In the coming years there will be no more important challenge to institutions of higher education than to preserve and extend their commitment to the poor and disadvantaged. That is particularly true of the cities, where so many people in need of help are concentrated—racial and ethnic minorities, unemployed youth, recent immigrants, and others. Their education—in the schools and beyond—is critical to their futures and to that of the cities as well. In considerable part, the solution to many of the problems of cities depends on educating the people who live and work in them.

In higher education, this job falls primarily to urban-oriented colleges and universities—institutions in the central cities whose educational mission, whether by charter or default, is to serve the cities' people. Their undergraduate enrollments reflect that orientation, and because these institutions are based in the city and serve such a diverse range of people and needs, they have special problems that need to be much more widely recognized and addressed. An alarming gap remains between those served and those locked out of higher education in the cities. The future well-being of the cities, their colleges and universities, and their people depend in large part on narrowing the gap (and remaining firm in the resolve to do so) despite financial constraints and other obstacles.

In 1978, and again in mid-1980, the Ford Foundation's concern about these issues prompted it to make a series of grants totaling some $1.1 million to help urban-oriented colleges and universities—and those who make and shape policy affecting them—to examine and work on undergraduate services and programs for the inner-city poor and disadvantaged. The focus of the overall program was on problems most directly affecting educational access and success for these people. From the standpoint of what current and potential students need, the main problems seemed to be: (1) remediation of basic