Who's the Customer?

By Matt Reed.At NACCE I briefly got into a colloquy with a very young, very self-assured investor who asserted confidently that “young people” don’t care a whit about institutions or tradition, and that they will desert public higher ed en masse as soon as a better deal comes along, which is already happening. I suggested that what he called “young people” in fact reflected an elite, well-resourced slice of young people, and that hollowing out more universalist institutions on their whim would amount to abandoning everybody else. I still believe that, but I think I’m honing in on why we kept talking past each other. Read more...