“The Future of Higher Education: Creating Opportunity, Assessing Value,” an all-day conference at the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday, April 7, should draw interest from educators, prospective students and current workers considering what lies ahead for job prospects and skills, policymakers, businesses and the general public.
Key program topics will include:
- Responses to disinvestment in public higher education: What is to be done?
- Investing in higher education: Research universities, innovation and economic impact
- Assessing value: The worth of a higher education for individuals
Speakers on divestment in public higher education will include UC Berkeley Chancellor Designate Carol Christ; former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau; UC Berkeley Public Policy School Dean Henry Brady; John Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels; and Mark Becker, president of Georgia State University.
A panel on higher education investment in terms of research universities, innovation and economic impact will include Edward Penhoet, former dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health; Martin Kenney of UC Davis and senior project director at the Berkeley Roundtable for the International Economy; Sean Randolph, senior director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute; Pradeep Khosla, UC San Diego chancellor; and John Zysman, a UC Berkeley political science professor and co-founder of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy.
Discussing the value for individuals of higher education will be John Douglass of UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education; Laura Hamilton of UC Merced; Mike Hout, a professor of sociology at New York University; James Rosenbaum, an education researcher at Northwestern University; and Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
Friday’s program runs from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public. The conference is being held at Sutardja Dai Hall’s Banatao Auditorium on the north side of campus, on the south side of Hearst Avenue between Euclid Avenue and Galey Road. A map is online .
More details about the conference are available online .
The program is sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. It is co-sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, the Graduate School of Education and the Cal Alumni Association.