Universities, Schools, and the Welfare State

By Ira Harkavy and Lee Benson

Over the past decade, a torrent of major reports have focused on the problem of improving public education and services to children and families. Resulting from an unprecedented recognition that our nation's children face unprecedented problems, these reports have generally told us what we know simply by living in America in the 1990's: That nearly all systems--education, health, human services--are in a state of crisis, unable to provide effective assistance to children and families in need.

Wide recognition exists that the main cause of the crisis in the American Welfare State is the remarkable fragmentation that characterizes its provision of services.

In order to remedy the radical defects built into both the public-school system and the welfare state, we must view and treat them together--not an easy task. But it can best be accomplished if American universities use their great resources to help transform local public schools into comprehensive community schools that function as government-funded, multipurpose community centers, capable of expanding and responsibly supervising the provision of welfare services to residents of their areas. Public schools can only serve in this capacity, however, if they become the center of a broad-based partnership involving an array of...