Charting the Future of the Constrained Metropolitan Universities

Abstract

Due to a combination of economic, social, and political forces, a generation of constrained metropolitan universities has been created across the United States. These institutions operate with the borrowed traditions of the research university, under imposed financial and political constraints, and amidst growing societal expectations. In the future these institutions will take one of three paths. They will settle reluctantly for marginal change, grapple unsuccessfully with multiple missions, or take an historic step to become a new kind of institution: a Metropolitan Grant University with a unique identity akin to that of the landgrant university.