Disconnect: How Universities Isolate Themselves from the Public

by Jacob Rueda

UPDATE 11/1/2025: The article has been updated to include new data on public confidence in higher education, student engagement, and university funding trends. Key points regarding how research priorities and faculty restrictions contribute to the growing disconnect between universities and the communities they serve have also been clarified.

Public universities are concentrating more on specialized knowledge. This shift in focus means that more time is spent getting grant funding and improving their reputation, causing them to lose touch with the communities they surround.

Dr. Matthew Draper, a clinical psychologist and former professor at Utah Valley University, said universities have drifted from their original purpose of creating "an educated civic body" and serving their own interests rather than the public.

THE RISE OF RESEARCH FOR ITS OWN SAKE

Corporate contributions increasingly shape what research gets prioritized.

A major driver of this drift is the growing emphasis on internally focused research, which is often designed more to satisfy funding agencies than to address real-world needs. These funding sources increasingly come from large institutions. In 2023, U.S. colleges and universities received $58 billion in charitable donations, with corporate contributions making up 64.7% of the total, according to CASE Insights. In 2024, corporate giving hit $44.40 billion, a 9.1% increase. The trend indicates that universities are aligning themselves more closely with business interests. Because corporations fund research that aligns with their interests, universities often pursue projects disconnected from local needs, which reinforces the divide between campus priorities and community issues.

The corporate alignment extends into the classroom. More universities are hiring business professionals for teaching roles. It’s a move intended to provide students with industry exposure. Draper, however, sees a different motivation. "Universities need to make good worker bees," he said, "They hire people from business to run the university in order to see to the interests of business."

Draper, himself a researcher, said grant-driven research largely rewards studies that promise efficiency, speed, or cost-cutting, not necessarily those that improve lives.

"If I can start putting out research saying this method of therapy is quicker, efficient, and cheaper, then I'm going to get the grant dollars, which then fuels more of my research," he said.

His goal, however, is to produce research that benefits both academia and society, which is something he believes is becoming harder within the current system.

COMMUNITIES FEEL DISCONNECTED

A 2012 study by the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that residents felt disconnected from the university and believed it did not prioritize local needs. More recent national data shows that the divide has only widened.

A 2024 Gallup/Lumina Foundation survey found that only one-third of Americans expressed high confidence in higher education, while another third reported little or no confidence. Respondents cited rising tuition, political polarization, and doubts about the real-world relevance of university programs. These are all factors that push institutions further away from public expectations.

At the University of California, Berkeley, researchers with the SERU Consortium reported in 2025 that student engagement at public research universities has still not recovered since the COVID-19 pandemic. They found lasting declines in civic involvement, extracurricular participation, and career preparation, suggesting that universities are struggling to reconnect students with broader community and civic life.

A 2024 working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reached a similar conclusion from an economic perspective. The report warned that financially distressed colleges are increasingly focused on institutional survival and financial engineering rather than community service, leaving some regions without meaningful local access to higher education.

Together, these findings show a sustained national trend: public universities are drifting away from the people they are meant to serve.

BARRIERS BETWEEN FACULTY AND THE PUBLIC

According to Draper, even faculty who want to serve their communities often face institutional resistance.

Before retiring after 15 years at Utah Valley University, Draper said the school tried to stop him from continuing his clinical practice despite his contract allowing it. To Draper, this was a sign that universities increasingly value internal control over community impact.

“The walls have come up. They’re much thicker now,” he said. “You don’t want faculty going off campus. They have to stay in the ivory tower, right? ‘It’s a conflict of interest for you to go and work in the community and we forbid it.’”

Instead, he was assigned to serve on a book-vetting committee, reviewing texts for potentially offensive language, a task he felt had far less value than helping people through clinical work in the field.

A GROWING PROBLEM WITH REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES

The growing separation between public universities and the communities they serve is more than an academic concern as it undermines the very purpose of higher education.

By prioritizing grant-driven studies with limited practical application and restricting faculty from engaging in real-world practice, Draper argues, universities risk becoming isolated institutions with diminishing relevance.

To learn more, see the full interview with Dr. Matthew Draper below.