Technology is on the verge of changing higher education in unprecedented ways. The very definable alternatives provided by the online for-profit institutions have given way to the much less easily definable alternatives represented in the development of MOOCs, the shift from grade-based to competency-based credit, and the gradual encroachment of corporate “educational advisers” into the most profitable elements of our curricula.

It is important to ask not only who is financially invested in all of these changes but also who is politically driving them and why. The political contention within many of our states has become even more vicious than what exists more visibly at the national level. We would be very, very naive to think that those political realities are not affecting higher-education policy and practice in profound ways.

So, even if you do not agree with the politics of the writer of this Salon editorial, we think  it is worth sharing in order to provoke a fuller conversation about the issues that it addresses.