The Higher Education Forum

The Higher Education Forum, a collaboration of higher education leaders and scholars, launched in 1984 and moved to the Academy in 2022. The Higher Education Forum is an opportunity for the Academy to provide leadership and learning on pressing issues in higher education with an interdisciplinary and cross-sector approach that draws on the strengths of its members and Affiliates.    

Forum activities, including an annual meeting at Aspen, are an opportunity to bring together Academy Affiliate leaders and other higher education stakeholders to discuss the most pressing matters facing campus communities and society more broadly. The Academy is proud to continue the tradition of hosting the annual Higher Education Forum meeting in Aspen.

The activities of the Forum are guided by Academy experts and leaders within higher education including: the Higher Education Forum Advisory Committee, Academy Affiliates, and Academy members. Importantly, the Forum engages the Academy’s Affiliates, comprised of colleges, universities, and cultural and scientific institutions who, united in their commitment to advancing the common good, work with the Academy to address issues of both timely and abiding concern.  

The Forum is the newest addition to the Academy’s work in higher education. Recent related work includes The Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education, The Lincoln Project, and The Humanities Indicators, which provides researchers and policymakers with reliable, nonpartisan data – including in higher education – and has been underway at the Academy since 2009. 

The Forum furthers the Academy’s education portfolio by providing opportunities to be nimbler and more experimental in response to issues that matter to higher education as they develop, while also informing the Academy’s longer-term work in higher education.