In the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson adds his voice to the chorus of observers and experts questioning the idea that all young Americans should go to college.

The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it’s now doing more harm than good. It looms as the largest mistake in educational policy since World War II, even though higher education’s expansion also ranks as one of America’s great postwar triumphs.

This is one of a number of much-discussed issues in higher education that I’d love to hear Drew Faust’s opinion about. (Others include the cost of tuition, the relationship between business and education—something Faust is now, presumably, an expert on—and the viability of Internet teaching, or what Faust likes to call “online learning.”) She is, after all, the occupant of probably the top job in American education.

Instead, her commencement address this year is the dullest, driest, most tedious piece of boilerplate, cut-and-pasted from various policy papers written by various people, one could imagine. Do your best to stay awake through the next paragraph.

As we reimagine ourselves for the 21st century, we recognize that history teaches us not just about continuity – what is important because it is enduring. History also teaches us about change. Harvard has survived and thrived by considering over and over again how its timeless and unwavering dedication to knowledge and truth must be adapted to the demands of each new age. History encourages us to see contingency and opportunity by offering us the ability to imagine a different world.

History teaches us about continuity and change. Harvard has survived and thrived.

Really? That’s the best you got? Does anybody else recognize how insipid these thoughts are? (What would be the reaction of a Harvard admissions officer is an applicant wrote such nothingness?)

What a shame that, at the moment higher education really needs an impassioned advocate, Drew Faust has nothing to say.