“Simply put, many Americans fail to finish college, because many colleges are not designed to be finished. They are designed to enroll students, yes. They are built to garner research funds and accrue status through rankings and the scholarly articles published by faculty. But those things have little to do with making sure students leave prepared to thrive in the modern economy.”
“At the Gates Foundation, Greenstein calls this approach the “reintroduction of intimacy”—a return to what worked in the Middle Ages, when university meant not a physical place but a collection of dons and students unified by a collaborative sense of educational mission.”