Only a handful have been set up this century: University of California Merced (2005), Ave Maria University (2003) and Soka University of America (2001). Just five U.S. colleges founded in the past 50 years make it into the Times’s top 25 “Young Universities”: University of Alabama at Birmingham (founded 1969), University of Texas at Dallas (1969), George Mason (1957), University of Texas at San Antonio (1969) and Florida International (1969). Each is (or originated as) part of a state university system.

How does he focus on the dearth of new universities, particularly in populations which have only been growing? No mention of the growing number of colleges which have gone bankrupt and disappeared? Given population growth, with appropriately commensurate funding (a political football), we should have seen a huge number of new institutions just from that.