It\u27s Graduation Time-So What Do We Want From Universities?

It is that season of graduation again, and this year\u27s group of college and university graduates is poised to enter an ever more difficult and volatile global marketplace. At the same time, on the world stage, struggles abound, wrought by overconsumption of environmental resources and rampant failures at peaceful coexistence. At home, the results of the 2010 census frame a national dialogue about changing demographics, and the weight of job losses intensifies the zero-sum debates on immigration

Scholarship in Action: The Case for Engagement

Momentum is growing to take public scholarship seriously as a movement that will “challenge and reshape the relationship between our colleges and universities and the society of which they are a part.”As the Kellogg Commission said at the dawn of this new millennium, “The irreducible idea is that we [American higher education] exist to advance the commongood. . . the fundamental challenge with which we struggle is how to reshape our historic agreement with the American people so that it fits the times that are emerging instead of the times that have passed.

Transforming America: The University as Public Good

Nancy Cantor, chancellor and president of Syracuse University, outlines a number of bold campus-communitypartnerships, many of which were integral to the Brown v. Board of Education Commemoration at the University of Illinois. She makes a passionate case for the arts as “a context for exchange” and “a medium for participation” in a society where “pervasive and longstanding racial divides” exist. In response, Kristina Valaitis, director, Illinois Humanities Council, asks tough, affectionate questions of her university-based colleagues, and offers “suggestions for action,” including some pointed advice on the tenure syste