Education Quote by Roy Romer

Romer is doing the politician’s two-step: make a pointed argument about educational value, then cushion it with a disarming shrug. The core claim is quietly combative in the way education debates often are. He’s pushing back on the prestige reflex that treats selective colleges as inherently superior, arguing that “value-added” can be larger at a four-year state school precisely because the starting line is wider. If you admit students with more varied preparation, the institution has more room to move the needle; improvement becomes the measure, not exclusivity.

The phrase “broader range of admission” is also a proxy for class and opportunity. Romer is talking about publics that serve first-gen students, working families, commuters, people who can’t buy their way into smaller seminars and brand-name networks. He’s recoding what critics call “less selective” as “more mission-driven,” a rhetorical pivot that tries to restore moral status to public education without sounding sanctimonious.

Then comes the tell: “I don’t know.” It’s not ignorance so much as a strategic release valve. In a policy ecosystem addicted to rankings and certainty, he signals humility while still planting the thesis: outcomes over inputs. The uncertainty makes him sound reasonable, empirical, open to data, even as he smuggles in a critique of the meritocracy story. Subtext: if we actually cared about learning and mobility, we’d fund and esteem the institutions doing the hardest work, not just the ones best at sorting winners.