Friday’s edition of the indispensable Inside Higher Ed brings news of the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, just in case you were wondering. According to Colleen Flaherty’s report, an air of apprehension hangs over the event, which is being held, where else, in San Francisco.
In her opening comments to the teachers and administrators gathered there, the group’s president, Lynn Pasquerella, announced that “American higher education is under siege.” The general public has become alienated from the academy. Liberal arts, she pointed out, has been a particular target of a prevailing anti-intellectualism that equates education with job training. It is their job, she went on, “to contest the widespread perception that colleges and universities are out of touch with mainstream America.”
