Meanings of merit - Higher education as a lens on public culture

What does discussion of higher education issues tell us about fundamental s ocietal questions? Merit appears to underpin the major issues in higher edu cation at the moment. Yet an inspection of these issues suggests that this is really about larger tensions that we may wish to avoid, such as the role of experts ina democracy, specifically their degree of professional autono my in setting content and performance standards. A new unifying purpose for higher education-articulate judgment-may allow us to address these societa l issues more clearly and the role of higher education more publicly and di rectly. Fundamentally, we must decide what role we want for the academic pr ofessions and how we place articulate judgment in their endeavor: Do we hav e the moral confidence in our enterprise to asserts capacity and a responsi bility for independent, informed, deliberative, and humane judgment and for the capacity to elicit the same in our students?