HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Denial Is Not A Strategy. “Tierney’s missive does provide some valuable insight, albeit unintentionally: higher education is in bad need of reform and faces a potential fiscal cliff because it has increasingly been dominated by people who think like himself. Such denial and intransigence in the face of drastically changing circumstances undermine academia’s claim to intellectual primacy and wisdom beyond that possessed by the average man—or even equal to the wisdom of the average person.” Academics like to think of themselves as more like scientists, but most are more like clergy.