Agents and Architects of Democracy: The Struggle for the Future of Higher Education
Explore the history and future of civic agency as an organizing theme for higher education. This webcast program begins with a provocative question:
How can higher education reverse the disturbing trends we see occurring: pressures for higher education to become increasingly a private good with students as customers, institutions as industries, and competitive success measured by how many are refused admission?
An emerging focus on agency—how people develop the skills, confidence, and outlook to become shapers of their lives and communities and agents of change – can help. Civic Agency is visible across the world. It appears in development efforts in Africa; in the writings of development scholars reflecting on World Bank and UNDP experiences; and in pioneering work around the world on public health, resource management, global climate change, and education reform. Higher education has been slow to focus on this issue. Yet promising signs are emerging, particularly in the effort by scholars to define an emergent “civic field,” and the first Institute of Civic Studies this summer at Tufts. Could civic agency become a core focus of higher education in the 21st century?
Webcast Moderator: Harry C. Boyte is founder and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship now at Augsburg College, and a Senior Fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota.
Handouts will include the presenters’ PowerPoint images and other supportive articles for your reference.
Presenters: Barbara G. Burch is the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, at Western Kentucky University where she oversees the general goals and directions for instruction, research, public service, and related support offices.
Edwin Fogelman is professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. In 2000, Fogelman became the chair of the university-wide Task Force on Civic Engagement, which worked for two years to develop comprehensive strategies for renewing the university’s land grant mission and its democracy identity.
Vijayendra Rao is a lead economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He integrates his training in economics with theories and methods from sociology and political science to study the social, cultural, and political context of extreme poverty in developing countries.
Who should attend?
- Those involved in the community engagement strand of higher education
- The engaged teaching/student as collaborator networks
- Those interested in questions of public scholarship -- Imagining America
- Those concerned about the trends toward higher education becoming a private good, not a public good.
