Can We Have Both Equity and Innovation in Higher Ed? A Response to CNN's IVORY TOWER

By Cathy Davidson. On Thursday, Nov 20, at 11 am EST, I will be interviewed on CNN’s @This Hour, with hosts John Berman and Michaela Pereira.  Our focus is a  new documentary Ivory Tower.  I previewed the documentary last night.  It is   pretty terrifying, even apocalyptic, if you are a student, a professor, a parent, or just a general citizen of the US concerned about your future.  I don’t want to “spoil” the movie for anyone so I’ll only give away what is in the Ivory Tower trailer.
Ivory Tower focuses on both economics and on learning.  On the economic side the focus is on: the 1 trillion in student loan debt; the even greater debt that colleges and universities have taken on over the last decades making them unstable and unsustainable; the declining state funding of public universities beginning with Governor Reagan’s program of defunding the University of California and vowing, as a presidential candidate, to dismantle the Department of Education. More...