ABSTRACT
When academic problems appear intractable, it is often because an underlying systemic element is responsible, but no one quite sees what or where that element is. People who work in the academy, like people in any institution or profession, are socialized to operate in certain ways. When they are called upon to alter their practices, they sometimes find that they lack a compass to guide those changes. Some of the reasons why “this is the way things are” in American higher education are still good ones, some almost certainly obsolete. (Menand, 2010, p. 17)
