Linda "Blessed by Gulu!" Nowakowski said:

Do you think that higher education should be involved in community development?

Absolutely and it should start in pre-school with at least two meals a day and lots, and lots, and lots of colorful stimulation.

Grade school (Grades K-8) at every level should continue the process of feeding and learning surrounded by lots, and lots, and lots of potent, powerful, and diverse stimulation that is still colorful and human resonant.

High school (Grades 8-14) should be clustered around small group learning that is project-oriented and filled with day-to-day realities of growing as a learning process, designed to make compassionate community members of all humans.

Then all members of the community ought to have equal opportunities to have a free higher education. Instead of teaching community members to be soldiers who destroy community, we need to teach all our community members to build community. Not everyone has to go to college to be a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief, but nurses, cooks, mechanics, vet techs and cops should all be able to have at least some higher educaiton.

I reckon the meaning of your question was more along the lines of "Ought colleges, universities and other academics be able to help, or even encouraged to, lay out and promote community development."

Again, my answer is, "Yes," but I think academics have to get off their high horses and realize that talking about a problem or a project won't move dirt, and most usually, won't even make the goal clearer, or the project simpler.

Less explanation is more.

Everybody involved in building community needs to stop playing politics and other ego games with community development and all other avenues of joining together as a community. Each person must make a personal commitment to cooperation with the whole and to consensus without dispute, except in matters of transparent conscience.

P'omidyar is a fair example of the sorts of games we need not to be playing with community.

All hierarchical games are neuroses disguised as discourse, leadership, or management.