This essay examines two narratives for US higher education—the tradition of access and the current moment of globalized expansion—to understand how policies about access and language do not inherently uphold practices of equity. I also discuss how writing specialists can intervene in the explicit and implicit practice of these policies.

This review takes on the assumption that readers of College English believe in democratic practice and the possibility that education can play a role in supporting and cultivating those practices. The books reviewed here are a good reminder that education does not have to be focused on competition and achievement, about defining intelligence through academic aptitude, a reminder well served as the Common Core and its impending assessment shape the nature of public education and its goals.

Rather than simply invoke citizenship as an ideal for their students to achieve, writing instructors should address the various possible meanings of the term, which represent divergent traditions of political thought.