What should be done?

Inside Higher Ed reports.

Authors discuss new book on higher education’s problems, real and imagined

Bachelor’s degrees should be completed in three years. MOOCs should replace general education. Coding boot camps are the game changer. College should be free. Internships are more important than instruction. Eliminate administrative bloat and higher education will be prosperous.

Pick your quick fix for higher education, but it won’t be endorsed in Lesson Plan (Princeton University Press), a new book by William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson. They make clear early in the book that while higher education has serious problems, they find most punditry and political proposals for higher education to be wrong. In a short volume (140 pages), they try to explain what everyone is getting wrong and to offer an agenda for change. They argue that much more focus should be placed on academic rigor and graduation rates than on the numerous ideas that receive widespread attention for reforming higher education.