Everyone knows that a college education is a passport for higher earnings. In fact, emphasis is usually on the economic benefit of a college degree to the individual graduate.

What is less often talked about is the monumental impact of colleges and universities on our society. Some of the benefits are purely economic. College educated individuals have better jobs that provide health insurance and retirement benefits, and they therefore contribute more in taxes. College grads have better health and better life expectancy. They have healthier children and better outcomes for their children. This in turn helps reduce public spending on social programs.

But the benefits to society created by colleges and universities are hardly just economic, although perhaps harder to quantify. Studies show that college graduates play a more active role in the life of our communities. They volunteer more, vote more often, and participate more in civic and community life.

The American Council on Education (ACE) has created a national campaign, Solutions for the Future, to demonstrate our enormous, and often unconsidered, societal impact. “We teach the people who solve the problems and change the world,” is the campaign slogan. Albright College is participating in the ACE campaign because it reflects our core beliefs. We indeed teach the people who solve the problems and change the world.

By our nature, we are designed to teach critical thinking and problem solving. We are the engines of research and innovation. (University-based research invented Fed Ex, Google and laser eye surgery.) Albright graduates, by virtue of their ability to combine fields of learning, can also bring multiple perspectives to bear on problems – as we say, a different way of thinking – that produces better results and broader solutions.

Colleges are knowledge engines, producing new scholarship and research that change the world. The media turn to us as experts on almost every topic. Albright faculty are routinely in the news, commenting on topics as diverse as pop culture, mergers and consolidations, environmental issues, safe toys and Supreme Court rulings.

In a poll conducted by ACE, 92 percent of Americans believe that the actions we take on higher education today will be critical to our nation’s competitive leadership in the world 25 years from now. Unfortunately, the news for colleges and universities is not very good today. Economic pressure, especially on tuition dependent institutions like Albright, is growing. Funding for student aid programs is being slashed. These changes have an impact not just on students, but on our nation’s global competitiveness. Among Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation countries, the U.S. has slipped to ninth place in post secondary enrollments.

We hope you will help us raise awareness about the important contributions of higher education on a public policy level, and to help the rest of the world understand why colleges like Albright are so important. We are not isolated navel gazers behind ivy covered walls. We are creative powerhouses building the very future of our nation.

Lex O. McMillan III, Ph.D.
President

To find out more about the American Council on Education’s campaign, “Solutions for Our Future,” go to www.solutionsforourfuture.org. Make sure to check out the very funny video public service announcements being aired on national television or go to www.solutionsforourfuture.org/media.