In an opinion piece for The Huffington Post on Wednesday, Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor argued universities are facing an existential crisis and should be more responsive to the needs of the public.

She noted times of crises can inspire “growth and creativity,” citing historic examples such as the Morrill Act of 1862, which established land-grant universities. Cantor said President Abraham Lincoln and Vermont Sen. Justin Morrill — who wrote the bill — did so in hopes that it would spur prosperity and educational opportunity in the United States.

“This decidedly optimistic reflection of higher education’s promise is still alive today, and many people are beginning to remind us that in the contemporary context of divisive politics and contested and unequal prosperity, higher education needs to step to the plate, barn-raising once again,” Cantor said in the article.

The media often paints higher education as a “necessary evil,” she said, because while it is often necessary for job opportunities, college is characterized by high costs, low productivity and sustaining privilege in society.

Cantor said an approach combining examining costs and serving the public is needed.

If the primary focus of college is cost, community colleges would serve as vocational schools for the growing number of students from low-income backgrounds that attended under-funded public schools, while four-year institutions would become even more selective, she said.

Community colleges can be great starting places for success, but such an approach would be far from ideal if selective colleges continue to only educate those who are already the most prepared, she said.

“From a pure productivity perspective, this clarification of purpose in higher education might be highly effective, even if it would perpetuate a legacy of separate and unequal education, as a Century Foundation task force has recently pointed out,” Cantor said.

She suggests universities focus on cultivating different groups of students, instead of accepting people with “high SATs and hoping they are still smart when they leave.” This is critical for social mobility in a time when the nation’s demographics are shifting, she said.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” Cantor said. “If we don’t change the fate of our metropolitan communities, and instead continue to waste a larger and larger share of our nation’s talent pool, we can’t succeed by any measure of productivity.”

Published on September 10, 2012 at 1:08 am

Contact Dylan: dmsegelb@syr.edu | @dylan_segelbaum