Commencement Address
Tercentenary Theatre, Cambridge, MA
May 26, 2011
Distinguished guests. Harvard faculty,晕机怎么办最有效方法
alumni, students, staff, friends.未缴纳社保证明
As we celebrate the Class of 2011 and welcome them to our alumni ranks, I feel a special n of connection to tho who just received their “first degrees,” to u the words with which I officially greeted them this morning. I began as president when they arrived as freshmen, and we have shared the past four years here together. Four world-changing years. From the global financial crisis, to a historic presidential election, to the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring — not to mention earthquakes, tsunamis and tornadoes. The choices and circumstances the new alumni face are likely to be quite different from the ones they expected when they moved into Harvard Yard in September 2007. And I hope and trust that they too are transformed — shaped by all they have learned and experienced as Harvard College undergraduates.
Their departure marks a milestone for me as well. One that prompts me, as Harvard enters its 375th year, to reflect on what the four years have meant for universities, and what universities must do in this time of worldwide challenges when knowledge is becoming ever more vital to our economies, our societies and to us all.
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Education has never mattered more to individual lives. In the midst of the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for college graduates in the United States was less than half that for tho with just a high school diploma. Tho with bachelor degrees earn half again as much as high school graduates. Doctoral or professional degrees nearly double, on average, earnings again. And education of cour brings far more than economic benefits. We believe that the graduates of institutions like Harvard are instilled with analytic and creative habits of mind, with a capacity for judgment and discernment that can guide them through a lifetime that promis an abundance of change.
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But education is not just about individuals. Education has never mattered more to human progress and the common good. Much of what we have undertaken at Harvard in the past four years reflects our fundamental n of that responsibility: to educate individu
als who will understand the difference between information and wisdom, who will po the questions, and create the knowledge that can address the world’s problems, who can situate today’s realities in the context of the past even as we prepare for the future.
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Yet universities have been deeply affected, as events have reshaped the educational landscape in the United States and abroad. The cost of higher education has become the source of even greater anxiety for American families. At a time when college matters more than ever, it ems increasingly less affordable. Access to higher education is a national priority, and at Harvard we have significantly enhanced our financial aid policies to make sure that Harvard is attainable for talented students regardless of their financial circumstances. This is fundamental to sustaining Harvard’s excellence. More than 60% of undergraduates received financial aid from Harvard this year; their families paid an average of $11,500 for tuition and room and board. The composition of our student body
has changed as a result, and we have reached out to students who previously would not have imagined they could attend. This past year, for example, nearly 20% of the freshman class came from families with incomes below $60,000. We want to attract and invest in the most talented students, tho likely to take fullest advantage of their experience at Harvard College.
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Our graduate and professional schools recognize a similar imperative and ek to ensure that graduates are able to choo careers bad on their aspirations rather than on the need to repay educational debt. The Kennedy School, for example, has made increasing financial aid its highest priority; Harvard Medical School’s enhanced financial aid policies now assist over 70% of its student body.
Like American families, institutions of higher education face intensified financial challenges as well. At our distinguished public universities, pressures on state funding threaten fundamental purpos. The governor of Pennsylvania, for example, propos cutting state appropriations for higher education by half. Leaders of the University of California system warned last week of a possible tuition increa of 32% in respon to reduced state support. Some in Congress are threatening to reduce aid for needy students, and to constrain the federal funding that fuels scientific rearch at Harvard and
at America’s other distinguished universities. By contrast, support for higher education and rearch is exploding in other parts of the globe. In China, for example, undergraduate student numbers have more than quadrupled in little over a decade; India has more than doubled its college attendance rate and plans to do so again by 2020. Higher education, the nations recognize, is a critical part of building their futures. As battles rage in Washington over national priorities and deficit reduction, we need to make that ca for America as well. Universities are an esntial part of the solution—providing economic opportunity and mobility, producing discoveries that build prosperity, create jobs and improve human lives. And American higher education—in its dedication to knowledge in breadth and depth, beyond instrumental or narrow technical focus — has proved a generator of imagination, wisdom and creativity, the capacities that rve as foundations for building our common future. When I met last year with university presidents in China, they wanted to talk not about science or technology, where we all know they have such strength, but instead about the liberal arts and how to introduce them in their country. They believed th食品安全责任制度
o principles of broad learning had yielded the most highly regarded educational system in the world. This year, Tsinghua University in Beijing introduced a new required cour called “Moral Reasoning and Critical Thinking.” It is modeled on Professor Michael Sandel’s famous Harvard undergraduate class, “Justice,” and he lectured in that cour last week. This is a time for us to convince Americans of what the Chine educational leaders affirmed to me: that we in the United States have developed a model of higher education that is unsurpasd in its achievements and distinction, in the knowledge it has created and in the students it has produced. It must be both supported and adapted to help cure the future in which our children and their children will live.
