (The New Press, 2009) Campus radicalism is back, big time. For the first time in a generation, massive rallies, marches, blogs, and, increasingly, student strikes, building occupations and confrontations with the police are drawing the public’s attention to the crisis in public higher education. On March 4 of this year, rallies in 28 states and 11 different countries testified to a growing movement to reverse the now thirty-year neoliberal trend towards privatization and inequality not just in higher education but in American life in general. These growing protests have both immediate causes and long term roots. In California, where I live and teach, we are witness to the spectacle of the richest state in the country claiming that it is broke, and that billions in deficits must be made up for exclusively by cuts to schools, parks, food stamps, and other necessities of public life. These cuts have fallen hard on public higher education where the community colleges are canceling entire quarters, the California State schools are reducing enrollment by nearly 40,000 and the University of California system just raised student fees 32% while furloughing faculty and laying off 1900 unionized workers. In a shocking reminder of the state’s skewed priorities, California now has the dubious honor of spending more to incarcerate people [End Page 72] than it does to subsidize higher education. Statewide, our higher education leadership, like the state’s politicians, chirp the same failed conventional wisdom: it is the crisis! we can’t raise taxes! there is no alternative! Apparently, California’s only choice is to gut our middle class and deny college opportunities to the poor. And as goes California, so goes the nation, right? Not so, says Nancy Folbre, professor of Economics at UMass Amherst, a leading voice in feminist economics and long-time activist for public higher education. Now is the time, Folbre argues in Saving State U: Why We Must Fix Public Higher Education, for us to assert “why we need free public higher education in the United States and how we should pay for it.” Folbre’s purpose in this wide-ranging yet efficient new book is “to explain how public higher education fits into the bigger picture, to explain the strings that tie it to our understanding of global capitalism.” This large scale view affords her the opportunity to lay out a broad re-imagining of the political economy of education. A convincing reorientation towards the public aspects of economic thinking— as opposed to the self-seeking (i.e. privatized) elements— empowers Folbre to argue that public schooling is more than a form of job training or personal investment. Rather, public education is a social good, creating richer cultures, healthier people, technological dynamism, and social democracy. Having fixed our gaze on what she calls “The Big Deal,” Folbre undertakes a quick but confident discussion of a wide range of topics intersecting with higher education and public policy, beginning with the economic history of the modern university from the Progressive era to the GI Bill (“The Sweet Boom”) through the Tax Revolt and the triumph of conservatism (“The Slow Fizzle”). From there, armed equally with anecdote and data, she tackles questions about the political economy of student loans and admissions, the penetration of market values into the university’s character, the casualization of academic labor (i.e. less tenure, more adjuncts), the influence of college rankings and prestige, the complexities of state funding and public finance, and why it is so hard for most Americans to pay for and get through college right now. Of course, the brevity of the book means that many huge topics get only summary discussions. Her sense of the political is rather professorial and is limited to formal democratic practices like lobbying, campaigning and elections. She discusses leafletting parents as they help move their kids into freshmen dorms, organizing for and against ballot measures, forming acronymed faculty groups, and sharing advice on how to talk about taxation and revenues with legislators. Yet she carefully shows...

The main question that this paper seeks to explore is: What contextual factors and conditions are contributing to the present higher education environment in Malta? To address this question, the author conducts a systematic study by examining the changing context of higher education from a legislative, economic and political perspective. The aim of this paper is to outline the determining influences that are shaping Malta’s higher education context.The research methods employed in this paper are mainly two: the first method involves the analysis of documents and data published in international academic journals and local reports. Statistics published by the National Commission for Further and Higher Education (NCFHE) and the National Statistics Office (NSO) were the main sources of local Maltese statistics. The second research method involves national and institutional data that was specifically requested by the author and that was never published before. NCFHE, the University of Malta (UM) and Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) were asked to provide data in order to present a comparative analysis by comparing local data with what has been published internationally. UM and MCAST are the two main public Maltese higher education institutions. In all instances headcount data is presented.

