As of noon today, I am “Doctor Jaumont, Ph.D. I defended my dissertation this morning at New York University, and passed.
Six years ago I became a doctoral student at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education in the Ph.D. program in International Education. Today was the last step of a long, but very exciting, process.
My research has focused on the role and influence of private foundations, particularly when high impact philanthropy meets education. At NYU I was fortunate to meet people who were involved with the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa – a consortium of seven of the largest foundations in the country (Ford, Carnegie, MacArthur, Rockefeller, Mellon, Hewlett and Kresge).
The foundations spent $400 million in 10 years trying to develop African higher education and modernize African universities in selected countries. I decided to focus my research on their collaboration, and interviewed the program officers who were involved with the Partnership.
I chose an institutional lens to look at these foundations’ work, and a mixed method to visualize the mechanisms and dynamics of their collaboration.
The title is: Strategic Philanthropy, Organizational Legitimacy and the Development of Higher Education in Africa: The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (2000-2010)
My committee included Dr. Richard Arum, Dr. Teboho Moja, and Dr. Laetitia Atlani-Duault. Outside readers included Dr. Philip Hosay and Dr. Dana Burde. The defense lasted 2 hours and was very interesting.
FABRICE JAUMONT 