“Educational Quality Is the Next Great Frontier”

Bill Henderson takes a look at a question that has been making the rounds: What is the answer to high student debt? After dispensing with a number of attempted answers to the question, he says:

My own belief is that educational quality is the next great frontier. If we can put a man on the moon in the 1960s, surely with four years and $120K we can turn a reasonably able and motivated 22 year old into a critical thinker who can reliably communicate, collaborate, gather facts, assess data, lead, follow, and approach problems with both empathy and objectivity. Further, improving quality changes the debate from "how much does higher education cost?" to "how much is higher education worth?" And if the worth is sufficiently high, both public and private employers would be willing to subsidize it in exchange for preferred access to graduates.

He goes on to say the only barrier to this shift is institutional focus.