Making Sense of the Higher Ed Debate

President Barack Obama’s recent proposals to reform higher education have once again made the debate over the future of higher education big news. Today, higher education is under scrutiny to explain what it does and why, while reformers from the White House to Wall Street are eager to provide alternatives.
The discussion is often vitriolic, in part because of the intense pressure exerted by internal and external stakeholders and because higher education today includes a diverse array of institutions that are not always distinguished from each other. At a deeper level, however, our disagreements stem from the fact that we speak very different languages, each of which reflect, ultimately, different assumptions about the nature and purpose of collegiate education in America.