Aligning Higher Education with a Renewed Public Agenda

In the 21st century, the United States will need a much more highly educated population to sustain its economic and civic vitality and restore its economic standing. Globalization, demographic change, the rise of a knowledge-driven society, and the unrelenting advances in technology are among the major forces intensifying the need for a more highly skilled and educated U.S. population. For the U.S. to maintain its world leadership in the years ahead, a much larger share of its population must seek and attain a postsecondary education at the public and private colleges and universities. The challenge facing the nation and the states is to define a public agenda for the 21st century--an agenda that acknowledges the nature and extent of societal challenges in the years ahead and conveys a vision of higher education's contributions to advancing the public's well-being. The U.S. needs a public agenda that clearly outlines the opportunities available to the nation and to each state and that identifies the actions required to achieve the goals set out in the agenda. In the global, competitive, knowledge-intensive terrain of the 21st century, the most critical action confronting states is to establish their own strategic public agendas. In this article, the author discusses how to align higher education with a renewed public agenda and emphasizes the roles of statewide boards and college and university leaders in considering how to best align the capacities of colleges and universities with the achievement of public purposes within a state or a region.