Parents and students expect real results from the four-year undergraduate curriculum. This is not unreasonable. Scholarly studies have shown that programs like Global Citizen Year do deliver real educational outcomes.

Colleges and universities should not need government regulation to do what is right. We must begin to take more seriously the major investment that our students and their families are making with us, and demonstrate why it is a good one.

I realized that most people had an easier time making sense of food writing as a respectable and enviable occupation than wrapping their mind around food as an object of serious scholarly pursuit.

After the preview of the movie, a man in the audience, visibly moved, raised his hand and said: "Growing up in Palestine, kite flying was the only thing that made me feel free."

Working in this space between theory and practice trains students -- and citizens -- to ask better questions about what government is doing, what it can do, and how students can themselves become responsible agents of change.