"The history of American higher education amounts to a three-phase story: in the colonial period, colleges promoted belief at a time of established (or quasi-established) religion; in the nineteenth century, they retained something of their distinctive creeds while multiplying under the protection of an increasingly liberal, tolerationist state; in the twentieth century, they became essentially indistinguishable from one another (except in degrees of wealth and prestige), by turning into miniature liberal states themselves—prescribing nothing and allowing virtually everything.[12] Anyone whose parents or grandparents were shut out from educational opportunity because of their race, ethnicity, or gender is thankful for the liberalizing trajectory of higher education— but as in every human story, there is loss as well as gain."
College is at least three-and-a-half years away for our oldest, but we are finding lots to talk about these days. Discussions of costs are short and filled with unknowns. Discussions of what a college teaches (in class and out), the value of higher education, what colleges are worthy of consideration...well, these questions could become full-time occupations. The more we read and talk, the less I seem to be certain of.
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