A conference whose time has come

Higher education affects every aspect of our lives – from the economy and the environment, to culture and communications. While the media play a critical role in shaping public understanding of this institution, little discussion has taken place about how that influence is manifested – or about how, in turn, higher education uses the media to mould how the public perceives it.

The Worldviews Conference on Media Coverage of Higher Education in the 21st Century on June 2011 in Toronto, Canada, not only examined these issues, but explored the importance of doing so.

The 2011 inaugural conference looked at a range of important issues, including:

  • How media coverage of higher education has changed over the past two decades and where it is headed
  • The impact of social media and how it is changing what is covered and how higher education is understood
  • The role the media play in influencing public policy debates on public education
  • How higher education engages with the media to inform public opinion
  • The different realities of the developing and developed worlds

These issues were examined in a format designed to maximize participation and discussion that featured:

  • Café discussions and salons, interviews with leading thinkers, readings and workshops, in addition to keynote addresses and panel debates
  • The opportunity for audience members to become speakers and debaters
  • Open programming reserved for sessions to respond to specific ideas that emerge from the conference itself

2011 Conference Themes

Worldviews: Media Coverage of Higher Education in the 21st Century was organized around five broad themes, each with a range of topics to be discussed and debated:

Media depictions of higher education

  • Current media portrayals of higher education and possibilities for the future
  • Creating dialogue and understanding between journalists and academia
  • Understanding the media world and its impact on higher education coverage
  • The globalization of higher education coverage: impact and trends
  • Muted voices in higher education coverage
  • “Hollywood goes to college”: Images of higher education in film and television

Wagging the dog: The media as the driver of higher education policy

  • Responsibilities of media and higher education in creating an informed public policy debate
  • Do rankings in the media drive higher education priorities? Are they helping or hurting higher education?
  • The competition among international and national rankings: Which methodology is best?
  • Public opinion surveys, public perceptions of higher education, and the media: Who is shaping whom?

Seizing the initiative: the role of higher education in shaping media and public perceptions

  • Do public and media relations take up a disproportionate amount of attention and resources in the modern university and college? Or should even greater efforts be devoted to these activities?
  • Reaching out to community and minority group media
  • Science journalism: The battle between the uncertainty of science and the certainty of “news”
  • Current, emerging and future media models for media coverage of research
  • The research “arms war” and the battle for researchers
  • Flashpoints in media coverage of research

The dawning of a new age? New media technology and new types of publications

  • The impact and implications of social media for higher education
  • New innovations in social media for colleges and universities and their communities
  • Higher education’s contribution to new media and citizen journalism

Cross-dressing media and academy

  • When the media and academia take on roles in each other’s worlds, does it lead to better understandings, or do they essentially remain two solitudes?
  • Practitioners v. Academics: What’s really valued in the academy?
  • Embedded journalists – the student media

Conference Organizers

The organizers of Worldviews: Media Coverage of Higher Education in the 21st Century are University World News, Inside Higher Ed, OCUFA/Academic Matters and OISE/University of Toronto.

University World News is an international newspaper and website on higher education issues produced by a network of education journalists in every region of the globe.

Inside Higher Ed is an independent website with news, ideas, career advice and thousands of job listings in higher education – with readers at every kind of college and university, all over the world.

The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) represents 16,000 university faculty and academic librarians in Ontario universities. Academic Matters, published by OCUFA, is a journal and website exploring Canadian and global higher education concerns from a diversity of perspectives.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto is an international leader in the research, teaching and study of issues that matter in education. As Canada’s largest faculty of education, the Institute operates a broad range of innovative academic programs and research initiatives.