While flipping through the channels of endless television mediocrity, I paused on Comedy Central as the opening credits for The Colbert Report beamed into my living room. After the satire, Stephen Colbert introduced his guest for that night’s interview. NYU President John Sexton took his seat in front of the hardball comic commentator, and throughout the interview, a few notions of truth may have been dropped.

In retaliation to Colbert’s thesis that education is simply “admitting you don’t know something,” Sexton responded with:

“I’m here to defend knowledge and wisdom.”

Sexton even said he wanted Colbert’s mind to be as much as it could be, and that the power the SAT test carries should be reduced.

Recently, Sexton came out with other ideas contradicting the conventions of higher education. In an article published by Washington Square News, Sexton agreed that the new political environment of the current lame duck Congress could negatively affect funding for private institutions. He went on to say admissions “shouldn’t be about us trying to persuade every student to come here, but should be about us revealing ourselves to these students and giving them the key questions to ask.”

As a student enrolled in my third college, these comments astounded me. It seemed to me that higher education could be compared to a perpetual motion machine whose only purpose was to collect money, assign degrees and process students like catalogued products. Between the jokes on the Colbert Report and statements made to the press, Sexton uncovers a truth to education.

The tools and means to higher education should always be made apparent and accessible to all students. I would point to our own school and the CHANCE program. Students who do not meet the traditional requirements for admission to NIU are still allotted an opportunity for higher education. Not everyone is judged merely on their ACT scores or GPA, and students are no longer simply “processed.” Progress should be the ultimate goal of any society, but it does not come with an uneducated majority.

There are two points to consider before we all ride the euphoric wave set by people like John Sexton. Although his ideas may show an improvement and a step in the right direction for higher education, the system is less than perfect. When it comes to higher education, the responsibility still ultimately lies in the hands of the student. Those who can change the standard have a responsibility to do so, and education must be made available to all. Sexton’s comments may be a sign of that principle coming to fruition.

Students must realize an all-important lesson. Right now, they have control of what they do and what they become. If change is ever to be realized, then responsibility for the future rests in the hands of the upcoming generation. An education must be earned, but collective progress must be passed on.