From the 
Editor's 
Desk 

Ernest A. Lynton 

Our intention from the beginning has been for this journal to be a 
truly international forum. The articles in this issue by Dietrnar von 
Hoyningen-Huene, Michael Leszczensky, and Michael Lewis are the first 
since the contribution in our first issue of Jean Dore, mayor of Montreal, 
to give reality to this intention. We welcome these contributions from 
other countries and intend to continue in future issues to broaden the 
geographic perspective of the journal as much as possible. In this age of 
increasing international contacts and exchanges, this perspective is 
important because of our readers' intrinsic interest in what is happening 
elsewhere in higher education. It is valuable as well because such 
contributions from abroad can help us to better understand our own 
system. Comparisons and contrasts with developments in other countries 
place into sharper relief what we are and are not doing in our own. 

The three international contributions in this issue are of particular 
interest because they deal with categories of institutions in the United 
Kingdom and in Germany, respectively, which in many-though not 
all-ways are a counterpart to the American metropolitan university. Just 
as we have, during the recent past, finally learned that not all universities 
either can or should be like Harvard or Madison, so also have our British 
and our German colleagues in academic institutions and in government 
come to recognize that there are important models for institutions of 
higher ed uca ti on other than Oxford and Cambridge-or even 
Manchester-in the UK and other than Tuebingen or Heidelberg in 
Germany. 

As the three articles show, the British polytechnics and the German 
Fachhochschulen, like our metropolitan universities, recognize their mission 
to be regionally oriented and focused on the preparation of effective 
practitioners. Polytechnics have moved, as well, toward accepting more 
part-time students and being responsive to broader educational needs, 
goals in which the GermanFachhochschulen, as yet, are lagging. In Germany 
and, to a lesser extent, in the UK, it is official policy to strengthen and to 
expand these newer sectors of higher education in the corning years 
considerably more than the traditional universities. 

Given the nature of polytechnics and Fachhochschulen, the articles by 
von Hoyningen-Huene, Leszczensky, and Lewis clearly contribute to the 
theme of this issue, which continues the theme of the preceding one: the 
role of metropolitan universities in regional development. Andrew Rudnick 
continued to function as guest editor for this issue, and it is more than 
fitting to express once again our gratitude for his invaluable contribution. 

Two articles by David Sweet as well as those by Robert Kraushaar 
and Eric Oldsrnan provide further U.S. perspectives on the theme. In the 
first of his contributions, Sweet recalls the pivotal role of cooperative 
extension in relating the land-grant institutions to agricultural 
development. By drawing attention to this and posing the challenge of an 
analogous urban extension for metropolitan universities, Sweet goes to 
the heart of the mission of metropolitan universities. He emphasizes that 
cooperative extension was and continues to be successful in agriculture to 
the extent to which it is informed by up-to-date research and, in turn, 



From the Editor's Desk 3 

brings back to the laboratory the issues and needs of practice. By the same 
token, metropolitan universities can meet the challenge of being a major 
intellectual resource to their urban constituencies only to the extent to 
which their faculty and professional staff provide a two-way flow of 
information between the locus of research and the point of its application. 
Metropolitan universities must be both metropolitan-that is, institutions 
responsive to the needs of their region-and universities-that is, 
institutions with a faculty of scholars whose applied research and 
professional outreach is based on the latest knowledge. Only if both these 
dimensions are combined can metropolitan universities play as crucial a 
role in the economic and social development of their region through urban 
extension as land-grant colleges contributed to agricultural development 
through cooperative extension. Sweet's first article describes several 
models for the relationship between cooperative and urban extension. In 
his second contribution he elaborates on one of these: the Urban University 
Program in Ohio. 

In his article, Kraushaar focuses on the highly important way in 
which our metropolitan universities can serve their constituencies by 
being sources of useful information aggregated regionally. Urban and 
regional planners and policy makers need economic and other data that 
are horizontally structured (rather than structured, for example, by type of 
product), with location as a prime determinant. Kraushaar describes 
specific ways in which the expertise and resources of metropolitan 
universities can contribute significantly to regional development by being 
sources of such information and by analyzing it in a timely and relevant 
fashion. Oldsman addresses science parks as yet another dimension of 
potential contribution by metropolitan universities to regional 
development. Such parks are not the panacea they once were thought to 
be by almost every community with a nearby university, but powerful 
developmental mechanisms under appropriate conditions that are 
described in the article. 

Two further articles round out this issue. Freeman Hrabowski and 
James Linksz describe the overlapping functions and interests of 
community colleges and metropolitan universities, and urge that the links 
between these institutions must move from articulation to true 
collaboration. Betty Hathaway and Edward Spanier provide useful 
information about the successful creation and operation of a day care 
center for children of faculty, staff, and students: a service that in 
metropolitan universities is not an amenity but a necessity. 

By the time this issue of Metropolitan Universities is distributed, the 
next one, with telecommunications as its theme, will already be at the 
publishers, and the one after that, on continuing education, will be well 
along in the final editing process. Three subsequent issues are at various 
stages in the pipeline: one on professional education, one on assessment, 
and one on the international dimension. We continue to invite contributions 
on these and on other subjects pertinent to metropolitan universities. We 
would also welcome brief descriptions of innovative programs and 
projects to which the attention of colleagues in other metropolitan 
universities should be drawn in our column "Interactive Strategies." For 
suggestions and information, please call, write, or fax me at the address 
indicated on the inside front cover. 


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