American higher education suffers from an identity crisis that threatens its long-term viability.
As costs have surged and free online courses have proliferated, colleges and universities have elevated image over substance and clung to an antiquated structure that has left them vulnerable in an era of rapid change. Until they focus seriously on improving their core function – student learning – they risk foundering in a sea of mixed messages.
On the one hand, administrators explain the immense long-term value of a degree and the immediate payoff in job opportunities and higher salary. On the other hand, they elevate sports teams to godlike status, pay coaches many times morethan they do professors, reward volume of research over innovative teaching, and compete for students by promoting what Jose Bowen calls the “campus spa.”
Overcoming this identity crisis requires an understanding of what I argue are the three main components of higher education: promise, process and product. Colleges and universities have long promised a path to broader thinking, an entree to a leadership class, and a means to bolster a democratic society.