About this book:

America’s public universities are being rebuilt from the dorm room up—and the architects hold the blueprints. *Campus Inc.* pulls back the curtain on the secretive alliance between elite firms like SOM and Mithun, private developers, and cash-strapped administrators. It reveals how the humble dormitory was transformed into a high-stakes asset class, financed by student debt and designed for profit, fundamentally altering the mission of public higher education in the process.

From the rise of the "university-developer complex" to the luxury amenity arms race pricing students out of their own campuses, this book traces the money, the design, and the power dynamics reshaping the quad. Through deep historical analysis and a landmark case study, it exposes how public-private partnerships turned student housing into a revenue engine, replacing communal architecture with resort-style living and corporate aesthetics. The result is a campus that looks more like a branded lifestyle product than a public trust.

Urgent, rigorously reported, and unafraid to name names, *Campus Inc.* is essential reading for anyone who believes the public university should serve students, not shareholders. It connects the dots between architectural spectacle, the affordability crisis, and the erosion of campus culture—offering a definitive account of how we got here and a bold roadmap for reclaiming the public university before the last brick is laid.