Conceiving a New Agenda for Public Higher Education

This reporting is by Doug Lederman in Inside Higher Ed: Gerald L. Baliles was most of the way through his speech Monday, delivered to nods of affirmation from the state higher education officials, public college trustees and others in the audience, when he threw the assembled a curveball. . . . Baliles, a former governor of Virginia and now director of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, was expressing the dual views that state and national politicians too often fail to recognize the value of American higher education (as college and university officials frequently argue, usually when seeking more government funds), and that higher education as an industry is too slow to adapt to changes in society and to those it purportedly serves, as critics often accuse. . . . “The point is that higher education is essential and that it is at risk in a time of change,” Baliles said. That’s when he dropped his punchline. [Emphasis SCUP's.] The words Baliles had just finished reading were not a fresh speech about the current state of higher education; they came from a letter he had written 15 years ago to introduce a report on educational quality from the Southern Regional Education Board. . . . The issues that the group had gathered to wrestle with—concerns about affordability, access, quality and accountability that college leaders and politicians have been discussing intensely for the last few years—have been around for ages. And relatively little progress has been made in attacking them, in part because the many words that have been spilled on the subjects have not been sufficiently transformed into actions.