It seems that every op-ed piece written lately about higher education begins with the same litany of woes: diminishing public confidence driven by perceptions of out-of-control prices, soul-crushing debt, murky value, lack of integrity, favoritism for the wealthy and white, on-campus assaults, athletics scandals, “going out of business” signs, and a shockingly impractical preparation for a rapidly changing world of work. A reckoning is coming, say the pundits, and it’s not going to be good for the nation’s colleges and universities.
From where I sit, at the culmination of nearly 40 years of advocacy for higher education and good governance, it’s both difficult to disagree with the list above and it’s hard to avoid the fact that there’s not much on that list that is new. The American public has been telling us for years that they are losing faith in what was once seen as the surest path to a good job and a good life. We cannot afford to waste any more time — we must address the longstanding challenges that we can all name and describe but have yet to solve. And we need to do so innovatively and nondefensively.
These strategic challenges will not be overcome by what I hear from so many higher-education leaders at so many national meetings: “We just have to tell our story better.” I don’t disagree — we do need to tell our story better — but I think being so historically narrow in our approach is part of the problem. We’re assuming that the public dislikes us because they don’t know us. We’re having the wrong debate. What we are failing to realize is that the public dislikes us because they don’t — and we don’t — agree on what higher education is for in this country. Change requires, rather mandates, actual change. We are well past the moving of chairs on the deck of the Titanic as the suitable bromide. That ship sank; our sector need not suffer the same fate. However, we need to turn the wheel — otherwise, the answers default to a debate about more or less, rather than different.
In 1947, the President’s Commission on Higher Education, known as the Truman Commission, produced a landmark report that was the culmination of their examination of higher education in our country. The commission considered not just higher education’s transactional objectives, methods, and facilities, but more importantly the societal role it must serve in order to advance our democratic values. The commission clearly saw the connection of a robust investment in higher education to the promulgation of the nation’s priorities. Words taken from the report seem eerily familiar today:
For many years they [college and university presidents] had been healthily dissatisfied with their own accomplishments, significant though these have been. Educational leaders were troubled by an uneasy sense of shortcoming. They felt that somehow the colleges had not kept pace with changing social conditions, that the programs of higher education would have to be repatterned if they were to prepare youth to live satisfyingly and effectively in contemporary society.
This uneasy sense of shortcoming in the mid-20th century immediately following World War II, when there was a palpable recognition that things were going to change and that higher education would need to play a lead role in helping to shape and assure this country’s future, should serve notice on us at this point in addressing the complexities of the 21st century. As leaders of our sector, one that should aggressively maintain its stature as the voice of the future, we must demand a national reckoning about the true purpose of higher education in today’s society.
The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges has long advocated for board members to embrace their role as advocates and fiduciaries for their own institutions, but as the questions about the purpose of higher education have mounted, we have pushed them to do more — to take ownership of and responsibility for the health of the entire enterprise. These conversations about the strategic role of higher education must begin in individual boardrooms but can’t stop there.
In 1947 such a conversation led to a report that, while a product of its time, recognized the fundamental value of developing a population educated beyond the secondary level, addressed the need for expanded access, and recognized the fundamental value of higher education as a national resource. The commission laid a solid foundation for higher education in the United States in modern times.
We now must address the cracks in that foundation and tackle the question that was at the core of the Truman Commission’s work and must be at the core of ours: What is the purpose of higher education in America? We need that same level of commitment about higher education today. It’s time for a new commission with a bold agenda.
This needs to be an effort endorsed by government and generously supported, although its independence will be essential to its success. Representation on the commission must include, among others, leaders from higher education, the corporate sector, and the government. Higher-education board members must be part of this effort. The proposed commission should focus on higher education but not be part of higher education; no single higher-education association or foundation should assume leadership, though strong leadership and an openness to innovative ideas will be necessary.
Defensive or overly critical posturing cannot be the order of the day; instead, it is time to move from calls for transformation to the modeling of how such transformation can help reinvent a sector and its support. Building national support for this essential convening will be challenging; only through total independence will it have a chance to succeed.
Once we agree on a clear vision (which won’t be easy), we can invest strategically to meet 21st-century objectives and have a far stronger story to tell the American people — one that will return our system of higher education, envied by the world, to the esteem of the people it was created to serve.
Richard D. Legon retired in June after 13 years as president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. He serves as a trustee on the board of Spelman College.
