OSUN | Open Society University Network

Bard College

• 6,500 students are enrolled in Bard’s undergraduate, graduate, early college, prison, and micro-college programs and Bard’s international affiliates.
• Bard emphasizes academic rigor, critical thinking, open intellectual inquiry, the arts, and civic engagement.
• In addition to its core undergraduate program in liberal arts and sciences, Bard offers advanced degrees which are particularly distinguished in the fine arts, curatorial studies, decorative arts, and music, bringing together students with the world’s leading academics and practitioners.
• The faculty are distinguished scholars and leading practitioners in their fields and include 11 MacArthur Fellows. Four recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature have taught at Bard.

• Early colleges at eight public schools in six cities, which offer underserved high-school students a rigorous, two-year, tuition-free college course of study, taught by university-level faculty, that can lead to an associate’s degree. Although half of these students are first-generation college goers, 79% of Bard early college graduates have gone on to complete their bachelor’s degree, a significantly higher percentage than the 59% national rate.
• The Bard Prison Initiative, which provides a liberal arts education to more than 300 incarcerated people each year leading to associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. Students released from prison have extraordinarily low recidivism rates: 2.5% for those who have completed degrees and 4% for students who have taken even one class, as compared to national rates of 40% to 50%.
• Bard’s microcolleges, which offer free credit-bearing college courses leading to an associate’s degree for underserved adults through libraries and community centers.

• Conferring dual B.A. degrees in liberal arts and sciences at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University (Russia), American University of Central Asia (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan), Al-Quds University (East Jerusalem), and Bard College Berlin.
• Close, long-term partnerships with institutions in Bard’s international network, including civic engagement initiatives and network courses that virtually link students and faculty across multiple campuses simultaneously on themes such as global citizenship, migration, and freedom of expression.
• Awarding Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degrees at the American University of Central Asia and Al-Quds University to extend the benefits of student-centered learning. The nearly 500 Al-Quds MAT graduates teach more than 105,000 students in 120 Palestinian schools on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Many have become school principals; some contributed substantially to secondary school reforms implemented by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

• Bard’s Trustee Leader Scholar program, which supports civic engagement projects designed and led by students. Roughly two-thirds of current Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) projects have run for five years or more, and one-third for 10 years or longer. Several of Bard’s most successful institutional initiatives, such as the Bard Prison Initiative, Bard’s Early College in New Orleans, and Brothers at Bard, which empowers male collegians of color, began as TLS projects and then were adopted and elevated by the institution.
• Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences courses, which merge theory and practice, allowing students to work within multiple geographies, organizations, and programs in local communities to contextualize their studies and bridge theoretical rigor with experiential action.
• Bard’s award-winning Election@Bard program, which supports student voting and engagement in politics.
• Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement, which helps coordinate Bard’s local, national, and global initiatives to realize its commitment to engaged citizenship, human rights, diversity and inclusion, sustainability, and access to education.

• All Bard undergraduates must complete coursework in the fine and performing arts, and the college has established unique programs integrating the arts in academics, international initiatives, and communities.
• The Fisher Center at Bard College, which opened in 2003, brings together students and professionals across disciplines to develop, produce, and present context-rich performing arts programs. Influential opera, dance, and theater productions created at Bard’s Fisher Center have been performed worldwide. Similar cross-curricular and multidisciplinary arts programs have been created at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies and Bard Graduate Center.

Central European University

• Chartered by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, and recognized in Austria as a private higher education institution.
• 15 academic departments, a doctoral school, and 20 research centers offering English-language Master’s and PhD programs in the social sciences, humanities, law, management, and public policy.
• Ranked among the top 100 universities in the world for social sciences and humanities, and one of the largest recipients of European Union competitive research grants in these fields.
• 1,300 students from more than 100 countries and faculty from over 50 countries. Hungarian nationals constitute the largest share of CEU students, at 15% of the student body.
• Network of 16,795 alumni in 147 countries, which includes current parliamentarians, policymakers, ambassadors, economists, business leaders, academics, and human rights activists.
• A global symbol in the fight for academic freedom. The CEU was declared illegal by the Hungarian government in 2017 and became the first university within the European Union to be stripped of its autonomy and academic freedom, and forced out of an EU member state. It has since relocated to Austria, at the invitation of the Viennese authorities.

• 82% of CEU students in the 2017-2018 academic year receiving significant financial aid.
• The creation of preparatory courses and scholarships for Roma master’s students, doctoral fellowships, and Romani Studies program at CEU, which have contributed to the education of a critical mass of Roma intelligentsia and leadership in Europe.
• The establishment of a curriculum development database with over 1,000 cases and conducted curriculum development training for a faculty of over 200 universities in Central and Eastern Europe, Central and South East Asia, and the Middle East.
• Outreach efforts in Myanmar, which have included advance planning for university autonomy and quality assurance, the modernization of curriculums for social sciences and humanities, and the promotion of critical thinking in teaching and research.
• The platform development of CEU’s Global Teaching Fellows, who have taught courses and introduced new pedagogic approaches at universities with a deficit in advanced teaching capacity in the Balkans, Bangladesh, Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Palestinian territories, and Russia.