It provides a broad range of undergraduate, professional, and graduate programs, and makes all levels of higher education more accessible to students living in the urban community.
Clearly, such criteria are not necessary to the definition of an urban university and may reflect subtle racism and classism that tacitly equates certain groups with lower academic abilities and achievement.
[15] During the years when cities were rapidly growing as a result of immigration and migration from the countryside, academics contributed to the search for solutions to urban problems and played a major role in the Progressive movement.
After World War I, research became increasingly esoteric, its focus shifting to national and international issues, until, with the 1960s, efforts to find accommodations with a restive local community spawned a wide variety of new programs.
In the present decade, new models for university-community partnerships and cooperation have evolved and civic engagement has been linked more closely with the educational mission of the urban and metropolitan university.