What major roles should universities and colleges play in modern society?

ROLES OF THE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES IN THE MODERN SOCIETY
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(February 24, 2012)
Roles of the universities and colleges in the modern society
Introduction
The tradition roles of the universities are research and teaching. The universities offer some professional training for high jobs level. They also provide educations that are useful for the improvement of the personality. On the side of the research, university adds the body of knowledge on theoretical, as well as practical application situation. Traditionally, university limited themselves to a close circle of the students, and professors, who were from the upper society and stayed in a relative isolation situation (Owusu-Ansaha, 2001). At the same time, they also produced the elite of the society as well as of the entire country. On the other occasion, research was regarded as the privilege of the determined professors of the University, to wide extend, by their contacts, and personal interest.
They also played wide role in the past years, in the basis for the progress of mankind. There was also more concern with the Universities, which later, lost their contact with the some societies until that time when they were completely exceptional as well as they failed to understand matters pertaining their surroundings. That resulted in the reduction of the performances in the Universities, as the ultimate yardstick established for measuring the success of the University was the improvement of the people’s it offered their services to (Harkavy, 2006). It was explained that the resent universities were established in a bygone era, with an aim of satisfying the needs of the people. It was further elaborated that, in the industrial nations, especially nowadays, the main criteria for opening the elite University to the world of the youth and to democratic, as well as a pluralistic society, was to keep the standard of research and teaching (Barnes, 2007).
On the other occasion, developing nation’s universities were established less or more according to the western models, as well as, European institutions. The methods and subjects of science taught, corresponded to the society from where they were generated. In developed nations, research methods were carried out basing on the problems facing western countries conditions as well as their needs (Toit, 2000). In some developing nations they helped to offer equity concerning opportunities, especially for women. This helped to improve the equitable representation of female in the senior positions in the higher education sectors. In the early year of the industrial revolution, Levin E. Arthur, the Columbian university College teacher president questioned neither whether the need of the changing society required a minor nor a major changing in the higher education sectors (Toit, 2000). The president latter concluded that there was a need to pursue answers, if colleges and universities were to retain vitality in dramatically changing world.
There was also an explanation, on how universities and colleges helped in the expansion of the economic activities across national boundaries. This was actually facilitated by the flow of the technological services between different nations, as well as an improvement in the computerized information systems. This resulted in the compression of space and time, thus making it easy for the business people to interact on the planetary scale in the real time.
Universities help in the improvement of knowledge, which increases the social world as well as advancing the understanding of the natural resources. They also enrich humanity’s accumulated scientific, as well as cultural inheritances and heritage. There was also a summary of the university responsibility carried out by Stinchcombe, (2000), clarifying that they operate on a complex set of mutually uncertainties fronts in deferent nations. The same clarification also showed that Universities carry out research into the high theoretical, as well as intractable uncertainties, concerning education.
They as well seek the application practical of discovery, as well as testing reinvigorate and deliver the inherited education of the past generations. As if that was is not enough, they also seek to develop sound principles concerning actions and reasoning, which they educate to generations of students. They carry out their operations on both long and short horizon basis (Harkavy, 2006).
The same institutions work with the contemporary situations and offer appropriate understandings and discoveries that they generate. In additional, they participate in the knowledge delivery and the establishment as well as the cultivation of the cognition of the students ch...