This day long conference is based on a major study of higher education expansion and quality in the world's four largest developing economies-Brazil, Russia, India, and China-known as the BRIC countries. These four economies are already important players globally, but by mid-century, they are likely to be economic powerhouses. Whether they reach that level of development will depend partly on how successfully they create quality higher education that puts their labor forces at the cutting edge of the information society. It is difficult to imagine large economies reaching advanced stages of development in the 21st century without high levels of innovative, well-trained, socially oriented professionals.

The study places particular emphasis on how the BRICs are expanding engineering higher education and the quality and equity of that expansion. Evaluating the potential success of the BRIC countries in developing highly skilled professionals is not the only reason to study their higher education systems. We want to learn how these governments go about organizing higher education because this can tell us a lot about their implicit economic, social, and political goals, and their capacity to reach them. Although the BRICs are acutely aware of their new role in the global economy, their governments must negotiate complex political demands at home, including ensuring domestic economic growth, social mobility, and political participation. Because more and better higher education is positively associated with all these elements, BRIC governments' focus on their university systems has become an important part of their domestic economic and social policy.

The conference involves all the authors of the study from China, India, Russia, and the United States, as well as expert discussants from Brazil and the United States. The various panels of the day-long discussion will focus on various aspects of change in the higher education systems in the BRICs.

TRIUMPH OF THE BRICS?

Higher Education Expansion in the Global Economy

Bechtel Conference Center--FSI

April 28, 2012

Co-Sponsored by

Freeman Spogli Institute, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Post-Secondary Education, Stanford School of Education Lemann Center for Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Brazil, Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford, State Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, China Institute for Educational Finance Research at Peking University, and National University of Educational Policy and Administration, Delhi

8:00 am Bagels and coffee

8:30 am Welcome

8:45 am Introduction to the Study
Presenter: Martin Carnoy, School of Education, Stanford
Discussants: Francisco Ramirez, School of Education, Stanford Gustavo Fischman*, Arizona State University

9:30 am Panel I: The Expansion of and Payoffs to Higher Education in the BRICs
Presenters: Isak Froumin and Maria Dobryakova, State Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow
Prashant Loyalka, China Institute for Educational Finance Research, Peking University  Discussants: Eric Bettinger, School of Education, Stanford Rafiq Dossani, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford

10:45 am Coffee Break

11:00 am Panel II: Financing of Higher Education in the BRICs
Presenters: Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, National University of Educational Planning Administration (NUEPA)
Wang Rong, China Institute for Educational Finance Research, Peking University
Discussants: Nick Hope, Stanford Center for International Development
Robert Verhine*, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

12:15 pm Lunch Break

1:00 pm: Panel III: Institutional Change In BRIC Universities
Presenters: Rafiq Dossani, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford
Katherine Kuhns, School of Education, Stanford
Discussants: Simon Schwartzman*, Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade, Rio de Janeiro
Wang Rong, China Institute for Educational Finance Research, Peking University

2:15 pm Panel IV: How Does the Quality of Engineering Education Compare?
Presenters: Prashant Loyalka, CIEFR, Peking University
Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, NUEPA, Delhi
Discussants: Sheri Sheppard, School of Engineering, Stanford
Anthony Antonio, School of Education, Stanford

3:30 pm Coffee break

3:45: pm Panel V: Implications for the Future
Presenters:  Martin Carnoy, School of Education, Stanford
Isak Froumin, Higher School of Economics, Moscow
Discussant: Philip Altbach*, Center for International Higher Education, Boston College

5:00 pm Closing Remarks

*Will give their remarks via Webinar connection

Seminar Synopsis:

