> In a recent interview with Salon, Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Presidents, charged that the new plagiarism critics are creating “a false narrative for the public that higher education is broken.”

WOW. So the decades of far-faster-than-inflation tuition increases, and destitution-level pay for most of the instructional staff, and ever-growing administrative bloat, and student-luxury-amenities arms race, and blind eyes turned to university-staff sexual predators are not signs that public higher education is broken?

I think "higher education is broken" means something different to some people than it does to you.

Specifically, someone in Mulvey's position may, I speculate, be interpreting it as "not worth saving or reforming", and when she denies it is "broken" is affirming reform as worthwhile and giving up as wrong.

That could be a biased perspective! It might be objectively wrong if we could survey alternate universes to determine the outcome of policy changes for sure. But not stupid or obviously false with our limited knowledge.

Plausibly true. And I'm far too removed from the culture wars to know if "higher ed is broken!" is a battle cry for any of the current factions.

OTOH - back in boring old-fashioned King's-English usage, "broken" is used in a wide variety of contexts; both for things that nobody would bother to repair (a water glass) and that everybody would very much want to repair (the speaker's leg bone).