A New University New Age - Polytechnic University

5 ✯ Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Polytechnic University
Adams, coined the expression, ‘the American Dream.’
Third, the new university must be a global
gateway to urban centers, both here and abroad,
not an enclave, but a hub of collaboration and
alliances with links around the world.
To teach in this new age, we can use the urban
landscape that surrounds us. Where better than the
hurly-burly, rough and tumble boroughs of New
York to comprehend and design urban security,
communications, transportation and quality of life.
Internships with companies, governments and nonprofits
will expand our students’ skills and enhance
our communities. As Bob Kerrey, president of the
New School, notes: one of the best places to hold a
fruitful dialogue about the problems of Kashmir is
not India or Pakistan, but rather Brooklyn or Queens.
Think of a today’s young science or engineering
student, fluent in English and also totally at ease
in his or her family’s Chinese, Russian, Spanish or
Farsi. Throughout life, he or she will have a special
advantage whether doing research, starting a new
business, or building a new city.
For him or her, the American Dream will be
the “Urban Dream” and the “Global Dream.”
Fourth, as the new university grows, it will
need to rethink vestiges of the current model. For
instance,
• How will we curb the price of tuition at this new
university?
• How will we give undergraduates an exciting
role in research?
• How will we re-engineer research so that the
artificially linear funding categories — basic,
applied, development — are fused into a more
holistic, creative and entrepreneurial approach?
A university can transform
itself if…it is small enough to
be agile and smart enough to
think innovatively…
Inaugural Address ✯ September 29, 2005 ✯ 6
The Brooklyn Bridge
• How will we integrate management, the humanities
and social sciences more fully into our
technical education?
• How will we bring new faces to the governing
boards of the new university? For the new university
I have in mind will need a fresh contingent of
trustees who know the entrepreneurial character
of large urban centers around the world.
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How do we create such a university?
One could, of course, repeat history in the manner
of Johns Hopkins in 1876 and create it from whole
cloth. Indeed, the recently opened Olin College of
Engineering near Boston hopes to do just this.
But one can also transform an existing university
to meet these challenges. Such a transformation is
unlikely at the most eminent of our great universities.
They are, in the words of Clay Christensen, caught
in the innovators dilemma with ‘rules’ that prevent
them from seeing and responding to the perils of
obsolescence.
However, a university can transform itself if
it has less at stake and more to gain; if it is small
enough to be agile and smart enough to think
innovatively; if it has diversity within its faculty
and students; and if it has friends and supporters
who will provide resources.
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