Through history, dating back to 2,686 BCE if you count the libraries of Ancient Egypt, education institutions have evolved from preserving knowledge to expanding it in the service of our collective society and individual wellbeing. Today we give thanks for the powerful role of higher education in bettering our world.
We are grateful for the energy that students, professors, researchers, and staff put into pushing the boundaries of what is possible in culture, governance, medicine, society, technology, and science. Thanks to their work, we live longer, learn faster, and solve problems more creatively.
Starting with this article, the capacity to both easily write and disseminate it rely on tools born from academic breakthroughs. Gutenberg’s press revolutionized communication, but it was university-based science that helped to digitize, globalize, and democratize access. The Internet, developed by a US government research project, was run through a backbone of computers at research institutions, including UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah, and expanded by a desire of educators to more easily share and access each other’s research.
Large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT are the latest evolution, having emerged from the foundational research on AI and natural language processing (NLP) at institutions like Stanford, UC Berkeley, and MIT to broad access. The influence of higher education is tangible and continually expanding.
There are a stunning number of advances that come out of research institutions. Halo, a company that seeks to join academic research with industry, cites “5 Modern-Day Inventions You Didn’t Know Were from Universities” as well as the widely known Gatorade and MRI. Just this year, Omar Yaghi, a UC Berkeley scientist and two other university research professors, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a breakthrough that could help solve water scarcity and toxic pollution.
Higher education is also linked with individual benefits, higher wages, longer life expectancy, better mental health. Advances in agriculture have allowed us to defeat hunger. Healthcare research has eradicated some diseases and made others less deadly. Medical advances have eradicated some diseases and made others less deadly.
Our communities are stronger with the presence of higher education institutions. A report from American Communities Project at Michigan State University School of Journalism shows that GDP in regions surrounding universities is significantly higher, an evidence of the beneficial effect colleges and universities have on local economies.
So this Thanksgiving, we offer thanks for the educators, researchers, staff, and students who keep these institutions alive and evolving. In a world that is so often focused on what’s broken, let’s not overlook what’s working.
Higher education continues to be one of the best innovations we’ve ever made.