C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, gave a very well-received keynote address on the impact of globalization on the nation's colleges and universities.

The following are excerpts from C. Fred Bergsten’s keynote address. Bergsten is director of the Institute for International Economics. Click here for the full text of Bergsten's speech.

“…Globalization is central to the theme of your whole meeting—competition, complexity, and change…. It is, in fact, you and your institutions—the institutions of higher learning in the United States—which essentially will make or break the process of globalization for our society and our economy.
     …First, globalization—along with the advances of technology—has been the dominant economic, as well as international, trend of the second half of the 20th century, and probably will be for the 21st century as well. Globalization has added something like $1 trillion per year to the standard of living in the United States.
     …Second, for us as a society to be able to take full advantage of globalization, and to turn it and its twin, technology advance, to our national benefit, requires a quantum leap of further improvement in the education level of the American workforce, the population and society as a whole—and that is where you and your institutions must play an absolutely central and decisive role.
     …Third, if we fail to achieve further substantial upgrading of the educational capacity of the American polity, we risk losing the huge gains from globalization that we’ve already achieved, because of the political backlash against it. Globalization, like any dynamic economic change, generates costs and losers, as well as gains and winners. And in the very narrow battle between them that we now experience in the United States, we could, in fact, lose the entire gain if we do not further equip our people to take advantage of the phenomenon, rather than feel victimized by it, as so many do.
     And that, in a nutshell, is why…the role of American higher education…will be a decisive factor in whether we, as a society, are able to continue improving our standard of living, our wherewithal, our national well-being, for the next half century, or more, to come.
     …We’ve just finished some truly brand new and cutting edge research at my Institute…. Using a variety of methodologies to make sure that we pass all methodological tests, we have concluded that the U.S. economy today is about $1 trillion richer as a result of America’s integration with the world economy over the last half century.… So it may shock you to learn that when we study the impact of globalization on domestic attitudes and politics in this country, we learn that despite these huge net benefits…the public is split pretty much down the middle on attitudes toward globalization.
     …But then we ask, ‘What explains this split and difference in attitudes?’ And that’s where you all come in, in a dramatic way. One, and only one, variable explains the changes, the differences in attitudes in the country toward globalization….education.
     Half the American workforce, or close to it, consist of high school graduates or less. And those workers are terrified of globalization because they feel that they are unable to meet its competitive challenges, unable to take advantage of it. They do feel victimized by it. And therefore, they oppose it. Or at least oppose any further expansion in it.
     By contrast, all of the analyses show that college graduates—even anybody who’s even had a couple of years of college—strongly support globalization because she or he feels he can take advantage of it, and gain from it, over her or his lifetime. And so the crucial variable in taking advantage of globalization— indeed in being able to maintain a domestic political foundation for an open international economic strategy, is education, and particularly higher education.
     Our study showed that for every additional one year in the average education level of the population, support for globalization went up 10 percent. So if you could convert the average worker from being a high school graduate, where she or he is today, even to being a graduate of a community college, but preferably a four-year college like you all have, we would then have a solid majority for globalization that we could build on for the foreseeable future, maintain the huge benefits already achieved, and go on to achieve the further opportunities that are out there.
     …And so, as I say, the bottom line for this group, as you contemplate your own institutional futures, the future of higher education as a group, is to keep in mind that this major new phenomenon, worldwide, decisively important in our own society, must be at the center of your planning. As you think in terms of your own curricula and what to train people in, as you think of attracting additional students to come to college, and make the investment, the globalization phenomenon should be at the very center of your attention and theirs.”

Click here to view the full text of Bergsten’s speech.