In recent months, there's been a surge of attention to issues of access and success in higher education. The U.S. Education Secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education talked about it. State policymakers are proposing new goals and accountability systems to address these issues. Even the mainstream press has been increasingly critical of higher education's perceived turning away from its longstanding promise to serve as a means for hardworking low-income students to learn their way into the middle class.
Now it seems that instead of serving as a bridge between the "two Americas," higher education is widening the gulf.
Many college leaders seem perplexed by this critique. In ...