Table of Contents

INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

NUMBER 40, SUMMER 2005

International Higher Education Clearinghouse: A CIHE Initiative

In February, the Center for International Higher Education announced an initiative, made possible with a grant from the Ford Foundation. This project will involve the task of compiling resources and research related to a range of issues in international higher education.

The International Higher Education Clearinghouse will be developed in conjunction with several other organizations. The American Council of Education, the Association of International Educators: NAFSA, and the Institute for International Education will be the CIHE's primary partners. Other organizations that have expressed interest in supporting this new project include: The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the Council of Graduate Schools, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, AMIDEAST, and LASPAU: Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas. The Center hopes to involve additional international organizations with compatible objectives and activities.

The principal activity of the Clearinghouse will be to create a website that will provide researchers and practitioners with the perfect starting point for searching available resources-web-based "one-stop shopping." The website will be a source of bibliographies, a venue for links to websites throughout the world, and a means to identify the location of databases with relevant data.

The project will track efforts underway by associating organizations to ensure greater awareness of current activities, avoid duplication of efforts, and improve the dissemination of new data.

The research component of the project will collect, evaluate, support, and encourage research on a variety of topics-particularly policy issues and worldwide trends in international education; the mobility of students, professors, and curricula; the growing participation of the private sector in higher education; the inclusion of higher education in the General Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS); and accreditation and quality assessment. The project will also collect and disseminate information on research methodologies, researchers (by field of interest), and available bibliographies. In addition, the project intends to provide professionals and graduate students with information about career opportunities in international education.

The director of the Clearinghouse is Liz Reisberg, a research associate at the CIHE. Ms. Reisberg has extensive experience in international education as a researcher and practitioner. She has worked primarily in the area of international admissions and researched a number of issues related to the mobility of students pursuing academic and professional degrees outside their home country. For more information about this project, contact Ms. Reisberg at: reisberg@bc.edu.

News of the Center

In collaboration with the Center for University Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (CESU) and the Center for Higher Education at the University of Arizona, the CIHE cosponsored a seminar on the theme of "academic capitalism and globalization" in Mexico City on April 21 and 22. Philip Altbach spoke, as did CESU director Axel Didriksson and University of Arizona professors Gary Rhoades and Alma Maldonado. Dr. Maldonado is a former CIHE staff member. This seminar represented part of a continuing link with CESU.

The Fulbright-sponsored New Century Scholars program will begin in summer 2005. The thirty scholars, soon to be selected by the Fulbright Program, will come together for a conference at Boston College in late September. Collaborative research work will begin following that meeting. CIHE director Philip Altbach is the distinguished scholar leader of the New Century Scholars higher education initiative.

The Center's "Flagship University and Development" project on research universities in developing and middle-income countries starts with a conference at Boston College in late June. Researchers from China, India, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil will participate in this project. A book concentrating on the challenges facing research universities will result from this collaborative research project. The effort is codirected by Philip Altbach and Dr. Jorge Balan of the Ford Foundation.

A major new CIHE initiative has just begun: the International Higher Education Clearinghouse (IHEC), directed by Liz Reisberg. In collaboration with the American Council on Education, NAFSA, and the Institute of International Education, the Clearinghouse will collect and disseminate information concerning a range of key themes in international higher education.

The Corruption Monitor project, coordinated by Natia Janashia, has recently been posted on the CIHE website. We plan to update it continually so that readers can keep abreast of developments in this area.

Prof. Adnan El-Amine from the Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon was a senior Fulbright scholar at the CIHE during the spring semester, with a focus on issues relating to accreditation and evaluation. Several CIHE staff members are graduating this semester. Roberta M. Bassett, a CIHE graduate assistant, has completed her doctoral dissertation on GATS and the U.S. policy community. Robin M. Helms, currently on the Institute of International Education staff in Washington, DC, has completed her dissertation on foreign-language faculty at American universities. CIHE graduate assistant Laura Rumbley is currently in Spain collecting data for her dissertation on the internationalization of Spanish higher education.

Work is being completed on a two-volume International Handbook on Higher Education, coedited by James J.F. Forest and Philip G. Altbach. This reference book will be published by Springer in 2006. Dr. Forest, an alumnus of CIHE, is currently on the faculty of the United States Military Academy. Philip G. Altbach and Daniel C. Levy of SUNY-Albany are compiling an edited book on private higher education that will feature some of the best articles published in International Higher Education in recent years. American Higher Education in the 21st Century: Social, Political, and Economic Trends, edited by Philip G. Altbach, Robert O. Berdahl, and Patricia J. Gumport, has been published a revised and updated 2nd edition by the Johns Hopkins University Press. This book is now the most widely used text in the field of higher education in the United States. The cost of the paperback edition is $28. It is available from the publisher at 2712 N. Charles St., Baltimore MD 21218, USA (contact: www.press.jhu.edu).

The Center has teamed up with SensePublishers in the Netherlands to publish all of the CIHE books. Our traditional practice of publishing our own editions for free distribution in developing countries will continue, and SensePublishers will publish all of the CIHE books in commercial paperback editions. In addition, this book series, Global Perspectives on Higher Education, will publish other volumes concerning international higher education issues.