The Academy’s annual Higher Education Forum, which took place this past June in the mountains of Aspen, Colorado, provides a space for institutional leaders, journalists, and philanthropists to explore the future of higher education with time to examine the most pressing issues facing higher education. The focus this year was the uncertainty of higher education’s future, asking the question, “Is Higher Education Built to Last?”
Over the course of four days and twelve engaging panels, speakers and attendees address this question while considering affordability, future proofing, academic freedom, the liberal arts, and more.
The keynote panel,“Resistance, Resilience, and Reform: What Does Higher Education Need the Most?” set the tone by inviting attendees to consider what their institutions and the sector as a whole need the most—not only to survive but to thrive.
A panel titled “Is Closing and Cutting Always the First Step Forward?” featured David Chard, Former President of Wheelock College, as he discussed the difficult choices he made that ultimately led to the closing of Wheelock College. Moderated by Kirk Carapezza, Managing Editor and Correspondent of GBH, this panel provided intimate insights into the choices and challenges of closing a college. For Chard, it was a lot of sleepless nights, phone calls from frustrated alumni, and balancing the needs of students with economic realities.
Though most of the institutional leaders in attendance were not facing school closures, many were facing cuts to programming and areas of studies, accelerated by the looming demographic cliff and rise of AI. The message that emerged was that all higher education leaders need to be ready not only to make tough choices about budget cuts, but also mindful of how to communicate the issues and implications to students, faculty, staff, and communities. Balancing the enterprise value of a college alongside the future of students is a difficult task, but Chard imparted his lesson of leading with transparency and the educational mission.
Other leaders are envisioning how to grow and expand, and a popular topic was maintaining and increasing access to global education on their campuses, prompting leaders to question: what is American higher education if not a globally competitive enterprise? One panel titled, “Is the United States Losing its Edge as a Global Education Leader?” featuring Amy Gadsden, Associate Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and Eric Mlyn, Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, explored issues currently affecting global education and what the future of American universities might look like amongst momentous changes to their international reach. Being globally connected is essential to a research university, Gadsden explains, and it’s important to consider our universities as intentionally global rather than inherently global, which is what happens when we rely solely on international students' attendance to make our schools “global.”
Read more about this panel and the challenge to U.S. global leadership in higher education, in the Hechinger Report.
Despite federal pressures and a decrease in international students on American campuses, students are hungry for opportunities to engage in global education, both abroad and at home. Both Gadsden and Mlyn shared students’ enthusiasm for global learning and view it as a key experience of their education. Despite the rise of nationalism and mistrust for anything seen as “other” in national discourse, students are eager to explore the world and learn from international perspectives. It’s important for universities to align themselves with their students, international and national, despite a lack of a clear path to do so. A first step, Gadsden recommends, is thinking about the American University increasingly competing in a global marketplace and not solely a US one.
As attendees considered the range of issues – from closing campuses to expanding globally - they shared a renewed commitment to uniting as a sector.
The Academy is grateful for all of the speakers, moderators, and attendees who engaged candidly and fervently across all panel topics. As one attendee noted, “the meeting is one of the best on higher education, year after year.”
The Forum benefits from the investment, guidance, commitment, and active participation of Lumina Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, TIAA, Spencer Foundation, Barclays, Kaplan, Bank of America Private Bank, and EdConic, as well as the generosity of David C. Weinstein, who supports the Academy’s work in Education.
* The Higher Education Forum is held under Chatham House Rule. *
Explicit permission to be attributed was given by all speakers in this article.