Last year, leading lights in for-profit and nonprofit higher education convened in Washington for a conference on private-sector innovation in the industry. The national conversation about dysfunction and disruption in higher education was just heating up, and panelists from start-ups, banking, government, and education waxed enthusiastic about the ways that a traditional college education could be torn down and rebuilt--and about how lots of money could be made along the way. The question few people want to grapple with is, For whom is college being reinvented? The punditry around reinvention has trumpeted the arrival of MOOCs (massive open online courses), badges, "UnCollege," and so on as the beginning of a historic transformation. Higher education does have real problems, and MOOC's, badges--certificates of accomplishment--and other innovations have real potential to tackle some of them. They could enrich teaching, add rigor, encourage interdisciplinarity, reinforce education's real-world applicability, and make learning more efficient--advances all sorely needed. But the reinvention conversation has not produced the panacea that people seem to yearn for. The furor over the cost and effectiveness of a college education has roots in deep socioeconomic challenges that won't be solved with an online app. Over decades, state support per student at public institutions has dwindled even as enrollments have ballooned, leading to higher prices for parents and students. State funds per student dropped by 20 percent from 1987 to 2011. Meanwhile, the gap between the country's rich and poor widened during the recession, choking off employment opportunities for many recent graduates. Education leading up to college is a mess: Public elementary and secondary systems have failed a major segment of society, and the recent focus on testing has had questionable results.