PILING ON.

I've been looking for a copy of Academically Adrift.  The commentary from people who have obtained a copy and been able to read it is compelling.  Jason Fertig posts a paragraph excerpt at Phi Beta Cons.

Only the most cynical policy analyst could advocate “college for all” without simultaneously demanding that once admitted into college, students would be compelled to demonstrate significant academic growth. Otherwise, “college for all” becomes little more than a policy designed for warehousing students during the years when they would otherwise face an elevated risk of unemployment and criminal behavior.

"Students pay some hefty storage charges at these warehouses," he quips.

Mark Bauerlein's Minding the Campus post frets about the tradeoff higher education faces.

But colleges are in a bind either way. They are under pressure to open access and keep retention rates high. But the obvious solution to the low-learning problem---raise standards, assign more reading and writing, increase rigor---might improve test scores, but the other rates will fall. That is, if homework goes up and assignments get more rigorous, dropouts and flunk-outs will rise as well. At the very least, grades will plummet. Reaction will follow. Colleges are under intense pressure to get kids in the door and keep them there. If the retention rate falls, they have a lot of explaining to do in public.

So keep that dilemma in mind. The more you make students work, the fewer students will cross the finish line.

In the midst of a recession, might the colleges be able to explain that the completion problem often begins with high schools, let alone elementary schools, that have failed to carry out their part of the social contract.

Although Reason's Greg Beato focuses on the money-suck that higher education has become, with little social and diminished private returns on investment, and the misplaced, to a free-market perspective, emphasis on the shortcomings of for-profit colleges that charge large sums of money (perhaps enlarged by the availability of third-party money) for little effect, he, too, notes the deleterious consequences of access for its own sake.

It’s true that for-profit institutions are raking in huge profits in large part because of federal subsidies. (The CEO of the holding company behind Strayer University made $41 million in 2009.) But it’s also true that few if any for-profits are using federal money to finance lengthy sabbaticals for high-paid professors who teach a handful of classes a year, or the athletic pursuits of undersized linebackers who should have hung up their cleats after graduating high school. Non-profit institutions of higher learning have been using federal money to make sure American college kids are the tannest, best-fed, most vigorously administrated students in the world for decades now. For a little extra credit, our elected officials should start holding them more accountable too.

It's not quite "higher education should be higher," but it's a start.