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"On whether college still serves its traditional role of leveling the playing field and equalizing opportunities "No, and that's really unfortunate. It was always seen as the great leveler in this country, especially after World War II. One of the most disturbing numbers I came across in research for this book was that if you come from a family with a family income above $90,000, you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting a bachelor's degree by the time you're in your mid-20s. If you come from a family under $35,000, you have a 1 in 17 chance. "One of the fears, and one of my fears, is that we might become a country where the next generation is less educated than the generation that preceded it.""

Thanks for sharing this article, Matt. In my curriculum theory course with Scott Richardson, I began exploring the history of education in the US and the difference between "schooling" and "educating." Have our colleges starting schooling now? It will definitely be interesting to watch this especially as potential standards are implemented at the college level.

"DeVaney compared campus innovation to Japanese pottery. Specifically, he invoked the ancient practice of Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken bowls with brightly-colored laquers, so that the break becomes part of the object's history that is celebrated rather than disguised. "By preserving the damage, by showing that history of an object or an institution, we're able to enlighten those around us," he says. "We're able to illuminate pathways. We're able to help other institutions take advantage of the wisdom that we gained from the journeys that we were on.""

Tuition hikes are fine when someone else pays the real cost, and in this case, it's typically other students at a college who end up footing the bill for some professor's kid to go there free or at a reduced price. As tuition rates have increased, tuition remission has evolved from a nice extra to a big-ticket benefit, surpassing health care for those workers who take advantage of it in a particular year.

"On most four-year college campuses, full-time students don't pay by the credit hour (think by channel on your cable bill). Rather they pay a flat fee for the semester (a programming package on your cable bill) and are typically allowed to take as many courses up to a certain limit."

"There's been much debate in recent years about the role of public colleges in an era when students pay for more than half their education in most states. Sure, state funds might make up less than 10 percent of the budget at the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, and Berkeley, but the fact of the matter is that most public colleges couldn't survive if not for their states."

"One way of defining these workplace skills is to consider what employers actually ask for in job postings. Based on Burning Glass Technologies' analysis of millions of job postings, one in every three skills cited in job ads is a "baseline" skill - that is, skills that aren't specific to any particular kind of job but rather that are requested by employers across the board. (Most of these are soft skills, though the analysis also includes skills like Microsoft Office that are so common as to be considered core to employability in the modern workplace.) A worker who has these in addition to technical skills is going to be welcome anywhere."

"At Arizona State, Michael Crow has pioneered transdisciplinary structures and algorithm-driven apps to help students hone in on a college and career path. Crow says colleges and universities are too "fixed" and "rigid" and must figure out a way to "be very broadly engaged with society." At Northeastern, Joseph Aoun is attempting to supplement the traditional "human literacy" curriculum with "technological literacy" and "data literacy," and to power this via experiential education - "the most powerful way to learn": internships, co-ops, work study. "