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325What Is the Future of Higher Education? Conversation QUESTIONS Exploring the Text 1. According to Adrian Wooldridge, what factors justify America%u2019s status as a %u201cleader in higher education%u201d (par. 1)? 2. What are the first two principles that have %u201cshaped the university sector%u201d (par. 4)? Why does Wooldridge think the United States has taken these principles %u201ctoo far%u201d? 3. Does Wooldridge think vocational education should be incorporated into traditional universities? Why or why not? 4. What are the third and fourth principles that complete Wooldridge%u2019s list? On what grounds does Wooldridge argue the United States is failing to honor these principles? QUESTIONS The most dangerous threat of all is to the principle of free speech. There is an uncomfortable number of examples of students shouting down invited speakers %u2014 most recently, law school students at Stanford University shouted down a Trump-appointed federal judge, Stuart Kyle Duncan, who had been invited to speak by the school%u2019s Federalist Society chapter. The Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) calculates that there were 877 attempts from 2014 to 2022 to 10 punish scholars for the expression of ideas that are protected by the First Amendment. . . . A long period of pell-mell growth has pulled the higher education sector badly out of shape. Let%u2019s hope the coming years of retrenchment will allow universities to rein back some of their excessive enthusiasms (for adding numbers and unleashing market forces) while at the same time reinforcing their commitment to the foundational liberal principles of meritocracy and freedom-of-speech. 3 In Defense of College Degrees and New Post-Secondary Pathways Jeffrey Selingo Jeffrey Selingo (b. 1973) writes about American higher education for publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Atlantic . He%u2019s also a special advisor and professor of practice at Arizona State University and co-host of the podcast Future U. He is a FutureEd senior fellow. This piece was published on the website of FutureEd in 2023. In November 1965, at a ceremony at Southwest Texas State College, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act, a law he said %u201cmeans that a high school senior anywhere in this great land of ours can apply to any college or any university in any of the 50 states.%u201d The legislation and its expansion of federal financial aid for students and colleges ushered in a %u201cuniversal college%u201d movement in the United States, much like the %u201chigh school movement%u201d at the turn of the 20th century that made 12 years of schooling the norm in an increasingly complex world. When the Higher Education Act was signed, about half of high school graduates went right on to college; today, some twothirds enroll immediately in some sort of postsecondary education. But there is mounting evidence that Americans are losing confidence in higher education as an engine of economic opportunity and social mobility. Americans have drastically shifted their priorities for K-12 education since 2023Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.