Higher Education In The Metropolitan Environment

Abstract

Other papers prepared for this significant conference on the "Changing Environment for Library Services in Metropolitan Areas" do an admirable job of describing the population characteristics of our large urban centers, and of delineating changes in the social structure, employment patterns, and public school systems. All of these, appropriately, relate directly or indirectly to the vital role of libraries and librarians in the perplexing yet exciting setting which the great metropolitan centers of our country represent. It is my privilege as a university dean in the central office of The City University of New York to participate in the administration of a publicly supported multi-campus institution with some 142,000 students, most of them full-time students in tuition-free programs at the undergraduate level. During the past few years our well-known and traditionally liberal arts-centered colleges (City, Hunter, Brooklyn, and Queens) have been joined by a Graduate Center which awarded our first Ph.D. degrees last spring, by a baccalaureate degree - granting College of Police Science, and by six two-year community colleges, offering both transfer as well as job-related career programs. From this vantage point some call it a precarious perch I am made aware daily of the unique role of the urban higher institution today: what ought to be done, the pitfalls and road-blocks, and the possibilities of success. I would like to offer some introductory comments on the role of urban higher education (I shall use the term metroversity) and then pose three major questions: A. What are the expanding roles which urban-based higher education institutions are seeking to fill ? B. What steps may be taken to accelerate change and provide innovation toward achieving these roles? C. What implications are there for libraries and librarians related to metropolitan colleges and universities?