In 2012 the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government introduced a number of reforms to the higher education system in England. The main change was to abolish direct state subsidies for the teaching of most subjects, and replace them with a state-subsidised tuition fee of up to $9,000 (US $13,700). A number of other changes were also made, all with the aim of increasing institutional competition and consumer choice. The Government believes the reforms are necessary to assure financial sustainability, raise quality and enhance social mobility. This paper assesses the early impact of...
With the advent of electronic publishing, the scholarly communication landscape at universities has become increasingly diverse. Multiple stakeholders including university presses, libraries, and central IT departments are challenged by the increasing volume and the rapidity of production of these new forms of publication in an environment of economic uncertainties. As a response to these increasing pressures, as well as the recent publication of important reports and papers on the topic, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) convened a meeting of experts titled, The...
This paper traces the historical development of the American research and technology enterprise from its origins in the post-Civil War period to its current international dominance in the discovery and dissemination of scientific knowledge. U.S. research universities have become the vital center of this enterprise over the past 60 years. But competitors in Europe and Asia, many of them looking to the American research university as a model, are beginning to challenge U.S. leadership in science and technology. The paper analyzes the nature of this challenge and the problems research...
The current and still-evolving role of the American research university has been shaped by four key developments in the past sixty-five years: the historic decision to establish a comprehensive postwar federal science policy, described in Vannevar Bush’s 1945 report, Science, The Endless Frontier; the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980; economic analyses from the 1950s onward that have validated the central role of knowledge in economic growth and influenced government and university policy on industry-university research; and various experiments with such research that have led to an increasing...
Proceedings of University of California Symposium held June 10, 2005
2005
Civic engagement is moving to the forefront of higher education discussions as universities seek ways not only to intensify students’ learning experiences but also to forge stronger links with the communities they are meant to serve. Within the University of California system, there are already multiple examples of service-learning, university-community partnerships, and volunteer initiatives.
In June 2005, faculty, academic staff, and student representatives from across the University of California system gathered at a symposium held on the Berkeley campus to discuss and analyze...
Many societal trends and needs call for engineers to broaden their outlooks, have more flexible career options, and work closely and effectively with persons of quite different backgrounds. Yet the education and general orientation of engineers have been directed inward toward the profession, rather than outward toward the rest of society and the world. Engineering education should change to create a broader outlook and understanding in graduates and thereby engender capabilities for linkages and more likelihood of advancement into management and/or movement into other areas. The...
There is strong interest in broadening engineering education, bringing in more liberal arts content as well as additional subjects such as economics, business and law, with which engineers now have to be familiar. There are also cogent arguments for balancing against what is now the almost exclusively quantitative nature of the curriculum, adding more elements that relate to the actual practice of engineering, and structuring engineering education so as to provide multiple and later entry points, which should enable more informed career choices and make engineering attractive to a...
Meeting global demand for growing the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce requires solutions for the shortage of qualified instructors. We propose and evaluate a model for scaling up affordable access to effective STEM education through national online education platforms. These platforms allow resource-constrained higher education institutions to adopt online courses produced by the country’s top universities and departments. A multisite randomized controlled trial tested this model with fully online and blended instruction modalities in Russia’s...
This article develops and tests an identity-based account of malfeasance in consumer markets. It is hypothesized that multi-brand organizational structures help predatory firms short-circuit reputational discipline by rendering their underlying identities opaque to consumer audiences. The analysis utilizes comprehensive administrative data on all for-profit U.S. colleges, an industry characterized by widespread fraud and poor (though variable) educational outcomes. Consistent with the hypothesis that brand differentiation facilitates malfeasance by reducing ex ante reputational risks,...
2010 marks the 50th anniversary of California’s famed Master Plan for Higher Education, arguably the single most influential effort to plan the future of a system of higher education in the annals of American higher education. This essay builds on the analysis offered in a previous CSHE research paper (“From Chaos to Order and Back”) by discussing the major challenges facing California’s higher education system, and offering a possibly pathway to reforms and institution-building essential for bolstering socioeconomic mobility and greater economic competitiveness. Most critics and...
