The conference was billed as a symposium on the future of higher education. But, by and large, speakers at the forum organized by the New School, part of its conference series on social research, were focused on the challenges of today, not on the possibilities of tomorrow—or those 20 years down the road. Indeed, to underscore the immediacy of the problems facing American universities, protesters angered by tuition increases at the City University of New York interrupted the opening session, drowning out the system's chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, who was one of the panelists.
