In this episode, Hilary Burns of The Boston Globe and Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker join hosts Michael Horn and Jeff Selingo to discuss what college insiders are missing about the sector’s changing public perception. Both argue that culture-war fights distract from a deeper problem: ordinary families are skeptical of higher ed’s cost and value, especially as demographic decline and AI-driven uncertainty constrain colleges and universities’ reliance on uninterrupted growth to progress. The pressure is hitting hardest at regional publics and tuition-dependent privates.
Burns urges leaders to fill what she sees as a leadership vacuum, observing that “everyone’s kind of just ducking and hoping someone else will step up.” Kang warns that enrollment problems are arriving quickly, causing “an emergency situation in a lot of these schools.” He predicts that college as a place for open-ended exploration will survive, but largely as a privilege of the wealthy.