The concept of higher education as the “great equalizer” may be the best outcome of the evolution of American colleges and universities in the 20th century. As education advanced and the needs of the workforce changed, Americans recognized with clearheaded pragmatism that education offered the most certain avenue “out and up.” They took advantage of the G.I. Bill to retrain to meet the demands of the mature industrial economy. For middle-class America, the expectation became even stronger as parents prepared their children for a college degree and sacrificed what was necessary to achieve it.
We should celebrate and appreciate what got done.
At the same time, however, policies that opened access and supported choice also created an enormous higher education infrastructure with protocols that evolved from older higher education models.
Presidents became corporate managers, for example, who lived in two worlds. In the first world, they related as business leaders managing thriving enterprises that related to trustees hailing from Wall Street and Main Street, often with different expectations and expertise.
In the second world, presidents were often the equivalent of big city ward bosses using financial, social and political capital to deal with staff, faculty, students, parents and alumni in a complex and cumbersome shared governance model. Presidents became brokers between these two worlds in which they were often expected to be all things to all people at all times.
This tension between the broader world and life behind the college gates has now come to a head as the financing models continue to break down. The fixed costs of labor, infrastructure and technology, together with the long, lingering deep recession, have wreaked havoc upon even the most comprehensive financial models. There are a few universities and well-endowed liberal arts colleges that can continue to innovate and hide in plain sight. These institutions are so small in number that the quiet crisis in how to finance a college education is now open, raw and a matter of heightened public debate.
These troubles are serious enough but they underscore an even more damaging trend. The fact is that the value of a college education is no longer a right and expectation for most middle-class Americans.
