Course Focus

The American Dream – that ubiquitous narrative in American society that stipulates widespread individual access to economic and social mobility – has been pinned heavily over the last 50 years to an accessible, affordable and effective system of US higher education.

This seminar (“ADHE”) examines critically the relationship between the American Dream and US higher education. ADHE challenges students to diagnose the US system of higher education system for the root causes of its current problems and, from there, to formulate a point of view about which interventions in policy and practice can lead to meaningful, lasting improvement to the US system of higher education and to its stabilization as an engine of economic and social mobility in American society.

Higher education in the US is now overwhelmingly common. A large majority of US high school graduates pursue post-secondary education of some kind. Unfortunately, institutions of higher education in the US are now also staggeringly expensive, and their essential outcomes – including the rate at which their students graduate and the earnings outcomes of their students -- are poorly tracked and (when they are disclosed) usually disappoint.

While almost all critics of US higher education agree that the sector is in distress, they share no consensus on the origins of that distress or, as a result, on the nature of structural and lasting remedies. One topic of debate in the field – and one that will be central to ADHE -- is how the public policy and sector design of US higher education contributes to (or even predicts) the sector’s dysfunction and inhibits innovation. American institutions of higher education are subsidized heavily by public expenditures and protected profoundly in law and accreditation from new entry and public accountability. It is in the context of this atypical and hotly contested sector design that students will be asked to evaluate the sector’s challenges and to design change strategies for practitioners and policymakers.

ADHE is most relevant to students who have an interest in higher education and workforce development and who are interested in entrepreneurial activity and policy disruption in those two domains.

Course Design

ADHE meets weekly for 2 hours. Preparation for each weekly session should average 90 minutes.

Readings for ADHE are a mix of primary sources on foundational aspects of US higher education (including its outcomes, finances and policy basis) and pointed secondary texts (including book chapters and opinion pieces) that take a stance on the organizing question of ADHE.

Weekly seminars feature both guests and student-only discussions. Guests include innovative leaders of institutions of higher education, leaders of aspiring new institutions of higher education, founders and CEO’s of ed-tech and work-tech companies focused on disrupting higher education, and a variety of policy-makers, grant-makers, investors, and advocates who specialized in the topic of the seminar. Student interactions with guests will be structured as student-led investigative interviews designed to surface data and opinion relevant to the question of the seminar.

The final grade is based 60% on preparation and participation and 40% on a final paper and presentation. The final paper asks students to take a position on the core question of the seminar.

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