Americans are unhappy with college. Very unhappy. According to a Tamar Lewin piece in the New York Times:
Most Americans believe that colleges today operate like businesses, concerned more with their bottom line than with the educational experience of students, according to a new study. And the proportion of people who hold that view has increased to 60 percent, from 52 percent in 2007.
Americans still think going to college is important, they just don’t seem to think colleges are very well managed.
Some 83 percent of those surveyed also believed that people borrowed too much to pay to go to college.
Americans appear to believe that colleges could offer high-quality education cheaper. College administrators don’t seem to agree. According to the article Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education, an association of higher education institutions, said: “It’s nice to think that we can have guns and butter, but it’s not that easy. The public is not always right.”
One wonders why the public might be suspicious of higher education management.
