Alliance for Learning: 'There Is Only Education for All Citizens'

By C. Peter Magrath

All of us in the enterprise of education are by now well acclimated, if indeed not hardened, to being the subjects of countless reports analyzing our work, grading us, and, of course, advising what we should do--and how we should do it. Until now, most of these reports, beginning with the famous A Nation at Risk report, targeted elementary and secondary education.

Increasingly, though, and for understandable reasons, the education provided by America's 3,600 colleges and universities has become a topic of commentary. The commentary comes from critics with rather self-serving political agendas, but, at times, also from friendly but concerned citizens who genuinely want to see the enterprise improved.

It is in this category that I place the recent "An American Imperative'' report. It is based on the premise of the absolute value of postsecondary education to the American society, our need to be better prepared for the highly competitive world in which we live, and the need to improve in those areas where we are deficient. Despite reservations about the tone of the report (a bit too negative, perhaps, to get attention and much too casual about the unsurpassed value of the research enterprise produced by America's leading universities), I count myself a friend of the Wingspread report. It is...