GTFS: Global Trends and Future Scenarios Index

Research Universities and the Future of America

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Excerpt

The crucial importance of the research university as a key asset in achieving economic prosperity and security is widely understood, as evidenced by the efforts that nations around the globe are making to create and sustain institutions of world-class quality. Yet, while America’s research universities remain the strongest in the world, they are threatened by many forces: national and state economic challenges, the emergence of global competitors, changing student demographics, and rapidly evolving technologies. And even as other countries have emulated the United States in building research universities to drive economic growth, America’s commitment to sustaining the research partnership that built a great industrial nation seems to have waned.