A new model for the American Research University

A new institutional design is emerging that meets the dual obligations of equity and excellence without compromising on either. The model embodies a reconceptualization of the American research university as a complex and adaptive comprehensive knowledge enterprise committed to discovery, creativity, and innovation, accessible to the demographically broadest possible student body, socioeconomically as well as intellectually, and directly responsive to the needs of the nation and society more broadly. The objective of the new model is to produce not only knowledge and innovation, but also students who are adaptive master-learners, empowered to integrate a broad array of interrelated disciplines and negotiate over their lifetimes the changing workforce demands and shifts in the knowledge economy driven by continual innovation. The New American University model attempts to transcend this self-aggrandizing zero-sum trade-off. The model brooks no compromise in the quality of knowledge production and insists that equity is attained only when all academically qualified students are offered an opportunity for access regardless of socioeconomic background. Whereas other assessments underscore focus on the socioeconomically disadvantaged and historically underrepresented, the New American University model embraces equally students from all demographic strata capable of accomplishment in a research-grade milieu, including the gifted and creative students who do not conform to a standard academic profile.