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  • Colleges and Universities must focus on creating good citizens
  • Posted By:
  • Tom A.
  • Posted On:
  • 27-Feb-2012
  • There is no use constantly bickering and complaining, expecting others to take positive action which is what most of our citizens today do. One of the aspects of a good citizen is to strive to correct the wrongs.

    Universities and colleges play a major role here. They must enhance student experience by ensuring more civic engagement. Agreed that learning to count, write and read is very important. Preparing for democracy and to be a good citizen of our country is equally vital.

    Students must be encouraged to have better civic imagination and must be able to think critically and develop real world skills regarding their communities. They must also be able to advocate and innovate on their own behalf as well as on behalf of others. They must have the capacity to commit themselves to a long term endeavor to bring about positive changes in the society.

    Civic engagement must therefore move beyond tutoring, volunteering and voting especially if our President wants to make it a central focus of higher education. Researchers must be provided with enough opportunities to move on and become entrepreneurs who work diligently towards solving social issues and faculty and students must be encouraged to use their writing skills to spread the message.

    Our civic version must effectively encouraged students to find a permanent cure by reaching the root cause of problems related to injustice and inequality. To give back thus is to care in a deep and sincere manner.

    Unemployment and other civic issues can also be addressed through reimagining as a sense of deep commitment and expression of caring. This obviously does not mean that we need fewer tutors and volunteers.

    Students must be equipped with enough skills to convert their knowledge to entrepreneurship geared towards solving social issues. This is a way to raise college education value and reduce unemployment.

    Today, our country faces a situation where value of college education is severely in question. It is time to adopt a win-win preposition where graduates are able to find gainful employment even as they contribute towards the betterment of our society.

    To ensure the economic health of individual citizens, it is important to equip each one of them with civic health and this makes civic engagement skill a vital job skill. As the world today is cross disciplinary, it goes without saying that new civic engagement vision must be cross disciplinary too.

    Research teams must be formed through collaboration of departments from different campuses around the country. These teams must function similar to the organized science labs. An interdisciplinary faculty team must lead each lab specially dealing with certain issues.

    To work with religious organizations, businesses, educational groups and nonprofit organizations in their local communities must be the collective goal of these labs. Ongoing problems must be addressed by them with innovative solutions.

    This model has worked very well in Princeton where students of social entrepreneurship courses presented their recommendations for urban employment in surrounding urban areas to the government after extensive research. This is a vision that enabled them to obtain federal grant successfully.

    We have the potential to cut down on unemployment rate among recent graduates by motivating them to address social, racial and economic inequality issues and promote creativity in a sustained manner.







 

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