The memory euphoria of the past half-century has, if anything, raised awareness of the constructed or invented nature of national memories and their complexity. Because the articulation between the normative rules of public memory and the at times politically incorrect claim to a right to private memory is representational and discursive, cultural artefacts, such as literary texts, films, photographs, videos or monuments have seismically materialized as go-betweens in the memory wars. The memories of empire in the Portuguese cultural tissue have been over the past 40 years after independence of the former colonies contentious sites, where a certain colonial melancholia clashes with a critical nostalgia that has been growing particularly amongst a generation of artists born after decolonization. Colonial melancholia is not simply a result of recent traumatic events, but spreads over two centuries in a pathological inheritance filled with resentment, humiliation, violence, denial, myth and mystification. This melancholic vision of the past has been mediated and disseminated by several media from texts to monuments, photos and films, which have either become accomplices in this regime of power, or have sought to subvert it and have finally created spaces of ambivalence and hybridity. A notorious example of the mediation of the colonial regime was of course photography.  Visibility was pivotal to the image world of the imperial regime, that not only needed to dominate the reality portrayed in the new medium, but which also made use of it for the sake of its own assertive self-representation. The talk inquires into this regime of visibility and seeks by means of a practice of interference to unravel the colonial discourse that used the perceived essentializing of reality supported by visual ‘objectivity’ to create a structure of feeling based on melancholy and nostalgia that would become the dominant  memory of empire in Portuguese culture.  Arguably, in this practice of interference resonates a practice of cultural literacy that allows for the reinterpretation and re-contextualization not only of what the images showed, but  what they meant. Then again, it is precisely a regained cultural literacy in the reading of the visual that lies at the root of the project of critical visual nostalgia enacted by contemporary video artists in the fragmented deconstruction of the imaginary wholeness of nostalgic thinking embedded in home movies.

Ever since December 1999, when Greece lifted its longstanding veto and Turkey became an EU candidate state, Greece and Turkey have attempted to overcome animosity and mistrust and resolve their perennial disputes. I argue that despite significant improvements at the level of economic, energy cooperation and minority rights, no breakthrough has been achieved on high-politics issues. The intractable Cyprus question has remained the biggest burden to any reconciliation attempt. Positive spillover of functional cooperation cannot by itself overcome the legacy of decades of acrimonious relations and accumulated disputes. Greece’s mounting economic and social crisis and Turkey’s new foreign policy activism can pose additional obstacles to the resolution of longstanding disputes, absent determined leadership on both sides. Only strong, visionary leadership on both sides can help overcome the pending stalemate.

Ioannis Grigoriadis is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He received his M.A. in International Affairs from the School of International & Public Affairs at Columbia University, and his Ph.D. in Politics from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London. He specializes in European, Middle Eastern and comparative politics with a particular focus on energy politics, nationalism, and democratization. Among his publications are “Redefining the Nation: The Shifting Boundaries of the ‘Other’ in Greece and Turkey” (in Middle Eastern Studies, 2011), “Europe and the Impasse of Centre-Left Politics in Turkey: Lessons from the Greek Experience” ( in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2010), Trials of Europeanization: Turkish Political Culture and the European Union (2009), “Friends No More?: The Rise of Anti-American Nationalism in Turkey” (in Middle East Journal, 2010),  “Islam and Democratization in Turkey: Secularism and Trust in a Divided Society” (in Democratization, 2009), and “On the Europeanization of Minority Rights Protection: Comparing the Cases of Greece and Turkey” (in Mediterranean Politics, 2008)

Part of the 2011-12 lecture series on Greece and Turkey, sponsored by The Mediterranean Studies Forum and the Europe Center

About the topic: This talk will provide a current affairs assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. It will present the trajectory of the counterinsurgency campaign highlighting the security and governance challenges--including the building up of the Afghan National Security Forces, the economic sustainability of the state and private sector, as well as issues pertaining to minority and women's rights. The talk will also offer a range of likely endgames in light of the 2014 withdrawal.

About the Speaker: Fotini Christia joined the MIT faculty in the fall of 2008. She received her PhD in Public Policy at Harvard University, and has been a recipient of research fellowships from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs among others. Her research interests deal with issues of ethnicity, conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world. Fotini has written opinion pieces on her experiences from Afghanistan, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza and Uzbekistan for Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. She graduated magna cum laude with a joint BA in Economics-Operations Research from Columbia College and a Masters in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.