Chancellor Gabel highlights higher education’s role in keeping America competitive

The world is changing fast — how can America keep up?

In a new video released by the Council on Competitiveness, Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel shared her perspective on education’s critical role in keeping America thriving in a new global economy.

“If we were to think about priorities and areas of focus, it’s generally not changed that much even in a very highly disruptive technological time: It’s people and ideas,” Gabel said in the video. “Are we creating the right educational environments that allow for innovation and thought?”

Gabel serves as academic vice chair for the Council on Competitiveness, a nonprofit focused on increasing the U.S.’s competitiveness in the global economy by bringing together leaders from academia, business, labor and government. She delivered her remarks at the Gallup World Headquarters as part of an initiative by the council to sustain the last half century of innovation in the U.S. into a new, rapidly shifting economic era.

In the video, Gabel discusses the importance of creating educational pipelines from preschool through graduate school — and emphasizes the necessity of partnership across sectors to harness the potential of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.

“Some of the most interesting technological innovations that we have coming into our day-to-day use also create the opportunity for misinformation, for misunderstanding, for polarization,” she said. “Part of what we need to accomplish requires some synergy, some compromise.”