Session I: Conversation - What Models Are Available for Sustainable Success?

A target set by the European Commission’s growth strategy for the coming decade, known as Europe 2020, calls for 40 percent of young people to earn higher education certificates in an effort to move millions from low-skill destinies to high-skill careers. In Africa, governments are scrambling to keep up with the soaring demand for higher education. And yet, institutions around the world are expected to cut budgets and meet competitive higher standards. The last decade has seen a great deal of experimentation—some might say “structural adjustment”—in financing and partnering in higher education. Is it possible to educate more people with limited public purses? What works? What doesn’t? Should the rewards generated by discovery be subject to private intellectual property rights or belong to institutions? Is a successful adjustment to the realities of demand and supply possible? And if so, what makes it sustainable? Moderator: Matthew Bishop, U.S. Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief, The Economist Vincent Berger, Special Advisor to French President François Hollande for Higher Education and Research Helga Nowotny, Immediate Past President, European Research Council; Professor Emerita of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich Wendy Piatt, Director-General and Chief Executive, The Russell Group Cecilia Rouse, Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education, Princeton University