Opinion: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Students In U.S. Higher Education: It was every administrator’s dream: two conferences in one week. One focused on measuring student-learning outcomes, the other on effective leadership in community colleges. In both meetings, the question of who can, does and should have access to higher education arose. Many assume the answer is that all students deserve a college education. This is a fraught assumption. Higher education in the United States was transported from Europe and was a system that served to control which social classes had access to knowledge and the opportunity to contribute to the generation of knowledge.
