In my recent article in New Political Science, “Higher Education and Democratic Public Life,” I argue that the common way of thinking about colleges and universities in the contemporary U.S., as a kind of consumer good, is wrong. And not just wrong, but damaging to democracy. I argue that when we think about higher education and especially about public colleges and universities and community colleges, we should think first of democratic public life and of the role of public institutions in serving the whole public. And we need to push and redesign public institutions to do a better job of being part of and of serving the whole public, as well as serving their local communities. This thinking comes in part out of the work that Rutgers University-Newark, led by Chancellor Cantor, has done in the past few years, to build a university that is “in Newark and of Newark”.

This economics-first way of thinking has been especially evident in the flawed public conversation about how universities will fulfill their mission of education and research this fall. Contrary to the idea that universities have “closed”, staff and faculty at my institution have worked harder than ever in the past four months, to convert classes to online instruction, to set up systems to ensure that we touched base with all students once we moved to remote instruction, to ensure that students scheduled to graduate in May were able to do so albeit without an in person ceremony, to continue to provide on campus housing and services for students who had no place else to go, and the list could continue just regarding the teaching aspect of our mission. This list does not even include all of the planning that took place to manage the university’s research mission, including shutting down labs where necessary, pivoting to COVID related research as appropriate, shifting research projects to virtual where possible.

So when we think about what universities should do, this fall and in the future, we need to think of public good not in the economic sense, but in the political sense. We need to place educational institutions at the center of democratic public life, and provide both public support and demands for accountability that our public institutions of higher education serve democratic public purposes.