Starting in the mid-20th century, academe became idolized, in good times, as embodying everything right about America, and demonized, in bad times, as embodying everything wrong. It’s neither, and both — a crazy, amorphous amalgam of interests and histories that couldn’t have been planned and won’t become extinct. It was ragtag and subpar until World War II, then enjoyed a 30-year golden age. Afterward, it remained the world leader but has subsided into noisy fractiousness over credentialism and culture, politics and price. As we grope our way forward, calm, rational discussion and a little perspective might help. But a search for solutions in American academe’s linear, illustrious history surely won’t — because that past of sustained grandeur and gravitas never existed. Frank Rhodes, a former president of Cornell, in 2001 described the university as "the most significant creation of the second millennium." Wow. That’s not how we thought of it when I was growing up.

November 17, 2015 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education