group. Enrolments have greatly increased in the last few years, although they are still low in comparison to other EU Member States. The highest growth rates were in tertiary or higher education where the number of students rose by 72% between 1985-1986 and 1990-1991. The increase in the number of private institutions after 1986 also contributed to this growth. In 1994, 19.3% of students aged between 18 and 21 were enrolled in higher education. In 1985, they were 5.8%. Students can enrol in public higher education after successfully completing 12 years of schooling and sitting for national exams. After the introduction of the numerus clausus in 1978-due to an excess demand for higher education after the mid-1970s-only 48.5% and 48.6% of students entered a public higher education institution in 1991-1992 and 1992-1993, respectively. Higher education is divided into universities and polytechnics. Courses at the universities last for four to five years (a minimum of six in medicine) and lead to the licenciatura. Courses in polytechnics last for three to four years. Students can obtain a bacharelato in the third year or continue to obtain a licenciatura. To enrol for a master's or doctorate degree, they must hold a licenciatura. In 1992, private institutions had to establish admission quotas to have their courses recognised by the Ministry of Education. That year, the number of new entrants was greater than in the public sector, only six years after the publication of the Statute of Private and Cooperative Higher Education. The number of women is very high, even when compared to other EU Member States. Since 1975-1976, it has been higher than that of men. But there are significant differences according to discipline. More women graduate from university undergraduate courses. Expenditure on education is estimated to be about 5.6% of the GDP and about 21% of the Government budget; 17.3% is devoted to higher education (0.8% of the GDP). Almost all expenditure is in public education where, in 1993, the Government spent US $566 per student. This represented 48% of the Portuguese GDP per capita.

The paper considers the impact of the indicative cost of education (the minimum amount of tuition fees on the contractual basis (contract) at the expense of individuals/legal entities) in state higher education institutions on the Ukrainian market of educational services. It demonstrates that the introduction of the indicative cost of higher education by the state institutions of higher education was accessible through the application of the dumping strategy – by using the budget funds to educate fee-paying students. Under such conditions, the share of private higher education was not more than 10 percent of the total number of fee-paying students. The present paper aims to assess the impact of the introduction of the indicative cost of education on the relationship between private and public higher education, and the shift of the equilibrium cost of education. It is determined that this indicator is calculated according to a simplified algorithm individually for each state higher education institution and does not fully consider all the actual costs of the educational process. At the same time, such an implementation does not allow public institutions to use the dumping strategy and over time will change the ratio of quantitative indicators of private and public higher education in Ukraine. The sample flowchart displaying the supply and demand for the speciality “Economics” illustrates how the ratio of students studying on a contractual basis in private and state higher education institutions will change at different ratios of the indicative cost and the equilibrium cost of education in the speciality “Economics” according to the 2019 data. It was concluded that, in general, the introduction of the indicative cost of education would subsequently lead to significant changes in the ratio of private and public higher education institutions, their student population under contract (fee-paying students) where the main factors will be the customer’s fiscal capacity and the income, they provide. As a result, there will be a shift of the equilibrium point for most in-demand specialities in the direction of increasing the cost of training and reducing the volume of final contracts between the applicants and higher educational institutions.

Cost accounting is a field of accounting dedicated to identifying, analyzing, and reporting costs related to business operations a company's operations. It aims to provide detailed insights into the costs of products, services, and processes, helping businesses make informed financial decisions. Cost accounting involves the collection and allocation of costs to specific cost centers or departments, tracking expenditures, and evaluating the efficiency of production processes. It uses various methods such as to calculate the cost of manufacturing items or rendering services, use Job costing, process costing, and activity-based costing are methods used to estimate costs. By examining cost data, companies can identify areas for cost control, budgeting, and financial planning. Cost accounting supports strategic decision-making, cost reduction, and performance improvement, ultimately contributing to enhanced profitability and operational efficiency.The significance of cost accounting research lies in its ability to enhance financial management and operational efficiency within organizations. By investigating various cost accounting methods and practices, research provides insights into how costs are incurred, allocated, and controlled. Businesses can use this information to make well-informed decisions around pricing, budgeting, and cost reduction strategies. Cost accounting research helps identify cost-saving opportunities, improve cost control mechanisms, and optimize resource allocation. It also supports strategic planning by providing accurate cost data that can influence business strategies and assessment of performance. Furthermore, cost accounting study aids in the creation of fresh methods and resources for more efficient cost control. All things considered, cost accounting research is essential for businesses looking to increase profitability, optimize operations, and obtain a competitive edge their respective industries. MOORA (Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis) is an approach used to evaluate multiple criteria in decision-making processes for evaluating alternatives based on multiple, often conflicting criteria. It helps in decision-making processes by allowing for the comparison of different performance ratios against reference alternatives. MOORA involves assigning weights to various criteria, measuring their significance, and sorting the alternatives accordingly. This technique aids in balancing multiple factors in complex decision-making scenarios. By systematically measuring trade-offs and considering multiple objectives simultaneously, MOORA provides a structured framework for achieving well-known and effective results. Alternative taken as Activity-based costing (ABC), fixed costing, and job order costing are various techniques used to allocate and manage manufacturing costs, Process Costing, Marginal Costing, Direct Costing, Throughput Accounting, Life Cycle Costing. Evaluation Parameter taken as Accuracy, Cost Control, Decision Support, Complexity, Cost of Implementation, Adaptability. The results indicate that performance accounting received the highest ranking and direct costing received the lowest ranking.

