At a time of extensive migration and weakening inhibitions on student travel, great cities are particularly attractive to heterogeneous populations of students. The scale of city populations means that urban universities are particularly vulnerable to pressures to provide mass educational services which may fly in the face of their traditional obligation to maintain standards. This has severe implications because of the traditional obligation to maintain the university as a forum for discussion from all ideological viewpoints. Cities present special complications in terms of political constraints, and the formal obligations of universities to their communities. The leaders in metropolitan universities have to struggle with their taxation base, with responsiveness to the need of the local populations, with the need to secure social services such as garbage disposal, police protection, and major facility requirements, and with the problem of maintaining flexibility in architectural planning.
Cities also present special community difficulties.
Large and often poor populations in great cities confront the universities in them with security needs, with problems in relations with police forces, and with lack of control over their immediate physical environment. Cities present special problems in conducting large-scale scientific research. Constraints upon emissions from laboratories, disposal of radioactive and other hazardous wastes, and the use of animal facilities are characteristically more stringent in large populations centers than elsewhere. Problems of vibration and noise are more serious than in other environments. Because the great urban universities share a common historical tradition, and because they are now faced with problems that transcend international boundaries and which are somewhat different from those of other universities, Dr. Oliva would like at his Inauguration to explore ways in which this group of institutions represented may be useful to one another.