Avoiding the Elephant

Doug Lederman reports on a recent conclave of higher education leaders opposed to new government oversight:

Even as other speakers agreed that the temptation to increase direct federal oversight of accreditation and higher education was ill-conceived, they were more accepting of the notion that colleges have brought much of the criticism behind that temptation on themselves, and that much of the scrutiny was deserved.

In other words: While our critics are right that we're underperforming, we reject their proposed solutions, even though we have no credible solutions of our own, and our objections are rooted in a general aversion to oversight as opposed to a specific analysis of the problem and how it might be solved. 

Good luck with that.