Michigan State University is pleased to announce the inauguration of our new Center for Higher and Adult Education. We are indebted to Dr. Bruce Erickson and the Dr. Mildred B. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education Endowment for providing us with start-up funds for this endeavor.  The Center will focus on the new realities of higher education in the 21^st century, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Higher education institutions and systems everywhere face more complex environments than ever before. In virtually every country, the challenges facing higher and adult education are daunting: how to support a mass higher education system without making it so expensive that it excludes many students from attending; how to incorporate complex technology into instruction; how to expose students to an ever-more global world; and – in some parts of the world – how to decentralize national or Ministry-based systems in order to promote institutional autonomy and flexibility. However, Higher and Adult Education graduate programs traditionally have not linked the research of their faculties to the policy concerns of the day.  Our goal is to close this substantial gap between research and practice by uniting the research and service of faculty members with the preparation of graduate students under the broad umbrella of higher and adult education policy. Examples of current Center activities include a Center Fellows Program to host faculty members and policy-makers from abroad and from the U.S., a Center Intern Program to aid in preparing graduates who will be able to enter the field with hands-on experience in international and domestic higher education policy, and several faculty projects focused on international comparative research in higher education.  Contact Professor Jim Fairweather (fairwea4@msu.edu) for further details or visit the Center’s web-site http://ed-web3.educ.msu.edu/halecenter.