In this article, the author discusses the public discourse on education. On that subject, Republicans and Democrats speak the same language--and so, with striking uniformity, do more and more college and university leaders. The view of teaching and learning as an economic driver is a limited one, which puts at risk America's most distinctive contribution to the history and to the future of higher education. That distinctiveness is embodied, above all, in the American college, whose mission goes far beyond creating a competent work force through training brains for this or that functional task. College is hardly an American invention. In ancient Greece and Rome, young men attended lectures that resembled our notion of a college course, and gatherings of students instructed by settled teachers took on some of the attributes we associate with modern colleges (libraries, fraternities, organized sports). By the Middle Ages, efforts were under way to regulate the right to teach by issuing licenses, presaging the modern idea of a faculty with exclusive authority to grant degrees. In that broad sense, college as a place where young people encounter ideas and ideals from teachers, and debate them with peers, has a history that exceeds two millennia. But in several important respects, the American college is a unique institution. In most of the world, students who continue their education beyond secondary school are expected to choose their field of specialization before they arrive at university. In this article, the author argues that higher education must not become a luxury afforded only to America's elite.