An era of accountability has swept over the higher education landscape. Everyone it seems-legislatures, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, books, and bloggers-wants to "hold colleges and universities accountable." They are attaching strings to budgets; producing reports that read like exposes; developing clever systems to rank and sort us; and writing books and articles that describe the end of college as we know it. According to them, we need to be reformed, reimagined, and rebooted. Momentum changes the conversation from how others are holding higher education accountable to why colleges...

An era of accountability has swept over the higher education landscape. Everyone it seems-legislatures, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, books, and bloggers-wants to "hold colleges and universities accountable." They are attaching strings to budgets; producing reports that read like exposes; developing clever systems to rank and sort us; and writing books and articles that describe the end of college as we know it. According to them, we need to be reformed, reimagined, and rebooted. Momentum changes the conversation from how others are holding higher education accountable to why colleges...