Is the headline of this blog correct?

Solution 1:

It is confusing because there are two possible ways to interpret the sentence "College Presidents & the General Public Disagree" (taken on its own):

• They, as a combined party, disagree with [some viewpoint] together

  or

• They disagree with each other

When put in context of the first sentence, @Thursagen pointed out, the first option is impossible, because the sentence "Does Online Learning Offer the Same Value as Face-to-Face Instruction?" offers a choice, not a single viewpoint.

That means that the second is the only plausible option, but this fact may not be noticed by most readers, particularly because "disagree" may, in this case, be interpreted as a negative answer to the yes-or-no question posed. However, I (personally) believe that would be somewhat of a misuse of the word disagree.

To retain most of the structure, but reduce confusion, I would suggest making the second sentence more direct:

Does online learning offer the same value as face-to-face instruction? College presidents & the general public have differing viewpoints.

Solution 2:

Although I concede that the people saying that the headline is ambiguous are technically correct, from a practical standpoint I don't think the headline is very confusing at all.

For one thing, if the headline can be properly interpreted as saying that the named parties speak in unison on the issue, it should still make sense if we reduce the parties from many to one:

Does Online Learning Offer the Same Value as Face-to-Face Instruction? President of Harvard Disagrees

Disagrees with what? That online learning offers the same value as face-to-face instruction, or that it doesn't? This headline is clearly nonsensical, which suggests that the alternate interpretation (that the parties disagree with one another) is the correct one.

In a real-world sense, I believe most readers are probably accustomed to the “Views Differ” style of headline, which merely states that a controversy exists, often in a (perhaps misguided) effort to appear evenhanded--consider Paul Krugman's famous quip: “If Bush said that the earth was flat ... the mainstream media, for the most part, would run articles with the headline 'Shape of the Earth: Views Differ.'” It is in this light, I believe, that most readers would interpret the headline.

Solution 3:

I think that the headline is grammatically correct, but it's written in a confusing way (I misunderstood it too).

Most of all, the & really makes it seems as if College Presidents and General Public are together in this matter, while they are not.

I would have written it as

[...] College Presidents disagree with the General Public