Cornell’s University Reform Report Sidesteps the Real Reason Americans Have Lost Trust in Higher Education
27th September 2026
Higher education is suffering through a self-inflicted crisis of declining public confidence. Only now are its faculty members and administrators starting to recognize that fact, but they collectively remain incapable of acknowledging the heart of the issue.
That’s my take from a recently released report from Cornell University titled “Report of the Committee on the Future of the American University.” The Wall Street Journal reported that it “confronts the crisis in higher education.” But I disagree. Instead, it plucks at a few well-known but serious issues that plague modern colleges and dodges the real cause of the crisis.
In fairness, a separate, largely accurate Wall Street Journal editorial calls the report a “limited self-critique,” but I’d go even further than that. I’d say that it’s an attempt to sidestep and distract from the bigger problem that the authors know exists but want to ignore (because abandoning it would be akin to abandoning their religion).