Americans Overwhelmingly Agree On What Universities Should Focus On
From congressional hearings to donor revolts to headlines about campus protests, American universities are being told—loudly—that they’ve lost the public’s trust. But beneath the noise, there’s a quieter question that rarely gets asked: when Americans criticize universities, what do they actually want them to do instead?
A new study published in Science Advances by economists at Cornell University and the University of Regensburg examines what societal roles Americans believe universities should engage in beyond their core mission of education and research.
The researchers first surveyed a representative sample of over 2,000 U.S. citizens to understand whether, in their opinion, universities should engage in several “initiatives beyond their core mission (which is to conduct cutting-edge research and educate students).” Across a range of initiatives, participants indicated that universities “definitely” or “probably should not” to “probably” to “definitely should” engage in “DEI, environmental sustainability, political engagement, speech and expression policies, traditional values, health and well-being programs, global perspectives, free speech and open dialogue, patriotism and veterans’ initiatives.”