What sort of citizens are universities making?

What sort of graduates do different universities produce, and what does higher education need to keep in mind as it aims to shape our future neighbors, community members, colleagues, and citizens? What should students keep in mind about the ways they, in turn, can shape their school?

It’s hard to know what the future of higher education will look like when we can’t reach a consensus on what its present looks like. Universities are simultaneously seen as engines of upward mobility and bastions of privilege. They are dynamos of mass prosperity and ivory towers removed from the concerns of most of the public. They are open forums for exchange and closed societies characterized by censorship and coerced orthodoxy. They are more dispensable and more indispensable than ever in the face of AI advances.

But beyond the cultural Rorschach test the university provides are the thousands of real students graduating each year whose trajectories are shaped by the experience their institutions choose to cultivate. What vision of the graduate guides this work? And how does it shift at juncture in politics, technology, and employment? How should universities respond to changing student preferences and priorities?

This conversation considers the present and future of higher education by focusing on how it shapes students.