Skip to main content
Photo Credit: The Economic Club of Washington, D.C./Joshua Roberts

Ruth Simmons

President, Brown University | April 02, 2008
Simmons decried the decline of governmental support for higher education.

Simmons discussed the impact a degrading relationship between government and higher education was having on the quality of education in the United States. She said, “The degree to which U.S. higher education has fueled upward social mobility and economic growth in the United States is a result really of a sustained period of positive coordination between these two sectors. But this is from all appearances under stress today, bringing with it the specter of the diminishing preeminence of U.S. higher education, just as major improvements and paradigm shifts in our once lagging higher education markets elsewhere in the world point to an increasing advantage for those competing economies.”

To view additional highlights and excerpts from the event, please click here.