The American system of higher education is under attack by political, economic, and educational forces that threaten to undermine its business model, governmental support, and operating mission. The potential changes are considerably more dramatic and disruptive than anything previously experienced. Traditional colleges and universities urgently need a coherent, thought-out response. Their central role in fostering the creation, preservation, and distribution of knowledge in the world may be at risk and, as a consequence, so too may be the spectacular progress across fields we have come to expect as a result.

Although expertise from many disciplines is needed to address the problems in our institutions of higher education, political scientists may be especially well positioned to contribute to a solution. Many of the problems are essentially political, and our discipline includes those with the skills and knowledge necessary to understand and analyze the problems, to design strategies to ameliorate them, and to evaluate the consequences of any changes. We encourage political scientists to take up the challenge.

In this light, we wrote “The Troubled Future of Colleges and Universities” to offer a summary of the status quo, an analysis of the actual and likely economic and political attacks on the traditional system of higher education, a list of some largely inadequate responses that have been proposed or attempted, and some suggestions for more productive directions to go. We then recruited five distinguished political scientists familiar with the issues to comment on our article or the general issues we raised. Our commenters represent a “Who's Who” among the nation's leading political scientists who have also served in major leadership positions in university administration. As you will see, they have an enormous amount to contribute.

Our contributors include current and former (and likely future!) university presidents, chairs, and deans. We start the symposium with Michael Laver, presently the dean for the Social Sciences at New York University. He explains that we don't have to panic quite yet and shows that we can leverage some of the new, and possibly threatening, educational innovations—like online learning—to universities' distinct advantage. Henry E. Brady, currently the dean at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, comes next. His essay draws nuanced parallels between the challenges faced by higher education today and the disruptive changes faced by newspapers, railroads, and other industries of years past. Next, Nannerl O. Keohane, now the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, identifies five important threats to the university business model, while also reminding us of the components of traditional universities that are essential to protect. The next commentary is by Virginia Sapiro, the dean of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, who brings a historical perspective to the symposium. Her essay puts our current difficulties in the context of 70 years of recurring disruptions, and she reminds us that higher education has weathered strong challenges in the past, too. The symposium concludes with an essay by John Mark Hansen, now the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor, and senior advisor to the President, at the University of Chicago. He brings a big picture perspective by focusing on the point of the university, the central role of academic freedom, and the delicate relationships with the various forces at work affecting higher education. Taken together, our commentators address a complicated set of challenges faced by higher education today. They raise new and unexpected problems, while also suggesting real and creative paths forward.

The existing and coming disruptive changes in higher education require the immediate attention of our academic community. Each of our commenters provides compelling insights into the challenges facing universities, and all make important arguments and proposals deserving of much discussion and analysis. We hope other political scientists will follow up so that we may collectively begin to tackle these issues, important to so many in and beyond our discipline, departments, and universities.

We are grateful to our commentators and the editors of PS for making this symposium possible. We also thank the countless scholars, students, citizens, and analysts who have engaged this important subject, many with us directly. We do not know what the future holds for colleges and universities, but it is difficult to be anything but deeply impressed by the support out there for these institutions and their goals.