Jean Johnson, National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) vice president for moderator development and communications, is the author of an article titled, What Does It Mean to Be an Educated Person Today?  The article can be found online in the Summer 2015 issue of Peer Review, a periodical by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU). In the article, Johnson describes a national project by the National Issues Forums Institute, the American Commonwealth Partnership, and the Democracy Commitment, that involved over 125 public forums held in in 22 states, where people talked about the future of higher education.

In the article, Johnson describes how some of the project findings diverge from results of polling the public on similar questions. The following is an excerpt from the article, What Does it Mean to Be an Educated Person Today?

Overall, the forums suggest that public thinking about higher education is considerably more aspirational and nuanced than polls sometimes suggest. Moreover, as documented in a Kettering Foundation report, Divided We Fail: Why It's Time for a Broader, More Inclusive Conversation on the Future of Higher Education, the forums show convincingly that a broad swath of Americans continues to hold "a rich, expansive, vivid--perhaps even idealistic--view of what higher education should be."

At the same time, the forums reveal a potentially troublesome gap between the way policy makers and more typical Americans think and talk about higher education. Based on the forums, people outside leadership circles appear only barely aware of the historic changes occurring in higher education today. Few seem to be closely following front-burner debates over issues like outcomes-based funding and competency-based education. Many are just starting to think through what values and priorities in higher education are most important to them. 

Click here to read the entire Peer Review article by Jean Johnson. You can also read the Kettering Foundation report titled Divided We Fail: Why It's Time for a Broader, More Inclusive Conversation on the Future of Higher Education.