The Center will cosponsor, with Nagoya University in Japan, a conference on “The Past and Future of Asian Universities,” on December 16–17, 2002, at Nagoya University. This working conference will discuss papers concerning 12 Asian countries. The papers will later be published in book form. Part of the conference will include an open forum on Asian higher education sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The conference is funded by the Toyota Foundation and the Japanese Ministry of Education. It is coordinated by Philip G. Altbach and Toru Umakoshi.

The Center welcomes new and returning staff members. Hong Zhu joins the doctoral program in higher education and the Center from Peking University in China, where she obtained a master’s degree in higher education and was assistant to the executive vice president. Robin Helms is working on an MBA and a doctorate in higher education and will be assistant editor of International Higher Education. Alma Maldonado-Maldonado will continue with her work on the Center’s private higher education initiative as she pursues her dissertation research on Latin American higher education research. Roberta Bassett continues as managing editor of the Review of Higher Education. Francesca Purcell and Jef Davis will be assisting with Center projects. Alexei Kuraev will be working on the internationalization of higher education in Russia.

The Center’s cooperative initiative on private higher education with the State University of New York at Albany continues. We are currently working on a major bibliography on private higher education and will develop a website on the topic. This work and other Center activity are being supported by the Ford Foundation.
Center director Philip G. Altbach recently participated in the China-Foreign University Presidents Conference in Beijing, where he gave a talk on future directions for Asian higher education. He will be speakng at a conference on globalization and Catholic higher education in December 2002. The conference is cosponsored by the Vatican and the International Federation of Catholic Universities.