Stanford professors examine higher education against innovative Bay Area landscape in new book

Stanford professors Dick Scott and Mike Kirst analyzed 45 years of higher education data in the Bay Area. Their findings showed that higher education has fallen behind the needs of an ever-changing region.

The San Francisco Bay Area, notably Silicon Valley, is known for its ingenuity and rapid growth, thanks in part to the global technology companies that reside there. An important industry that Silicon Valley depends on is higher education, but it appears that this relationship is an uneasy one, according to Dick Scott and Mike Kirst, two emeriti Stanford faculty members.  They, together with a team of colleagues associated with the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, have completed a longitudinal study describing developments in this area over the past 45 years (1970 to 2015).

In their new book, Higher Education and Silicon Valley: Connected but Conflicted, they detail the struggles of the Bay Area’s post-secondary educational institutions against the landscape of the region’s thriving and ever-changing economy. The research covers more than 350 postsecondary organizations in the Bay Area, including traditional degree-granting colleges and universities, community colleges and privately run vocational and professional schools.

Stanford News Service spoke to Kirst and Scott about their new book.

Continue reading the Stanford News interview with Professors Kirst and Scott about their new book