Why didn’t higher education as an industry fully see the perception challenges coming? 

Lungile Tshuma and Tim Brandt asked me this yesterday during an interview for their Architects of Belonging series.

It’s a good question. I didn’t have a great answer other than perhaps we weren’t staying in tune enough with the audience we were serving.

The truth is that society has come to view higher education less as a public good and more as a pathway to a career. This shift happened for many reasons. The labor market changed and a bachelor’s degree became the baseline for many roles. Higher tuition costs and student debt programs triggered a need for accountability and audience expectation of economic returns. Enrollment pressures forced colleges to lean into career and outcomes based messaging to remain relevant in the new market reality. In a sense, we’ve left an amenities race and found ourselves in an outcomes race. 

Plus, it’s hard to remain a public good without high levels of public funding. When society paid, college could be framed as a public good. When individuals pay, college must justify itself as a private investment. 

In any case, this is where we find ourselves. What do we do about it? 

As with so many things with life, I saw Doug Lederman’s column “Better Defining and Measuring Higher Ed’s Value” for Inside Higher Ed just after the interview or else I would have referenced it. 

I really love the idea of framing college as both education for work *and* education for life. Together, there is real opportunity to reframe the purpose of higher education. If we anchor our message in the outcomes people already say they value (career success, ROI) and also intentionally surface the outcomes we believe matter like purpose and civic engagement, we have a chance to broaden and strengthen the public understanding of college’s value.