Higher Ed and the American Dream?

David Leonhardt from the New York Times joined me and Jeff Selingo on the latest episode of Future U. to talk about his new book, Ours Was The Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

This is a must-listen episode if you care about the role higher ed plays in the economy and mobility. We discussed the high-school movement in the United States before pondering what a movement like that might look like in 2023.

According to David, the high-school movement was “essentially a one-size-fits-all solution that really did work.” That one size might not work today for post-secondary education. “While four-year college may not be for everyone, the opportunity to go to a four-year college absolutely should be for everyone,” David said. “It shouldn't just be for the children of relatively privileged people like all of us and many of the people listening to this podcast.”

Jeff and I then both had some sharp takes about what that should mean in the back-half of the episode.

We also discussed the “degree divide” in politics with David and what it means that Democrats have been becoming the party of those with a college degree. David’s take? “A party that is losing significant support from the 60-plus percent of American voters who don't have four-year college degrees has a lot of problems,” he said.

That led me and Jeff into another set of hot takes in the back-half of the episode on why and how colleges might want to change that reality. Here’s an excerpt of what I said:

“I think higher ed has a big responsibility to help shift this as well. … But I think [colleges] do that by not being so clearly partisan or eager to align with a particular and mostly the progressive cause, but instead by being places that are designed to cultivate difficult conversations with different perspectives by design and to dig for truth. And I think what's really challenging about that, Jeff, is that I think... This is my sense, I could be wrong, but I think a lot of the presidents of these institutions now want to go there. They realize what's happened and the faculty, and I'm just going to say it, particularly in the humanities, have been so driven by ideology and who has gotten tenure that I don't know if they're ready to make that shift. And I think that's probably part of it just to be super blatant. And I don't know how you change that to create an environment that is welcoming of different perspectives again, on all these issues, frankly. I don't know how you do it.”

Jeff and I recorded the episode before the fiasco in Congress with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn. You can listen to the full episode here.

Changing A Through F Grades?

“Many schools have moved to standards-based grading systems that are meant to shift emphasis away from winning points on tests and homework in favor of stressing student mastery of material. But some parents and educators have pushed back, worried that students get the message that homework no longer matters,” reports EdSurge.

That should be no surprise to those who read my most recent book, From Reopen to Reinvent. That’s because changes to grading should, in most cases, occur at the end of a process to move to mastery-based learning, not at the beginning. Stories about my mom yelling at me, the experience of a middle school principal in Massachusetts, and Iron County School District’s efforts to innovate make the case for why in the book.

To be clear, the current grading system is flawed. But as I wrote in the book, “Fixing grading alone is akin to a doctor treating a sick patient’s symptoms rather than the root cause of the underlying problem.” You can learn more here.

Higher Ed Regs in 2024

Meanwhile, Inside Higher Ed reports that the “Future of OPMs in Flux as Regulations Loom.”

I wrote about the Biden administration’s previous (and now failed) effort to regulate outside entities that partner with colleges earlier this year here. As the piece in Inside Higher Ed lays out and Dartmouth’s Joshua Kim’s quotes make clear, the administration is likely to repeat its mistakes.

Rather than focus on micromanaging contracts between colleges and outside companies, “policy should instead focus on student outcomes and empower schools to figure out the best ways to deliver,” I wrote in March. “Better policy would do things like tie the ability of college programs to participate in federal aid programs on the condition that their students get good-paying jobs when they leave and repay their debt. Or Congress could pass policy to require that colleges share in the risk when student borrowers don’t repay what they borrow. Under this model, schools would have the incentive to cut off companies that added costs without benefiting students.”

As always, thanks for reading, writing, and listening.