A Tale of Two Reports

A point that has generated much discussion is the decline in confidence in and support for higher education. Over the last ten years or so, the percentage of Americans who say they have a high degree of confidence in our colleges and universities has fallen, while the percentage who say they’re skeptical about the value of higher education has risen sharply. Many in the higher education establishment have dismissed this as having no importance—merely the result of increasingly vicious right-wing polemics aimed at one of the nation’s great engines of “progressive” influence, they say. Nothing to be concerned about. Some...