I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and talking with my recent colleagues in higher education, as they react to the new environment in which they find themselves.

The tenor of their current commentary might best be described as the language of anguish, and it had a familiar ring that took me a while to pin down.

“It’s loss, grief.” “We hugged; we cried.” “My heart breaks.” Faculty are “very frightened.” The entire sector, we are told, is in a state of “panicked bewilderment.” Maybe most apocalyptically, “This is simply the end.” Where had I heard all this before?

It finally hit me. I repaired to the Bible and read — I confess for the first time in years — the Book of Lamentations. The despair of Israel at the destruction of Jerusalem gave rise to the same outcries of fallen greatness, of abandonment, of unfair persecution, of hopelessness. Just the response we are hearing today from the nation’s college and university leadership.

The analogy breaks down in one basic respect. What we have yet to hear from our modern-day Jeremiahs is much sense of self-examination, repentance or acceptance of some need to mend ways.

But the lamentations are sure reminiscent. Have hard times come? “‘We have experienced panic and pitfall, devastation and destruction.’ My eyes flow with streams of tears ...”

Has the gravy train of rising enrollments, annual price increases, generous research overhead rates and steadily rising public subsidies come to an end? “Those who used to eat delicacies are destitute in the streets …” “… no one comes to the appointed festivals. All her gates are deserted, her priests groan …”

Has public support for higher education, and acceptance of its practices, sunk alarmingly? “All who honored her now despise her, for they have seen her nakedness.” Have the sector’s once-staunch defenders retreated, or even joined the chorus of critics? “How she sits alone … [s]he who was great among the nations has become like a widow.”

And now, a new administration, whose election was to a significant degree propelled by public discontent at the cost and cultural arrogance of higher education, has come to power. “Her adversaries have become her masters; her enemies are at ease.”

So, if my former brethren should ever find themselves at a loss for words, the biblical poet (Jeremiah, by tradition) left them some eloquent options.

But words and sympathy won’t rebuild the temples of learning.

That will require a change in behavior, which in turn must start with an acknowledgment of error. (I’ll stop short of saying “sin.”)

Jeremiah faced up to that realization. “Let’s examine and probe our ways.” The path back to public esteem starts with an honest acceptance that, just maybe, some of the criticisms are legitimate.

The sector has failed to deliver value: Its prices rocketed upward even as its rigor, quality and the marketplace value of its degrees eroded.

Much of the federal research money on which it has feasted contributed nothing to the national interest. Too much of it was the stuff of parody, fat targets for skewering by adversaries.

Decades of undeniable, illiberal discrimination and ostracism of even mainstream viewpoints fatally undercut today’s wailing about “academic freedom.” Those who have trampled the principle for so long are not well-positioned to take refuge in it now.

As one sympathetic analyst wrote: “The sector has been very effective at preserving funding, but it has not been as effective at reforming itself. And that set up this situation where if you don’t change on your own, sometimes you are forced to change in ways that maybe are not healthy.”

A few isolated calls for introspection have poked through the general hand-wringing. University of Michigan President Santa Ono has shown the way by urging his counterparts to “wake up” and listen to their critics. They should listen, to Ono and the critics, if they hope to avoid the obvious baby-and-bathwater risk that the defiant “no problem here” stance invites. But, so far, his voice has been drowned out by the to-the-ramparts shouts of the denialists.

Yes, a college diploma is still the right goal for millions of young Americans. But the federal loan program and other price-inflating subsidies are a disaster in need of reform.

Yes, a universal research overhead rate of just 15 percent is unreasonable in many cases. But so is the 50-70 percent raked in by some schools.

Yes, charges of campus antisemitism are being used as a cover for wider assaults. But enforced conformity, indoctrination and censorship have been real issues for a long time.

Perhaps the apologists for today’s higher education can find the solace of shared grief in this Old Testament lament: “Joy has left our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head.”

But they’d be well-advised to read the next line: “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

Mitch Daniels is a senior adviser to the Liberty Fund, president emeritus of Purdue University and a former governor of Indiana.