Higher Education Policy

Neo-Academic Cold War

August 10, 2026
John Aubrey Douglass

A new Cold War is emerging and in turn a Neo-Academic Cold War that reflects emerging geopolitical rivalries. The context of the Neo-Academic Cold War is different from the previous Cold War which featured bipolar competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for military superiority and spheres of influence that included distinct scientific and academic ecosystems. This has given way to a multipolar and complex world of rivalries and semi-autonomous silos of transnational science cooperation and science diplomacy. This paper explores the evolution of the Neo-Academic Cold War as...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41307-026-00465-z

Commentary: SAT Wars and the University of California

July 10, 2026
John Aubrey Douglass

Commentary on Substack:

Opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and a growing number of ...

https://substack.com/@johnaubreydouglass?utm_source=global-search

Jesse Rothstein

David Gardner Chair of Higher Education, Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, Professor of Public Policy & Economics, Carmel P. Friesen Chair of Public Policy

Jesse Rothstein is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Public Policy and the David Pierpont Gardner Chair in Higher Education and directs the Center for Studies in Higher Education. He previously served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and as Senior Economist with the Council of Economic Advisers, Executive Office of the President. From 2015-2020, he was director of...

How Trump’s HE policies are hamstringing economic growth

July 3, 2026
John Aubrey Douglass

In an analysis published in University World News, John Aubrey Douglass, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), addressed the impact of the new federal provisions limiting loans for graduate education in the United States.

Douglass explains how these changes “will likely come at a cost to the economy in terms of fewer professionals across a wide array of fields, as well as further erosion in socioeconomic mobility, for which access to graduate education is a key component.”

Read the...

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260703124411294

Breakfast with George: A Mentorship Program for University Executives

Ready to advance your higher education leadership skills?

Join Breakfast with George for an intimate and personalized mentoring experience.

Breakfast with George is an exclusive opportunity to benefit from the experienced mentorship of George Blumenthal, Chancellor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz. As the Former Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, George Blumenthal has nearly 50 years of experience in higher education, as a...

Igor Chirikov

Senior Researcher and SERU Consortium Director

Igor Chirikov is the Director of the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium and Senior Researcher at CSHE. SERU Consortium is an academic and policy research collaboration based at Center for Studies in Higher Education at the UC Berkeley working in partnership with Etio and member universities. The Consortium is a group of leading research-intensive universities that increase student success by generating and analyzing comparative data on the student experience.

As SERU Consortium Director Igor Chirikov has broad responsibilities for overall SERU Consortium...

Ivy Chen

Research Assistant
Princeton University Department of Economics

Ivy Chen is an undergraduate research assistant for Professor Zachary Bleemer at Princeton University in the Industrial Relations Section. She is pursuing a B.A. in Economics on the mathematics-track with minors in Statistics and Machine Learning as well as English. Her research interests include the economics of higher education and the labor market impacts of reproductive healthcare access.

Education's Abiding Moral Dilemma: Merit and Worth in the Cross-Atlantic Democracies, 1800-2006 by Sheldon Rothblatt (2007)

Sheldon Rothblatt
2007

The conflict between access and quality in education has been front-page news for decades. Policies regarding the role of elite universities, the organisation of secondary education, admissions criteria, courses of study, high stakes testing, and fiscal and programme accountability have changed with uncommon frequency, resulting in confusion and uncertainty. Yet it is the argument of this book that the tension between access to education and the preservation of quality is another chapter in the much longer history of merit selection in England, Scotland and America, and should be...

Marijk Van der Wende

Professor of Higher Education, Utrecht University

Marijk van der Wende is Distinguished Faculty Professor of Higher Education at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance. Her research focuses on the impact of globalization and internationalization on higher education systems, institutions, curricula, and teaching and learning arrangements.

She is also Guest Professor and member of the International Advisory Board of the Graduate School of Education Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a member of...

John Aubrey Douglass

Senior Research Fellow

John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow - Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), and is a faculty member in the Goldman School of Public Policy, at the University of California - Berkeley. His research focuses on the forces and politics of globalization, the future of Democracy, the role of universities in economic development and socioeconomic mobility, the student experience and institutional self-improvement, and the history of higher education. He has written extensively on the rise of neo-nationalism and the impact on...