There is a crisis in higher education and we see that crisis as an opportunity for change.

We created The University of Venus because we are passionate about education and we want change: change for students, for faculty and teachers and for staff and administration. Around the world, many recent PhDs encounter a market flooded with overqualified applicants and junior faculty lines that are disappearing. Often, the focus at universities is on rankings and revenue. The debates over students define them as customers or clients rather than partners or learners. Tuition prices in the US continue to skyrocket, even as students face the worst economic situation in decades. The very definition of education is at question.

However, we believe that a crisis point is an opportunity for change and new ideas and we are that change and we have those new ideas.

The University of Venus is the place for exchanging ideas and brainstorming solutions to the problems we see in our lives as faculty, staff, students and administrators. We believe that the present and future of higher education is global. We are the first generation to rely on friends and colleagues around the globe, and we are using those connections to forge ahead with creative solutions. These global social networks enable us to entertain multiple perspectives, think outside the box, and create radical global solutions.

The University of Venus is the place where people share cutting-edge perspectives, raise questions that are not being raised and draw attention to issues that are being ignored. We are solution-oriented and plan to use this blog as a place to share ideas and best practices for the work we do in higher education and the lives we lead as GenX women. The University of Venus is a global space for building community, empowering people to share their voices and inspiring them to make change happen, both locally and globally.

Join with us in creating solutions. Add your voice to the conversation by letting us know what you think.

Do our views resonate with your experiences or are we way off base? What is it like where you teach, work, study? What do you want us to write about at The University of Venus? Or better yet, if you are interested in writing a guest post or being interviewed for the blog, let us know!

For more on an American perspective on the crisis in higher education see the daily pages of Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Bill Readings’s University in Ruins, The Edu-Factory Collective’s work, and the work of Richard Vedder. (note- the writings run the gamut from far left to far right)

Mary Churchill and Meg Palladino

The University of Venus