University mission statement
In preparation for Yale’s fourth century, the Yale Corporation in 1992 endorsed a mission statement for the University as a whole and elaborated on its long-term objectives:
As one of the world’s leading centers for learning, Yale’s primary mission is to attract, educate and motivate a diverse group of the most highly talented men and women in order to advance and disseminate knowledge and to promote the scholarship, high character, values, and leadership which can be directed towards sustaining and improving society.
Intrinsic to this mission are the faculty’s dual responsibilities for outstanding teaching and original research, carried out in a community comprised of Yale College, a Graduate School with broad coverage of the arts and sciences, and an array of professional schools in arts, sciences, and learned professions. This mission requires a continuing commitment to the excellence, the competitive position and the reputation for academic leadership that Yale has earned over nearly three centuries.
The coming decades present a host of challenges and opportunities for Yale as it pursues the following key objectives:
- Ensure the enduring qualities of a Yale education by focusing resources on core programs and facilities with emphasis on the arts and sciences at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, achieving excellence by building on quality, eliminating those programs and activities that cannot achieve the high standard which Yale requires.
- Provide continuous opportunity for innovation and improvement in those programs which enhance Yale’s role as an international center of learning.
- Preserve access to a Yale education based on each individual’s character, talent, and potential, without regard to financial circumstances.
- Attract faculty and students who combine a record of intellectual achievement with energy, creativity, and the capacity to become leaders in society.
- Enable students to experience a broad array of outstanding extracurricular activities that support and supplement Yale’s academic programs.
- Maintain a balanced operating budget over time, even as the University seizes new opportunities to enlarge knowledge and improve educational programs.
- Invest sufficiently in Yale’s physical plant to ensure its long-term integrity and its ongoing ability to embrace the research, teaching, residential, athletic, and support requirements of the University.
- Balance Yale’s immediate requirements with its long-term ability to provide the resources necessary to maintain the excellence of its student body, the faculty, and the academic programs by responsibly managing the endowment and by exploring new methods of generating revenue consistent with the institution’s academic mission.
Appraisal and projection
The University’s mission statement, created in 1991 and approved in 1992, will be reviewed by the Institutional Policies Committee of the Yale Corporation in 2001, and every ten years after that date, in order to ensure its accuracy and completeness in a changing University climate.
