STRATEGIC PLAN 2013-2017: Big Questions, Urgent Challenges: Liberal Education and Americans’ Global Future Download the Strategic Plan (pdf)

Mission and Goals

The mission of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is to make liberal education and inclusive excellence the foundation for institutional purpose and educational practice in higher education.

From 2013 through 2017, AAC&U will work to advance:

• LEAP: Liberal Education as a Global Necessity
• Quality: 21st-Century Markers for the Value of US Degrees
• Equity: Innovation, Inclusive Excellence, and Student Success
• Social Responsibility: Integrative Liberal Learning for the Global Commons

Goals:

Guided by its mission, the LEAP Principles of Excellence, and the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes, AAC&U will help the higher education community advance the following goals:

LEAP: Liberal Education as a Global Necessity

Build shared commitment to provide ALL college students with the high-quality learning they need to succeed and thrive in an era of global interconnection and rapid societal and economic change.

Quality: 21st-Century Markers for the Value of US Degrees

Promote a clear, contemporary, and capacious framework for high-quality learning and students' demonstrated achievement, providing an educationally meaningful compass to guide students' pathways to degrees.

Equity: Innovation, Inclusive Excellence, and Student Success

Accelerate broad-scale systemic innovation to advance educational practices that engage diversity and challenge inequities in order to make excellence inclusive.

Social Responsibility: Integrative Liberal Learning for the Global Commons

Advance "big questions/global commons" inquiry and innovation across the liberal arts and sciences and through cornerstone-to-capstone designs for general education that foster civic learning, ethical reasoning, and engagement with US and global diversity.