In a nation today that’s beset by deep, structural inequalities, the ladder of socioeconomic advancement leans heavily on public city colleges like CUNY’s Lehman in the Bronx. And for a quarter-century, Ricardo Fernandez, class of 1962 at Marquette University, steered that ship. The sea was not always calm: under-resourced institutions survive on threadbare margins; a state budget shortfall begets a financial crisis which begets the furor of students and employees alike. But President Fernandez believed deeply in schools like Lehman as a means of mobility for first-generation, low-income, and students of color and a beacon within blighted blocks. In episode 6 of Formative, we talk about the imperative of maintaining higher education as a public good; assigning Saul Alinsky as homework rather than prosecuting student strikers occupying university buildings; and the eternal task of learning how to learn as technology overtakes the labor landscape for graduates.