American Universities in Challenging Times

Guest speaker

Frederick M. Lawrence
Secretary and CEO, The Phi Beta Kappa Society
Distinguished Lecturer in Law, Georgetown Law

Conference Overview 

American colleges and universities are facing unprecedented financial, reputational, and existential threats.

The United States higher education system is a diverse network of small and large institutions, public and private schools, those focused exclusively on teaching and those with research-based missions, those that are secular and those that are faith-based.

For the quarter-millennium since our nation’s founding in 1776, American higher education has been the source of the nation’s creativity and prosperity and has long been seen as an engine of social mobility.

And yet, over the past decade, American public support for higher education has fallen sharply, accompanied by an increasingly antagonistic relationship between the government and institutions of higher learning.

Key Questions 

(i) how did we get here?

(ii) (ii) what can colleges and universities do to improve levels of public trust in American higher education and to address the confrontation between them and the government?