As Congress rushed to finish the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (after five years and 14 short-term extensions), nearly 3,000 miles away, on a corner of the Stanford University campus, Lee S. Shulman officially said goodbye to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching after 11 years as its president. In this article, Mr. Shulman talks about his vision of higher education's future and that his enormous faith in the power of ideas such as assessment of student learning is better than what is typically called policy. He wants colleges and policy makers to embrace "low stakes, high yield" types of assessments by employing measurements that are part of everyday learning and give students "an intellectual GPS so they know where they are." He reflects on the pressing issues facing higher education in the next decade which all revolve around his central love, teaching.