A Policy of AccessibilityOhio Public Higher Education’s Attempt at Equity, 1975–1983 Jonathan Tyler Baker (bio) introduction Since 1966, when the Ohio Board of Regents—the governing body of Ohio higher education—published their first “Master Plan for Ohio Higher Education,” political and economic factors played an influential role in determining the purpose of the state’s system of public higher education. For the first 10 years after their establishment in 1963, the Regents worked to build a system of public higher education that emphasized both academic excellence at the graduate level and universal access for lower-division students. The clear priority for the Regents, however, was the need to demonstrate that Ohio could compete with other states at the highest academic levels in the areas of research and technological development in order to earn lucrative government contracts that would, in theory, diversify Ohio’s economy and provide thousands of jobs for all facets of a workforce. But, in addition to Republican governor of Ohio Jim Rhodes’s decreasing support of advanced higher education, a significant string of economic setbacks in the late 1970s undercut the dual purpose of Ohio public higher education of elite graduate-level research programs and accessible higher education programs for working Ohioans. These economic setbacks were accompanied by an emerging service-sector economy that brought jobs requiring skills or credentials that higher education could provide. Unless the state wanted increased numbers of unemployment, higher education had to be both financially accessible and relevant to the needs of Ohio’s workforce. [End Page 112] During the process of repurposing public higher education in the late 1960s, the Regents discovered that Ohio’s public colleges and universities had historically, when compared to other states in the Midwest, enrolled a significantly smaller percentage of the state’s population in higher education, regardless of how many campuses opened across the state. Moreover, Ohio had a smaller percentage of college-aged students enrolled at two- or four-year colleges than any other state in the Midwest despite the influx of baby boomers driving up enrollment at four-year public campuses. Even though Ohio had more students enrolling in higher education than ever before, roughly 70 percent of the state’s traditional college-aged population was forgoing college altogether. The Regents found that a significant portion of the traditional college-aged population who forewent college were women who were either low-income, black, or divorced single mothers, or, in some cases, all of the above. Examining how the purpose of Ohio higher education changed, and who was affected by the changes, in the late 1970s and early 1980s is important because the story illustrates how politics, policy, and the economy play an outsized role in what version of public higher education a state’s residents receive. Moreover, the changing purpose of public higher education during this period of Ohio’s history provides a powerful example of the way that centralized state control over higher education is not always a guaranteed way to fix systemic socioeconomic problems. American higher education has, in some ways, represented a route toward economic and social mobility, but those routes are only available if state policy-makers stay committed to providing access through long-term planning. In other words, a policy of accessibility needs to be tailored to a wide variety of groups of people: what is accessible to one group may not be accessible to another. Even when enrollments were reaching all-time highs across Ohio and the nation, a significant number of students still couldn’t access higher education due to financial restrictions. From the mid-to-late 1970s through the early 1980s, the Regents turned their focus to increasing the percentage of Ohio’s population enrolled in college. While such actions may seem counterintuitive to the belief that college and university enrollments were experiencing unprecedented enrollments, the fact of the matter is that aside from increased enrollments at large, public four-year schools and some of their two-year satellite campuses, the overall enrollment in Ohio’s public colleges and universities was comparatively low. This article seeks to complicate what historians of higher education believe about the enrollment spikes caused by the...

