Children, Higher Education, and Social Policy

A central mission of the Academy throughout its 220-year history has been the promotion of a "strong and virtuous" society. Since World War II, the Academy has initiated and sponsored pioneering works on poverty, race relations, ethnicity, immigration, and education. Within the Children, Higher Education, and Social Policy initiative, Academy Fellows carry out studies in education, health, and social transformation designed to advance the state of scholarship and develop innovative solutions to pressing long-term social problems.

For the past decade, Academy projects grouped under the Initiatives for Children (IFC), a major program area under the broader initiative, have stimulated research efforts focused on the health, welfare, and educational needs of our nation's children. Through its own projects, and in partnership with a wide variety of public and private organizations, the IFC has stressed the importance of solid data and sound evidence as the basis for implementing policies affecting children. Howard Hiatt (Brigham and Women's Hospital) chairs the IFC.

The changing nature of teaching and research in higher education is the focus of another group of projects, covering topics that range from new challenges facing today's professoriate to the evolving educational needs of science and engineering to the challenges posed by increasing diversity on college campuses (under IFC).

This large-scale initiative also includes Academy studies that address social policy in other areas, such as health care, or that cut across several areas, including an ambitious project that explores the feasibility—and social ramifications—of providing "Universal and Basic Secondary Education" to all the world's children between the ages of 6 and 16. Projects on social transformations, such as the changing roles of the courts and Congress, also fall under the Children, Higher Education, and Social Policy initiative.

Current Program Areas:

• Initiatives for Children (IFC): studies that apply innovative research methods to addressing the needs of children and teenagers. IFC projects include:
  
  
  • Center for Evaluation
  • Educational Effects of Diversity in Higher Education

Other Project Activity:

• Universal Basic and Secondary Education: a study of the feasibility and consequences of providing high-quality education to all the world's children.
  
  
• Science and Technology in the University of the 21st Century: a binational study of changing research and education needs in science and technology at universities in the US and Germany.
  
  
• Principles of Conduct for Professors: an examination of the intellectual and ethical dilemmas that US professors face as they balance their responsibilities to students, to their disciplines, to the university, and to the broader community.
  
  
• The Transition from Paper: a study of how the expansion of electronic communications is altering the collection, dissemination, and storage of scholarly information.

Under Consideration:

• Congress and the Courts: a proposed study of the changing role of the Court in relationship to the Congress and its constitutional implications

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