ABSTRACT
Impatience with higher education often stems from a sense that it refuses to fully embrace the present moment. Higher education enjoys what Louis Menand calls a “delicate and somewhat paradoxical relation” to the broader culture. Higher education does a disservice to society if it only seeks to satisfy customers and affirm conventional wisdom. Higher education’s future challenges will be like the ones of its past. Institutions will need to determine how best to serve an ever-changing set of social and economic needs without falling into the ephemera of the moment. Anachronistic irrelevance on the one hand and excessive zeal for currency on the other are opposite but equal threats to the ability of higher education to remain at the vital center of social and economic change. College athletic programs distort the values of too many institutions and, in some cases, exploit student-athletes.
