This book started with a hypothesis that I first published online in 2015: that the “Dissolution of the Monasteries” under Henry VIII in England in the 1530s provides a working metaphor for current challenges to higher education in the United States, and by extension to other Anglophone systems.1 Why has this book adopted such a historical metaphor? Centuries, political systems and economies, social systems, and universes of belief divide our world from that of late medieval and early modern England and Europe. Skeptics will be quick to point out that – unlike the medieval monastery – the modern American university is secular, devoted to the pursuit of reason and knowledge, open to all, and forged around the values of this, not the next, world. They will add that, unlike the medieval monastery that emerged from a hatred of the world and civil society and was the tap root of all “medieval” obscurantism, the modern university was born of Renaissance and Enlightenment. It freed minds and bodies from the bonds of authority and blind tradition. It unchained and opened books and knowledge for all. Excellence and the free exchange of ideas were and are its inspirations and guiding principles. How can any valid comparisons – positive or negative – be made between the two institutions? This book seeks to answer these objections by demonstrating the clear affinities between the institutional life cycles of the monastery and the university.