As Congress and President Obama continue to seek ways to improve the post-secondary degree attainment of our population, I suggest adding to or modifying the classifications commonly used in higher education reports, regulations, and statistics.

My first suggestion is that, in the case of most classifications, the term “for-profit” be removed as a separate distinction. This term refers to corporate structure and institutional governance, neither of which is of particular relevance in describing contemporary American higher education. Also, and unfortunately, the pejorative innuendo and labeling associated with the term are not warranted or representative of the academic quality and educational impact associated with many for-profit institutions; moreover, the term does not provide a meaningful form of differentiation between institutional types.
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I recently received an email that was quite touching and I thought worth sharing here (see below).  SSgt Darrell “Shifty” Powers served with the 101st Airborne Infantry Easy Company.  Anyone who has read Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers or seen the HBO hit series by the same name will recognize Shifty’s name.  Actor Peter Youngblood Hills portrays Shifty’s character on the HBO series.

SSgt Powers died at his home in Dickenson County, Virginia on June 17 at the age of 86 after losing a prolonged battle with cancer.  While the story was covered by several local news outlets in and around Shifty’s hometown in rural Virginia, the story and Shifty’s significance to American history seems to have been lost on the national media. 

The email I received was written by an individual who met Powers in a Philadelphia airport a couple of years before Shifty’s death.  After helping Powers confirm that he was waiting at the correct gate, the email’s author engaged in some small talk with the elderly man that led the author to discover that he was chit-chatting with a true American hero.  After recognizing the emblem of the 101st Airborne on Powers’ hat, the author quickly discovered that Powers was not only a World War II veteran, he was in fact a man of notable military experience and distinction. 

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In last week’s The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson reported on a speech given by George Pernsteiner, Chancellor of the Oregon University System.  In addressing attendees at the annual meeting of the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), Pernsteiner was quoted as saying “If [the crisis] is all we look at, we will have failed.  Our institutions will have failed.”

Mr. Pernsteiner believes that all the solutions generated so far out of the current crisis are “Band-Aids.”  He talked about the slipping position of college educated Americans versus other nations, the cutback in funding to public institutions by the states, and the growing percentage of Latinos who have been a traditionally underserved group in higher education. “More students, different students, fewer dollars, more control, and more accountability,” Mr. Pernsteiner said. “If you lay those things down end to end, you have a series of puzzles.”

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