| In the past, American colleges and
universities were created to serve a dual purpose to advance learning and to
offer a chance to become familiar with bodies of knowledge already discovered to
those who wished it. To create and to impart, these were the distinctive
features of American higher education prior to the most recent, disorderly
decades of the twentieth century. The successful institution of higher learning
had never been one whose mission could be defined in terms of providing
vocational skills or as a strategy for resolving societal problems. In a subtle
way Americans believed higher education to be useful, but not necessarily of
immediate use. Another purpose has now been assigned to the mission of American colleges and universities. Institutions of higher learning-public or private-commonly face the challenge of defining their programs in such a way as to contribute to the service of the community. This service role has various applications. Most common are programs to meet the demands of regional employment markets, to provide opportunities for upward social and economic mobility, to achieve racial, ethnic, or social integration, or more generally to produce "productive" as compared to "educated" graduates. Regardless of its precise definition, the idea of a service-university has won acceptance within the academic community. One need only be reminded of the change in language describing the two-year college to appreciate the new value currently being attached to the concept of a service-related university. The traditional two-year college has shed its pejorative "junior" college label and is generally called a "community" college, a clearly value-laden expression representing the latest commitment in higher education. Even the doctoral degree, long recognized as a required "union card" in the academic world, has come under severe criticism as the pursuit of learning for its own sake and the accumulation of knowledge without immediate application to a professor's classroom duties. The idea of a college or university that performs a triple function-- communicating knowledge to students, expanding the content of various disciplines, and interacting in a direct relationship with society--has been the most important change in higher education in recent years. The novel development, however, is often overlooked. Educators have always been familiar with those parts of the two-year college curriculum that have a "service" or vocational orientation. It is important to know this. But some commentaries on American postsecondary education tend to underplay the impact of the attempt of colleges and universities to relate to, if not resolve, the problems of society. What's worse, they obscure a fundamental question posed by the service-university--what is higher education supposed to do? |