Throughout the last century higher education in North America and in Europe has served as one of the most powerful catalysts of social transformation and of upward social mobility. More recently, however, universities have increasingly become liable to the paradigm of the market and an “enterprise culture” responding to new demands of a globalized knowledge economy (or, as Tony Blair put it, “education is the best economic policy there is for a modern economy”). The symposium will focus on the role of universities as social institutions promoting the common good. It is one of the assumptions of this symposium that higher education institutions on both sides of the Atlantic differ greatly in how they see “the service function” of the university. The discussions during this meeting are intended to encourage comparative viewpoints.