It s not, says Ward. We re more than that, but we re large employers, consumers of capital, creators of jobs and so on. And yet our niche in the economy needs to be better defined. Our key position in the global economy, which is both positive and negative, needs to be better defined. And so in a way, we need to see ourselves as a legitimate topic of study.
Research is the core.
Professional staff, clinical and academic faculty from the campus and visiting fellows from a wide variety of academic disciplines and institutional backgrounds will examine the workings of post-secondary education and apply the results thereto. And finally, and perhaps most provocatively, there is The Forum. It is here that civic, government, business and education leaders will be engaged in the nexus of the post-secondary institution and the evolving needs of society. Berkeley, in fact, offered to save Ward the trouble and just make him the new head of About Wiscape there. But Ward says while there is research available on the history of higher education, on the financing of higher education, on the role of tuition, etc., there is nothing on the new areas of the international-ness of knowledge, on the relationship of the university to the macro economy and of the strategic role of the university.