Your Mission (yes, that means you): Build Trust in Higher Education
By the year 2070, 80%+ of all Americans — including 66%+ majorities of all major demographic groups, political affiliations, and in every state in the nation — will answer "A great deal" to this question:
Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in higher education — a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little?
The target year of 2070 for the achievement of this audacious goal is not a coincidence. It's a selfish one. I am 30 years old. Male life expectancy in the United States is around 75. Polling numbers above 80% of "a great deal of confidence in higher education" are numbers I'd like to see by the time I am expected to die in 2070, some 45 years from now. This is my deathbed dream. And I believe it may take the rest of my life for those of us who love higher education to regain the trust of our fellow Americans, to see this deathbed dream fulfilled.
— Sam Schwartz, Fall 2025.