“I think researchers are really struggling to survive in a world where resources are really scarce and innovation is not always the highest priority,” says Francine Berman, a computer scientist and vice president for research at upstate New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Speaking as part of Miller-McCune.com’s series of interviews on the challenges facing research universities, she explained that the innovation enterprise requires complex scaffolding, access to a pool of adequately paid graduate students, up-to-date equipment and money for things like travel to professional ... Read More

Robert M. Berdahl is an American historian, author and university administrator. He was chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1997 to 2004, and president of the Association of American Universities from May 2000 until May of this year. Q: Are universities in crisis today? How big a crisis are we in now? Is it mostly cyclical, or is it structural? What lasting impact is it likely to have and does it alter in any significant way, the model that then-Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development Vannevar Bush envisioned in his seminal 1945 paper, "Science, ... Read More

The same week that President Obama called for the United States to regain its lead as the world's best-educated nation, the University of California system turned away 30,000 students. This was roughly two years ago, but since then the fiscal picture has only darkened — for the federal government as well on the state level. The Golden State labors under a particularly gargantuan deficit — and the regents of the University of California responded by raising tuition a second time this year — but its predicament is emblematic of a central challenge for higher education across the United ... Read More