This was the fourth symposium of the Universities Project (UP) to feature a more junior-level group of some 40 participants, mostly from universities and some from organizations in Europe and North America that are closely associated with the UP. The main rationale of convening these meetings was to promote the development of future university leaders who are sensitive to the international trends in higher education and who have established ties to their counterparts in other countries at an early stage of their career. Previous symposia of this kind addressed issues related to the impact of globalization on higher education, as well as the social and civic responsibilities of universities. In 2002, the focus was on “Academic Career Patterns,” a topic that is particularly suitable for comparative assessment, as evidenced during some informal discussions at previous meetings. What are the pathways, crossroads, stepping stones, and bottlenecks that junior-level academics in different countries face as they try to find permanent positions for themselves at a university?

For the year 2002, the Universities Project featured a different focus issue at each of its four symposia. These issues were chosen because they had consistently been the subject of extensive discussion during the Project’s first five years of programming. While the theme "Academic Career Patterns" served as the main focus of the symposium, we brought into the discussions the five core themes of the Universities Project as well:

1) University administration and finance;
2) Academic structure within the university;
3) Meeting the needs of students, and the role of students in Institutional affairs;
4) Technology in higher education;
5) The university and civil society.

The symposium featured plenary presentations followed by discussion as well as conversations in smaller working group format. In this way, we tried to maximize the opportunities for meaningful discussion afforded by both large and small formats.