While I found the country-wide consensus on this issue interesting, I found equally interesting the wide range of diversity within the system, among the universities, colleges, and technical schools scattered across the country - each with its own unique mission and mandate, and each responding to the particular needs of the community within which it is situated - working together to provide a post-secondary system of education that may well be second to none.
The disparate missions and mandates of all of the participants of the education sector made coming together an agreeing on anything particularly difficult.