Overview

The MacArthur Foundation provides support for efforts to strengthen higher education in Russia and Nigeria, two of the Foundation’s focus countries. The Foundation believes that strong universities and intellectual freedom are indispensable preconditions for healthy democratic societies.

In 2009, the grant budget for this program area is $6.5 million for Russian universities and scholarly infrastructure and $6 million for Nigerian universities.

What MacArthur Funds

Nigerian Universities

A goal of the MacArthur Foundation in Nigeria is to help improve the country's higher education system. MacArthur currently works with four of Nigeria's leading universities — the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, Bayero University, and the University of Port Harcourt — in an effort to strengthen them and bolster reforms that they have initiated. MacArthur's efforts on behalf of universities in Nigeria are carried out in conjunction with the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, which includes the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford, Kresge, Hewlett, Mellon, Rockefeller, and MacArthur foundations. The initiative supports efforts by leading African institutions to expand and improve higher education, such as the creation of a consortium of sub-Saharan universities for the purchase of greater satellite bandwidth and Internet capacity at lower rates.

Russian Universities and Scholarly Infrastructure

The Foundation is committed to sustaining and advancing new generations of scholars and researchers whose efforts will contribute to resolving the social, environmental, economic, human rights, and security problems facing Russia.

Through grants to universities and to helping build other scholarly capacity, the Foundation supports:

• Centers of excellence in the sciences and social sciences at state universities;
• Independent graduate schools in the social sciences and other institutions of higher education;
• Independent public policy institutes; and
• Journals and networking.

Through the Program on Basic Research and Higher Education in Russia, the Foundation supports 20 research and education centers in the natural and physical sciences at state universities in Russia, with a particular emphasis on universities outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. Through a complementary program, the Centers for Advanced Study and Education, MacArthur supports nine additional centers of excellence in the social sciences and humanities at regional Russian state universities. MacArthur funds three model non-state institutions of higher education that are emerging as centers of world-quality research and graduate training in the social sciences: the European University at St. Petersburg, the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, and the Moscow-based New Economic School.

In addition, the Foundation supports a complementary set of research and educational institutions and activities in Russia, including independent public policy institutes, scholarly journals, and academic networks. MacArthur also provides grants to independent public policy institutes, academic journals and networking programs.

Updated January 2009