![GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES
17
Globalization has brought Indonesia into a big arena where the countries
become borderless… globalization comes into all countries. The problems are
different from country to country. Other countries may be more prepared than
Indonesia in facing globalization. If Indonesia is not prepared, the country will
become the consumer of developed countries… Western culture can now easily
come into Indonesia. (Usman Chatib Warsa, Rector, Universitas Indonesia)
The President of the Vietnam National University made a similar point about the
openness of Vietnam to American media and the potential for regressive cultural
transformation, especially in the rural areas and among the uneducated. However,
he was less worried about the potential dangers for the university, with its longer
history of cross-border flows.
The economic form of inequality was stressed by the interviewees from each of
Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Mexico. In this regard, in Indonesia
and Vietnam the universities could not afford subscriptions to basic journals. In
Malaysia, which saw itself as an emerging economy, the financial firepower of
Singapore was a constant reminder that the university was not yet a WCGRU:
Globalization [ideally] would be a world without borders. But we must
always be aware that in the globalized world the field has not developed this
way. The players are not the same size. What will be good for the bigger power
may not be good for the smaller power…. What we are looking forward to in
the globalized world is that things become freer and things become shared,
but they must be shared… if it is rules of the jungle, best man wins, we are all
dead. (Hashim Yaacob, Vice-Chancellor, University of Malaya)
Globalization affects differently each country and each group of countries. It
has a completely different impact in the strongest economies, such as the
United States and many of the European countries, and the newly developed
Asian economies, than it has in countries such as Mexico, and the effect it
may have in the least developed countries. It has an impact that really increases
inequities. That has made it very difficult the dialogue at global and internal
institutions, because the effects are perceived by government and society in
one country as different from the effects that are perceived in another. (Juan
Ramon de la Fuente, Rector, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico)
Relational Geographies
Nearly all presidents discussed the strategic significance of proximate neighbour
countries. With respect to this, for the Dutch universities European developments
were crucial. Leiden itself had initiated the League of European universities, a
consortium of most of the strongest research-intensive institutions on that continent.
At both Toronto and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in
Mexico, higher education in the USA exerted the main outside influence on faculty
work. In the former, where there was always a choice in regionalization strategy
between looking north and looking south, the rector felt that Latin America had
been neglected, as very few UNAM students went to Spanish speaking countries,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1164867-250601154932-d231c08b/85/Paths-To-A-Worldclass-University-Nian-Cai-Liu-Qi-Wang-Ying-Cheng-40-320.jpg)
![MARGINSON
20
was a three-year contract. The salary level meant that Malaysian employment was
attractive to staff from poorer nations such as Indonesia, and to some extent to staff
from India, but has limited pulling power in the Middle East and none in Europe or
the English-speaking world. Meanwhile neighbouring Singapore was paying US-
level salaries, four times the level of Malaysia, and recruiting vigorously from
everywhere including the University of Malaya. In Thailand pay rates were again
too low to be globally competitive. In the Netherlands, there was political ambi-
valence about immigration. Visa delays were a key issue. In Japan the language
factor inhibited potential recruits. This was an open concern at the University of
Tokyo which wanted to grow foreign professors. Universities in the settler societies
of Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand were more readily accessed by
foreigners than were universities in low immigration countries, but the pulling
power of the USA overshadowed the others.
Borrowing
However, global openness had an upside for Vietnam, and to some extent Thailand
and Malaysia. It was seen to facilitate improvements in higher education quality.
The National University of Vietnam sourced approaches to teaching, research and
governance from across the world, particularly the USA.
The College of Science has requested the University of Illinois to assist with
the teaching of chemistry. We submit the curriculum and subject requirements
[for consideration for the Illinois science faulty]. Physics uses the Brown
University teaching program. Mathematics has gone to Wisconsin. The College
of Economics draws on the Haas business school. We adapt the curricula of
the best universities for implementation here. Of course we adapt it to suit our
conditions. We also use their teaching technology, with modifications - that’s
very important. Also our staff go to the American universities to be trained
and learn new ideas… every university has unique conditions and values/ it is
not so easy to follow a whole university. But it is possible to learn from part of
their activities. For example, in relation to the links between universities and
industry, we have learned a lot from the Taiwan universities. For information
technology I visit Carnegie Mellon. For social sciences and law, Harvard.
