Engaging Higher Education in Societal Challenges of the 21st Century

This Special Report by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education was published April 22, 2008. The 11-page report is available on line in HTML and PDF. It is structured, following its front page, in sections labeled: "To Optimize Learning"; "Conjoining Self-Interest and Societal Purpose"; "Drawing the Strands Together"; and "Exercising Leadership.":

The challenge for the years ahead is to achieve a public agenda in an era of diminished public purposes. Many have observed that in the relative decline of policy as a motivating force, higher education institutions may choose priorities primarily from market considerations, setting agendas that seek to advance their own prestige and market position more than the fulfillment of publicly defined purposes. If markets have supplanted the force of policy per se as the primary drivers of higher education’s motivations, what actions will create the market that engages universities and colleges in solving the nation’s most important challenges? Any successful strategy must recognize that no single, centralized approach—no one 'market'—can enlist the energies and passion of higher education to achieve a particular purpose. Higher education in the U.S. rightly and productively proceeds from a system of incentives rather than control.