From
Inside Higher Ed:Gathered here Thursday for the TIAA-CREF Institute's Higher Education Leadership Conference, some of the nation's most prominent figures in postsecondary education wrestled with the central question of their time: What is the future of this thing called college?
What became quickly and painfully obvious in their deliberations is that the center will not hold. In something of an irony, higher education leaders acknowledged here Thursday that the very system that put them in the position to run the nation's colleges and universities is no longer fit to groom their successors or the rest of the U.S. work force. Diminishing state support, a skeptical public pressing for accountability, and dramatically shifting demographics all point toward the necessity for a serious rethinking of the way colleges educate students, according to just about every panelist who spoke at the conference.
