Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, November 16, 1998 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

David Bloom

ABSTRACT -- Higher education is vital to economic development, but has received woefully insufficient attention and support during the last few decades.  As countries on all continents have reached a higher stage of development, and as demographic trends have led to increased demand for higher education, many countries are now finding it both necessary and very difficult to improve the quality of their institutions of higher education and to increase access to higher education by a wide range of individuals.  Because higher education can convey substantial public and private benefits, governments, educational institutions, and international donors should take concrete steps to improve and expand higher education in developing countries.  Failure to do so successfully will make it increasingly difficult for such countries to close the gap in development between them and the industrial countries.  

SPEAKER: David Bloom is Deputy Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development and Professor of Population and Health Economics at the Harvard University School of Public Health.  Bloom joined HIID in July 1995 as Executive Director, and became Deputy Director one year later.  From 1987-1996, Bloom was Professor of Economics at Columbia University, where he served as Chairman of the Economics Department from 1990-1993.  He served as Assistant Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University from 1980-1982, Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University from 1982-1985, and Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University from 1985-1987.  Professor Bloom has published over seventy articles and books in the fields of economics and demography.  He has been honored with a number of distinctions, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Galbraith Award for quality teaching in economics.  He was also a Fulbright Scholar in India, and a scholar in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation during the academic year 1989-1990.  Professor Bloom's current research interests include labor economics, health, demography, and the environment.