Higher education should be a public good, not a private commodity

Submitted by Tim Goral. The ideal of higher education as a public good — once inextricably linked to the American Dream — has been all but abandoned in favor of the college degree as a private commodity. The narrow focus on earning power, coinciding with demographic shifts in the number and diversity of college students, has fueled the understanding of college as a purely private benefit rather than a good for all. More...