“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
-William Butler Yeats

Public education was established to serve the public good. Until now, an informal but powerful compact has clarified and governed the responsibility of higher education to the public. Historically, higher education has served society through teaching, research, and service. Its objectivity and integrity have been trusted because its interests are beyond those of the marketplace. In return, society has provided higher education with academic freedom, the right to debate controversial issues, financial support, and tax exemption, as well as respect and trust.

In recent years, however, this compact has suffered a slow but significant erosion as higher education has become more market-oriented. In the competition for research grants, tuition revenue, favorable rankings in national and international publications, and the most talented students, institutions have betrayed their public service mission in favor of prestige and its accompanying rewards. In part, this erosion is the result of an overstated sense that the benefits of higher education are a personal rather than a public good. Guilty, too, is an unwillingness to acknowledge and address the flaws that afflict educational performance.

A call to arms
The public purposes of higher education have never been more important. If our society is to be able to address and overcome our most pressing economic, social, political, and diplomatic issues, higher education must stand as a central source of hope, vision, and assistance.

We must, therefore, clearly restate the public purposes of higher education and publicize the growing gap between its purposes and its performance. Then we must motivate the general public and political and academic leaders in a debate about how and when change must occur.

A focus on three key areas
The Futures Project seeks to change this dynamic by informing and mobilizing key constituents including policy makers, academic leaders, faculty, students, and parents. By employing a democratic process to address the need for our public institutions to serve the public good, we adopt Gandhi’s teaching to “become the change we seek.”

We call this process the Pressure Points campaign, and it targets three key areas where policymakers and educational leaders must effect change:
- Autonomy and Accountability
- Responsibility for Student Learning
- Access and Attainment

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