2006-2007 Education Policy Seminars

Lois Weis, distinguished professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Buffalo gave the first policy seminar of 2006-07. She addressed the findings of her book Class Reunion: The Remaking of the American White Working Class (2004), which re-interviews, after 20 years, the subjects of Working Class Without Work. Weis contributed insightfully to current policy debates about why men are less likely than women to pursue postsecondary education.

Marvin Titus, assistant professor of adult and higher education at North Carolina State University examined the influence of financial aspects of the state higher education policy context on the production of postsecondary degrees.

Francisco Marmolejo serves as executive director of the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC), a network of more than 130 colleges and universities from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, headquartered at the University of Arizona. His seminar addressed the importance of developing successful international higher education collaboration with Latin America. Recent launching of new educational policies in different Latin American countries offers a unique opportunity for collaboration in the area of education.

Clifford Adelman, senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, expanded on his article, "Propaganda of Numbers" (Chronicle of Higher Education 10/13/2006), which discusses the importance of sorting data concerning higher education. He warned that many assertions cannot "be supported by any national data that have been rigorously reviewed by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics . . . It is counterproductive to make decisions based on assumptions derived from unexamined numbers."

Joshua Powers, associate professor of higher education leadership at Indiana State University, whose research focuses on the commercialization of academic science, delivered a policy seminar on the results of a national longitudinal study on the revenues and costs of university technology transfer including its profitability to the university and the odds that a university will ever realize net gains on investment.

Brian Pusser, assistant professor of leadership, foundations, & policy at the University of Virginia gave a policy seminar on the new political economy of higher education: implications for state and national policy.

Gary Rhoades, professor of higher education and director, Center for the Study of Higher Education, University of Arizona. He gave a policy seminar on the ways in which entrepreneurial behavior on the part of professors re-shapes traditional organizational structures, such as departments and colleges, so that research activity close to markets is highly valued and often relocated in centers and institutes.

Anthony Morgan, professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah discussed comparative perspectives on financing higher education including the fundamental forces of change such as demographic shifts, policy, revenue growth, and pressures to reduce cost.