Lumina Foundation Pushes a Higher Ed Great Leap Forward

Another report out this week is the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation's 116-page account of how far the U.S. must go to meet the Foundation's goal of "increasing the proportion of American adults with a college degree to 60 percent by 2025." There's been a lot of goal-setting of this kind lately. President Obama, the Carnegie Corporation, and the College Board have all set their own goals for higher education attainment in the next decade or so. The rationale is that we want America to be the most-educated nation in the world (right now we're eleventh or twelfth). But being the most-educated nation isn't likely to make us the best-educated nation. Here's why. (See especially "American Character, the Remix: How College is Shaping Us Now")