Conference on The Future of Higher Education, Dec 2011, NYC

Join us as speakers discuss the shifting boundaries and roles of the research university, including the current development of global collaborations and export of the U.S. university model, abroad. This public conference aims to engage both experts and the public in discussions that will deepen our understandings of the ways in which higher education is changing and to outline the ways in which U.S. university leadership can work to ensure that U.S. universities can continue to adapt and thrive as their contexts change. 

Overview

There has been a great deal of discussion recently in the press and in the highbrow media, like the New York Review of Books, lamenting the current state of higher education in the United States, which ranges over the demise of liberal arts education, the enormous increase in the numbers of students, the explosion of off-site campuses around the globe, to the exorbitant cost of undergraduate education. The fact that so much ink has been spilled might legislate against the idea of an international conference on the subject of higher education. However, this proposed conversation will do more than list our fears; it will bring together experts from inside and outside the academy and from inside and outside the United States to not only assess what is going on and what might be intelligently be done to improve higher education, but what should we be aiming for over the next 20 years.

For decades, the growth of knowledge and development of culture and industry was heavily dependent upon what went on inside major research U.S. universities. However, it is no longer clear whether Western universities will continue to be the dominant site (or model) for the generation of new knowledge.

Today, many U.S. universities are entering into international exchanges, building satellite schools, and building new universities in other countries, because of their expectation that such an opportunity will infuse global perspectives into the home campus and campus abroad. Is this a safe assumption? What are the benefits and what are the challenges to moving universities to non-liberal democratic countries?

Higher Education experts are also being hired as consultants to help build new universities abroad. Not only do these moments provide us with a unique lens to examine how the U.S. university is being put to work around the world and what many countries are aiming to achieve and how; this may also be a unique opportunity for university leaders and policy makers to use higher education as an arm of international development, strengthening democratic ideals and increasing gender equality and civic engagement abroad.

We are bringing together scholars and university presidents from the U.S. as well as experts from Europe, South Africa, China, India, and the Middle East to better understand the changes and challenges facing higher education as well as the goals and uses of higher education globally, to respond to the risks and develop methods to maximize the opportunities.

This conference is the 26th in the Social Research conference series, founded by Arien Mack in 1988. Dr. Arien Mack is Alfred and Monette Marrow Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research and editor of Social Researchsince 1970. Social Research: An International Quarterly is the flagship journal ofThe New School for Social Research. For a list of over 70 degree programs at The New School, visit degree programs. For a list of other events at The New School, visit the university calendar. For general information about The New School visit the quick facts page. For the history of this conference series, visit the Social Research conference series site.

This conference is made possible by generous support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford Foundation.