Convocado por el Social Science Research Council de los Estados Unidos se acaba de constituir un Grupo de Trabajo que, durante los próximos meses, buscará formular una agenda de investigación sobre el estado actual y el futuro de las universidades públicas de investigación en el mundo.
El Grupo de Trabajo, cuyos miembros se señalan más abajo, se reunió por primera vez los días 8 y 9 de agosto en Nueva York.

Marco de referencia
While trends toward the privatization and commercialization of higher education and research are already the subject of much ideological debate, more concentrated attention is needed to advance this topic as an object of theoretical and empirical social science analysis. There is certainly evidence to suggest a transformation of public research universities is underway. At the same time, however, we lack adequate frameworks to measure and analyze changes with much precision and in a manner that explains why, how, and to what end this transformation is unfolding. Systematic comparison—across both time and space—is important but difficult. Currently, most of what we have are cursory insights into the macro-level drivers of this global transformation and some general notions about how it is playing out in micro-level processes of institutional change. We know little about the meso-level implications of these changes for national and international development.
With funding from the Ford Foundation, this Social Science Research Council (SSRC) project is aimed squarely at advancing novel research approaches related to understanding the un-making and re-molding of public research universities. We seek also to build bridges between the work of specialists on higher education and a broader range of social scientists with related interests. As a start to this, we will convene two Working Group meetings. The first will be somewhat smaller, including about a dozen people. The second will be slightly larger, bringing together some 25 influential social science scholars and public leaders from different disciplines, institutions, and countries. Although the issues are potentially and realistically many, this project will focus especially on changes in the finance and governance of public research universities as well as the competition from private institutions and investments.
Working Group Members
Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council
Diana Rhoten, Program Director, Social Science Research Council
Jorge Balán, Director, Program on Higher Education, Ford Foundation.
José Joaquín Brunner, Director of the Education Program at Fundación Chile, Academic Director of the School of Government at Adolfo Ibanez University
Kai-ming Cheng, Professor and Chair of Education, University of Hong Kong.
Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics, Cornell University.
Jürgen Enders, Professor & Director, Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, University of Twente.
Gustavo Fischman, Assistant Professor of Education, Arizona State University.
Johan Heilbron, Research Fellow, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Christopher Hood, Program Direction, Center for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, and the Professor of Government, University of Oxford.
Sarah E. Igo, Assistant Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania.
Simon Marginson, Professor of Education, Monash University.
Christine Musselin, Lecturer, Institut d‚Etudes Politiques de Paris and Research Fellow, Le Centre de Sociologie des Organisations.
Richard R. Nelson, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Business and Law, Columbia University.
Imanol Ordorika, Professor of Social Sciences and Education, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Akilagpa Sawyerr, Secretary-General, Association of African Universities.
Voldemar Tomusk, Deputy Director of the International Higher Education Support Program, Open Society Institute-Budapest, Hungary.
Jennifer Washburn, Fellow, New America Foundation.