Some thoughts on cost accounting developments in the United States

Compared with those of its more advanced ASEAN peers, Cambodia’s higher education system is still in its infancy. Its higher education governance, financing and financial management are neither sophisticated nor robust enough to deliver high-quality, relevant higher education to the society and economy. Higher education institutions have mushroomed amid inadequate regulation, supervision and support to meet national needs. The current legal framework for higher education has perpetuated an inefficient, fragmented and reactive regulatory regime. Similarly, the development of the subsector has been dictated by a distorted market system without comprehensive policy or well-thought-out state intervention. This study explores the current governance of higher education in Cambodia. It overviews conceptual discussions and examines key governance issues in public higher education. It reflects also on practices across Southeast Asia to draw academic and policy implications for improving public higher education governance in Cambodia.

A recent trend in Australian education is the diversification of programme delivery outside institutions’ traditional sector of education, including delivery of bachelor degrees by some public vocational education and training institutions (known in Australia as technical and further education, or TAFE, institutes). The delivery of higher education programmes in non-traditional providers, such as TAFE institutes, has created significant challenges for teachers working in these settings. They work within a vocational education and training (VET) culture but confront the regulatory frameworks demanded of higher education providers. Scholarship is a particularly problematic issue because it has not been an expectation in VET providers but is a key feature in higher education. This article examines the emerging nature of scholarship in a TAFE institute offering higher education programmes. We report on an analysis of regulatory and quality assurance documentation, which begins to formalise the notion of ‘scholarship’ in VET. We then compare this emerging official definition with higher education TAFE teachers’ experience of scholarship using interviews. We argue that higher education teachers and their TAFE institutes are forming distinctive hybrid scholarly cultures and practices as they take on external expectations and navigate through existing orientations to industry, educational commitments to teaching and the absence of scholarly structures and values in TAFE.

It seems almost commonplace now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, to bemoan the crisis facing public higher education in America. (1) Funding at the federal and state levels - sometimes in decline, sometimes on the rise - feels more tenuous than ever. (2) To entice new students, colleges and universities have been creating and revamping majors, expanding study-abroad programs and internship options, and opening new recreational and research facilities, all while increasing tuition at rates well above inflation. (3) And we have recently been witness to a disturbing set of public shamings as schools disclose a of statistical inflation in pursuit of higher rankings in U.S. News and World Report (Perez-Pena and Slotnik 2012). The 2008 fiscal crisis and the fraught relationship between Congress and the White House have only added urgency to this already agitated discussion. Many reasons can explain the anxiety about the future of public higher education. This paper addresses one cause that is often unmentioned. It is my worry that millions of Americans who regard religion as central to their lives may have become disenchanted with and disenfranchised by public higher education. For one example among many, Liberty University in Virginia, founded by the Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell in 1971, has doubled its student body twice since 2007 alone. It now educates more than 60,000 students each semester - far more than even some of the largest public universities (Anderson 2013). Religious Americans who attend or send their children to parochial schools of higher education do not see their moral or political views reflected in or valued by public academia, which is often seen as dominated by left-of-center voices. (4) I believe that this sense of disenfranchisement leads religious Americans to send more and more of their children to private denominationally-affiliated colleges and seminaries instead of public universities. (5) This essay is organized into two major parts. To provide an overview of the crisis facing American higher education, I begin by discussing two representative texts, The University in Ruins by Bill Readings and The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. These books describe different sets of problems and propose divergent (though complementary) kinds of solutions. The essay then takes up a vision of the university presented in the 1790s by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and compares his view with recent writings by the contemporary social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. I conclude by using these texts to suggest how public higher education could better accommodate religious Americans. Bill Readings and the University of Economics Two books on public education, one by the late literary scholar Bill Readings and the other by the cultural historian Louis Menand, present broad critiques of the contemporary public university. In a way, these two authors create a tension with each other. For Readings, the university functions primarily as a filter for creating and credentialing capitalist workers; for Menand, the university is structurally anachronistic and detached from the demands of contemporary life. A look at these two books provides an outline of the dominant discourses of alarm. It also suggests the reasons that words like morality, God, nation, and truth (common tropes for religious Americans) tend to be excluded from the debate about the condition and future of public higher education. Readings' primary contention is that, by the final decade of the twentieth century, the university had been transformed from an institution conveying what he calls culture to an institution promoting something he calls excellence. By culture, Readings means a sort of nation-state ethos, a narrative played on the accomplishments - including the history and the literature and art - of the political and geographical entity in which a university was founded and had matured. …