As I've seen him do all too often before, here Wadhwa writes with too little analysis of the situation he is commenting on. Right now, there is a status quo of HUGE subsidies for higher education. Higher education is second only to K-12 education as a line item in the budget of my state and other states. When billions of dollars extracted from taxpayers--including taxpayers who have no prospect of ever attending college--are injected into the current system, it is little wonder that some people have trouble imagining any different system, and most people who try to set up alternatives to the system are doomed to failure. "The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished more or less the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence, so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions." -- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Part 3, Article II (1776) "In modern times [as contrasted with ancient times] the diligence of public teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them more or less independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty in competition with those who trade with a considerable one. . . . The privileges of graduation, besides, are in many countries . . . obtained only by attending the lectures of the public teachers. . . . The endowment of schools and colleges have, in this manner, not only corrupted the diligence of public teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private ones." -- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Part 3, Article II (1776)