Momentum: The Responsibility Paradigm and Virtuous Cycles of Change in Colleges and Universities

An era of accountability has swept over the higher education landscape. Everyone it seems—legislatures, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, books, and bloggers—wants to “hold colleges and universities accountable.” They are attaching strings to budgets; producing reports that read like exposés; developing clever systems to rank and sort us; and writing books and articles that describe the end of college as we know it.

According to them, we need to be reformed, reimagined, and rebooted.

Momen...