Ted Mitchell
Ted Mitchell is president of the American Council on Education, the major coordinating body for U.S. colleges and universities. A former U.S. under secretary of education and president of Occidental College, he works on higher education policy, access, equity, student outcomes, and the future of postsecondary education.
College Alternatives Risk Tracking Poor Students Away From Opportunity
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, education leaders Shavar Jeffries, Ted Mitchell and Aneesh Sohoni argued that college remains a crucial route to mobility, but only if it is made more accessible, transparent and connected to work without becoming a tracking system. Their central warning was that “college alternatives” can expand opportunity when they are stackable and portable, but can also reproduce inequality when poor, Black, Latino and rural students are steered away from degrees while affluent families still treat college as the default. The panel framed higher education’s task as broader than earnings alone: it must prepare students for changing labor markets while preserving purpose, agency and the ability to choose among futures.
Colleges Must Prove Their Value Program by Program
College can still be a route to the American Dream, but higher education leaders Pascale Charlot, Ted Mitchell, Josh Wyner and Matthew Gianneschi argued that institutions now have to prove that promise through completion, affordability and post-graduation value. Their case is that declining public trust will not be answered by prestige or average wage premiums, but by clearer evidence that colleges help students finish, manage cost, connect degrees to viable work and sustain the civic and human learning they claim to provide.