The Atlantic, which is very progressive, has an article ruefully recognizing that higher education has a worsening image problem. Here are the opening 3 sentences.
Just 10 years ago, almost 60 percent of Americans said they had a lot of confidence in higher education. By last year, that number had fallen to 42 percent. Seventy percent of Americans told Pew last fall that higher education is moving in the wrong direction.
I read that with hope, but was disappointed by what followed. One positive comment I saw was this.
The pursuit of knowledge in certain fields in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has been subordinated to achieving “social justice.”
[The authors] are particularly concerned by what they see as the widespread belief that objective evaluation of scholarship is impossible, and that therefore political criteria are as worthy as evidentiary ones.
So they've accepted they have problems. They haven't made nearly enough progress in identifying needed change.
Admittedly, it is tough to look in the mirror, see self as a loser, identify shortfalls, and make change. Few of us are great at doing this.
Inexorable market forces - declining enrollments - will weed out many schools which cannot manage the difficult task.
