This document, the first in a series of occasional papers associated with a new American Council on Education (ACE) initiative, the Changing Enterprise Project, seeks to chart and understand the directions colleges and universities are pursuing to respond to increased competition and changing fiscal realities. This essay is based on the conversation of the Transatlantic Dialogue held in July 2001 in Quebec, Canada. The purpose of this meeting was to explore the forces shaping change in higher education in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and to analyze how institutions and policy makers are responding, while assessing the costs and benefits of these responses. Quite surprising was that the vision of the future held by most of these educators was quite similar. U.S., Canadian, and European presidents and university rectors largely agreed on the new emphasis on workforce preparation by higher education and the increasing role of accountability, institutional collaboration, and technology. Europeans were more likely to think that distance education would not increase educational access, and Americans and Canadians were more likely to thing that the inability of traditional higher education to adapt to the needs of the knowledge economy will result in the growth of new providers. Overall, there was a general awareness of the need to reinterpret the role of higher education and its capacity to respond to change. (Contains 19 endnotes.) (SLD)