Seventeen Questions Every College Should Be Asking
Our oldest kid is a senior in high school, so like a lot of American households, our whole family is visiting campuses and comparing colleges. One of the striking aspects of this process is how similarly many schools seek to present themselves—and how few make any clear promises about how our daughter would be changed, improved, better habituated, or made more thoughtful by investing four of her most valuable years in their care. As a former college president, I am well aware that every university is a complicated ecosystem, not a linear widget factory. An institution of higher education is a partnership among students and alumni, faculty and administrators, donors and trustees, neighborhoods and more, to build a community—and a culture. From the first-year students’ fall orientation to the board’s As just one example, it is decreasingly clear what purpose a four-year degree should serve when technology is changing the nature of work. These tidal economic and cultural changes should be prompting serious soul-searching in every board and faculty meeting, but most universities are deliberating with the urgency of 1951 becoming 1952. This isn’t good enough. Our students—and our nation—need more out of higher education in this tumultuous decade. In this context, the institutions that shape them in their late teens and 20s become all the more important. This should be driving us to ask harder questions of those who would lead our colleges and universities through the digital disruption of society. We should raise big questions about purpose and effectiveness, about technology and place, and about human capital, both inside and outside the school. The time to tolerate complacency has long since passed, and everyone who cares about the future of this critical sector and about helping our students navigate a change that’s every bit as big as industrialization and urbanization should be demanding more. We need a serious conversation about the future of America’s colleges and universities.
