By Dan Greenstein Last week, I kicked off a series of posts exploring what I believe is a growing disconnect between higher education and the American people. In that piece, I unpacked one of the possible causes of that disconnect – the ways in which academe celebrates exclusivity over opportunity. This week, I’m taking […]

The dangerous misconception that being a “good” college requires exclusivity is hurting our country, writes Director Dan Greenstein.

By Dan Greenstein I’m just now sending my oldest child back to college for his sophomore year, which has caused me to pause and reflect about what we’ve both learned from the experience of his freshman year. It also got me to thinking about the approximately 25 percent of students who won’t be returning to […]

Dan Greenstein’s speech on closing the opportunity gap delivered at ACT’s 32nd Annual Enrollment Planners Conference on July 19, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois.

In my five years at the foundation, I have done a good number of presentations, panel discussions, and speeches. And one of the things I enjoy most about these experiences is the opportunity to hear from people from across our enterprise and our nation. The most common— and vexing— question I receive from audiences is “What is your read on the future of college?”

Four in 10 students are non-white, one-third are the first in their family to attempt college, and more than a quarter are parents as well as students. If higher education is going to remain relevant and better serve today’s college students, our content and product providers must make strides to catch up in terms of diversity – and keep up.

Lasting institutional change is a combination of attention and intention, and Sinclair Community College gets that. And while they recognize that there is still a good distance to travel on their student success journey, they have already made great strides and have learned lessons that can benefit thousands – if not millions – of today’s college students.

While graduation season is filled with inspiring stories of persistence, sacrifice, and accomplishment, it also gives rise to some lingering myths about our students and what it takes for them to get to graduation. These myths hurt students because they help preserve a status quo in which not enough of them succeed. We can and must bust these myths.

While we’ve opened our doors to all Americans in the past 50 years, effectively democratizing access to higher education, we’ve done relatively little to adapt education so that it meets the needs of the students who now make up our majority. This trend matters because it forces us to ask whether yesterday’s education – the one that worked so well for us – is appropriate for today’s economy and for today’s students.

In so many respects, public higher education really does reflect the best of America’s past. This enterprise can also represent the best of our country’s future, provided that we have the will to evolve so that we may meet our changing demographic and economic needs.