Anywhere you look in the world today there are asymmetries in the education that people have and the education that people need. Even in the United States, with one of the most sophisticated systems of higher education the world has ever seen, we do not produce enough postsecondary graduates to meet the needs of our economy.

as we explore and expand our range of global opportunities, as new technologies enable us to be more connected, we must be that much more connected to our local communities. In our engagement with the local, we set the foundation to move forward with our work of advancing the betterment of humankind.

As a result, they’re racing to offer personalized filters that show us the Internet that they think we want to see. These filters, in effect, control and limit the information that reaches our screens.

the engineers who write the new gatekeeping code have enormous power to determine what we know about the world. But unlike the best of the old gatekeepers, they don’t see themselves as keepers of the public trust. There is no algorithmic equivalent to journalistic ethics.

We citizens need to uphold our end, too — developing the “filter literacy” needed to use these tools well and demanding content that broadens our horizons even when it’s uncomfortable.

I have been frustrated by the dramatic increase in specialization that has taken hold across so many disciplines. Since I first started in academe more and more journals have sprouted which seem to say more and more about less and less, each with their own attendant group of acolytes.

The training of teachers is key, said Margaret Gayle, co-designer of the program and director of the American Association for Gifted Children at Duke. The program was designed to give teachers new skills tailored for advanced students. "They challenge students more; they do more with problem-based learning," she said. "They get a lot of higher-level instructional strategies, they know better how to motivate kids."