Education sits at the center of economic adjustment, for individuals, firms and whole societies. The center probes the changing politics of human capital formation through two lenses:

a) a focus on lifelong learning as a prominent determinant of labor market functioning and consideration for labor market policy

b) attention to the processes of institutional change in a higher education landscape engulfed in both massification and differentiation

Labor Market Policy and Lifelong Learning

Publications include:
  • Schulze-Cleven, Tobias. 2014. “Labor Market Policy: Toward A ‘Flexicurity’ Model in the US?” In R. Daniel Kelemen, ed. Lessons from Europe? What Americans Can Learn from European Public Policies. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 77-96.
  • Schulze-Cleven, Tobias. 2009. “The Transatlantic Agenda for Labor Market Reform: Increasing Adaptability through Continuing Training.” Essay on the AICGS website, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington, DC.

Higher Education between Massification and Differentiation

Initiatives include:
  • We are also cooperating with Rutgers University’s Ph.D. Program in Higher Education.
  • 2016 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, “Higher Education Disrupted: The Politics and Policies of Transformation” Presentation. SMLR Professor Tobias Schulze-Cleven discussed the politics of higher education’s ongoing transformation and the policy lessons of recent reform attempts during the APSA's annual meeting. Professor Schulze-Cleven put the U.S. debate into the broader context of scholarship on comparative capitalism and welfare states.
Publications include:​
  • Schulze-Cleven, Tobias, Tilman Reitz, Jens Maesse and Johannes Angermuller. 2017. “The New Political Economy of Higher Education: Between Distributional Conflicts and Discursive Stratification.” Higher Education [doi: 10.1007/s10734-017-0114-4]
  • Schulze-Cleven, Tobias and Jennifer R. Olson. 2017. “Worlds of Higher Education Transformed: Toward Varieties of Academic Capitalism.” Higher Education (lead article) [doi: 10.1007/s10734-017-0123-3] 
  • Schulze-Cleven, Tobias, ed. 2017. “Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy: Politics and Policies of Transformation – Introduction.” PS: Political Science and Politics 50(2): 397-431.
  • Schulze-Cleven, Tobias. 2016. “Higher Education Reloaded: Studying the Politics of Institutional Change.” EuropeNow 1(2), December (lead article in special feature on “Transformation of Higher Education and Research in Europe”).