When children can support themselves, they generally leave their parents’ home. When state colleges and universities can do the same, they find it difficult to leave the nest of taxpayer-subsidized state and federal supports. “Ours is an economy of scarcity,” Gary A. Olson writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Even well-endowed institutions find themselves in a constant struggle to find enough money to do everything that they want to do.” “That economy of scarcity extends to salaries: Most academics and administrators are not compensated at the level that their education, skills, and experience would garner in business and industry.”...