C Thi Nguyen, Value Capture, and the University

Jennifer Szalai just interviewed C Thi Nguyen about his new book The Score. After encountering Nguyen’s work a few years ago, I threw out my draft of After the University and rethought everything. The clarity and energy of his thinking untethered me. Here are a few pages from my the introduction to After the University in which I adapt Nguyen’s notion of value capture to institutions, especially the modern university: