2013 Milken Institute Panel Discussion - The Future of Higher Education in America

Last updated on January 4th 2014

This youtube video, "The Future of Higher Education in America",http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw_Ey9Oip9g, 1 hr, 16 min, 19 sec, has a panel discussion on the subject-title and seems to have been done sometime in early 2013. So this panel discussion gives a fairly current picture of USA higher education.

The panel discussion was hosted by Milken Institute. From its wiki,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milken_Institute, "The Milken Institute is an independent economic think tank based in Santa Monica, California that publishes research and hosts conferences that apply market-based principles and financial innovations to a variety of societal issues in the US and internationally."

The youtube page description has the following:

Student debt surpassed the $1 trillion mark in 2012 and now is the second-largest category of household debt behind mortgages. Default rates exceed those of credit cards, and college tuition and fees have been rising even faster than health care costs. At the same time, employers are seeing a mismatch between their needs and the qualifications of those in the labor pool. This incongruity threatens to derail productivity and economic growth, raising serious questions about national competitiveness. Given this backdrop, how can the American higher education model fulfill the learning, affordability and job-preparation needs of students? What role can colleges and universities, online technology and government play in setting higher education on the best possible course?

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The moderator of the panel is John Nelson, Managing Director, Public Finance Group, Moody's Investors Service [He has a background in economic analysis of educational institutions.]

The speakers/panelists are:

William Bennett, Former U.S. Secretary of Education; Author, "Is College Worth It?", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bennett. From his wiki, "William John "Bill" Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is an American conservative pundit, politician, and political theorist. He served as United States Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988. He also held the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W. Bush. In 2000, he co-founded K12, a for-profit online education corporation which is publicly traded."

Steven Knapp, President, The George Washington University,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Knapp, http://www.gwu.edu/. From GWU wiki,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_University, "The George Washington University (GW, GWU, or George Washington) is a comprehensive private, coeducational research university located in the United States' capital, Washington, D.C."

Daphne Koller, Co-Founder, Coursera Inc., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Koller, https://www.coursera.org/. From her wiki, "Daphne Koller (born 27 August, 1968) is an Israeli-American Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She's also one of the founders of Coursera, an online education platform. Her general research area is artificial intelligence and its applications in the biomedical sciences.". From the Coursera wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coursera, "Coursera is a for-profit educational technology company offering massive open online courses (MOOCs) founded by computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University. Coursera works with universities to make some of their courses available online, and offers courses in engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, and other areas."

Patricia McWade, Dean of Student Financial Services, Georgetown University,http://www.georgetown.edu/. From its wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown_University, "Georgetown University is a private research university in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Jesuit and Catholic university in the United States."

Anthony Miller, Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, U.S. Department of Education. From his wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_W._Miller, "Anthony Wilder "Tony" Miller is the United States Deputy Secretary of Education, confirmed on July 24, 2009 to replace Raymond Simon, who resigned from this Office on January 20, 2009." [BTW the current Secretary of Education of the US is Arne Duncan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_Duncan]

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This seems to be quite an appropriate and high-profile group (in US higher education field) who seem to have good knowledge of the current situation and challenges in US higher education.

I have put down, usually in brief, some of the points touched by this panel discussion as a comment on the youtube page under my name. The comment was made today, 28th December 2013. I think it would be useful for readers interested in this topic to view these points/notes (posted as a comment).