Lost in all the focus on “wokeness,” DEI, academic freedom, anti-Semitism, and the like is the reality that higher education is failing to address its most pressing and important problems: It’s too expensive, and, outside the world of elite institutions, it’s woefully ineffective at getting students to completion. These problems are well known and well documented, yet the obstacles to change prevent them from being addressed in any serious way. The question of whether or not Harvard makes a statement on Israel and Gaza is insignificant compared with whether more students at more colleges can graduate. A lot of colleges and universities are at the point now where they have to stop being what they are. And have to start being something else.
