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These intriguing initiatives, which are bound to proliferate, create opportunities but also pose challenges. While traditional colleges and universities will continue to face major financial pressures, the global market for higher education will grow considerably. Increased cooperation among existing institutions is essential for their survival, as new players internationally become competitors. Shortsighted immigration policies that do not permit foreign students who study in this country to remain here after they complete their education will reinforce this tendency. Young people turned away from our colleges and universities will return to their own countries to conduct research and develop their own educational institutions. This is, of course, in many ways a beneficial development, since the spread of education to foreign countries contributes to the economic success that reduces poverty and promotes social justice, which in turn increases social stability. But as foreign institutions of higher learning improve, they will also become competitors that create both new challenges and new opportunities for cooperation.

Educational partnerships need not be limited to other colleges and universities but can extend to nonprofits like museums, symphonies, dance troupes, think tanks and policy institutes. Since many of these organizations face the same challenges as colleges and universities, collaboration would be mutually beneficial. Cooperative programs would also provide opportunities for students to get real-world experience that will be invaluable after they graduate. A relationship between a college and a museum, for example, would provide new teaching and research opportunities for students and faculty and would benefit the museum by providing scholars and student interns who could help with programming and operations. Such collaborations can be facilitated by initiatives colleges and universities take to break down the walls between the academic and the nonacademic worlds and bridge the gulf. At Columbia, for example, we have recently opened the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (www.ircpl.org). The emphasis on public life lies at the heart of the Institute’s mission. During the first two years of operation, we cosponsored programs with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Guggenheim Museum, the Institute of Turkish Studies and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (Delhi), and offered support to universities and scholars from Turkey, Indonesia, India, Israel, France, Germany, Senegal and Palestine, among others. One of the primary goals of the Institute is to create the opportunity for academics and nonacademics—writers, artists, journalists, business-people and government officials—to come together to discuss issues of common concern and interest. We launched the Institute with a program on the cultural, social, political, economic and religious implications of the new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum. Thomas Krens, then the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, presented the details of the project for the first time in public. In coming years, we plan to form relationships with other cultural institutions throughout the world and sponsor joint programs using teleconferencing. As part of our outreach plan, we are developing an integrated media platform that already includes podcasts (downloadable through iTunes) as well as webcasts of Institute events and soon will be extended to include radio and television programs. I will return to this initiative in the next chapter. By creating a variety of connections between the university and the wider world, we hope to broaden the horizons of faculty and students and to educate professionals working in many areas, while at the same time informing the general public.

Finally, and most controversially, colleges and universities must establish partnerships with for-profit businesses and corporations. Let’s make no mistake: