Contributions of Higher Education to Society and Economy: Global, National and Local Perspectives
Higher education has become a powerful institution that numbers over 200 million students worldwide. Individual choices to pursue a university degree are mostly prompted by various benefits one is looking to receive, such as securing a higher social status, landing a good job for a life well lived, etc. However, the contributions of higher education are not limited to personal welfare. It is a challenging task to understand how and to what extent higher education can yield non-monetary outcomes across individual, community and national dimensions. Recent discourse has increasingly emphasized the role of universities as an important linchpin in producing knowledge, sociocultural values, civic engagement, and social cohesion. For all that, various stakeholders—policymakers, households, corporates, etc.—have come up with different conceptions and expectations about how higher education should contribute to the society and economy. Therefore, more conclusive, multi-prism insights are required in order to more plausibly gauge how multiple actors have conceived of the socioeconomic role of higher education and how these conceptions relate to the way universities have actually been performing across dimensions. This evidence will provide the crucial groundwork to draw upon when devising more robust roadmaps to enhance university contributions as better aligned with what stakeholders are looking for.
The special topic of RHEC 2019 is “Contributions of Higher Education to Society and Economy: Global, National and Local Perspectives”.
The Conference will offer a vibrant international forum for academics, strategists, institutional leaders, etc. to share opinions and explore multiple perspectives in how higher education contributes to various socioeconomic domains, with a special focus on the following areas and topics:
- The role of higher education in building human capital to foster economic growth;
- How higher education institutions contribute to the production of knowledge;
- The role of academia in building sustainable communities and states;
- How universities shape individual learning paths and life courses;
- How universities contribute to equity, diversity and inclusion;
- Higher education and globalization: international mobility, partnerships and cooperation.
We also welcome submissions on other topics closely connected to the Conference theme.
Simon Marginson
Professor of Higher Education, University of Oxford
Mitchell Stevens
Associate Professor of Education and Sociology, Stanford University
Laura Perna
Executive Director, Penn AHEAD
Rong Wang
Director of China Institute for Education Finance Research (CIEFR), Peking University
John Meyer
Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, Stanford University