For applied technology, MIT. So each university has very specific value. By
adapting all of these examples we can make our own pathway. (Mai Trong
Nhuan, President, Vietnam National University Hanoi)
Global linkages thus utilized could enhance the university, if it worked out as
planned, provided local strategic and organizational coherence were maintained.
ACTS OF REGULATION
From the viewpoint of national authorities, the global dimension of higher
education creates a dilemma. All national governments want “their” universities to
be outstanding on the world scale. Most governments believe that strong research](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1164867-250601154932-d231c08b/85/Paths-To-A-Worldclass-University-Nian-Cai-Liu-Qi-Wang-Ying-Cheng-43-320.jpg)
Paths To A Worldclass University Nian Cai Liu Qi Wang Ying Cheng
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- 6. Paths to a World-Class University
- 7. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON HIGHER EDUCATION Volume 23 Higher education worldwide is in a period of transition, affected by globalization, the advent of mass access, changing relationships between the university and the state, and the new Technologies, among others. Global Perspectives on Higher Education provides cogent analysis and comparative perspectives on these and other central issues affecting postsecondary education worldwide. Series Editor: Philip G. Altbach Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, USA Editorial Board: Manuel Gil Antón, Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico, Tlalpan, Mexico Molly Lee, UNESCO Bangkok, Thailand Damtew Teferra, Journal of Higher Education in Africa, Boston College, This series is co-published with the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.
- 8. Paths to a World-Class University Lessons from Practices and Experiences Edited by Nian Cai Liu, Qi Wang and Ying Cheng Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P.R. China SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI
- 9. A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-94-6091-353-2 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-354-9 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-355-6 (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2011 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
- 10. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements................................................................................................ vii Paths to a World-Class University .......................................................................... ix Jamil Salmi and Nian Cai Liu Section I: The Role of World-Class Universities in National Systems 1. Global Perspectives and Strategies of Asia-Pacific Research Universities........................................................................................ 3 Simon Marginson 2. The Role of Elite Universities in National Higher Education and Research Systems, and the Challenges of Prosecuting the Case for Concentrating Public Investment in their Development in Australia .............. 29 Michael Gallagher 3. The “Global 30” and the Consequences of Selecting “World-Class Universities” in Japan...................................................................................... 67 Akiyoshi Yonezawa 4. Is Developing Elite Universities a Top Priority Agenda for Higher Education in Romania?: Analyses of the Evolution of the Higher Education Sector’s Priorities and Romanian Top University Strategies in Developing Excellence ............................................. 83 Paul Şerban Agachi, Camelia Moraru, Romana Cucuruzan and Adrian Curaj 5. The Role of Research University in the Third World: A Case Study of the National University of Colombia ........................................................ 107 Natalia Ruiz-Rodgers 6. Towards a European Approach to Ranking................................................... 125 Marijk van der Wende Section II: Institutional Practices of Building World-Class Universities 7. Effective University Management in Difficult Times ................................... 139 John T. Casteen III
- 11. TABLE OF CONTENTS vi 8. The Role of Elite Universities in Africa: A Case Study of the University of Yaounde I in Cameroon .......................................................... 159 Etienne Zé Amvela 9. Riding the Globalization Wave: EPFL’s Strategy and Achievements .......... 177 Dimitrios Noukakis, Jean-François Ricci and Martin Detterli 10. World-Class Research Performance through Research Focus and the Strategic Use of Research Resources ............................................................ 195 Chris Marlin 11. Emergence of Asian Universities as Centres of New Knowledge Generation and a Base for National Competitiveness: A Case Study of the National University of Singapore........................................................ 205 Seeram Ramakrishna and Venni Venkata Krishna 12. Strategy for Impact: The University Global Partnership Network. ............... 237 Colin B. Grant 13. Becoming a World-renowned Health Sciences Centre in the Era of the Global Market: Institutional Effort and Policies for the Promotion of Academic Talent. ...................................................................................... 247 Harold M. Maurer and Jialin C. Zheng 14. Developing a Quality Culture to Become a World-Class University............ 263 Jacques Lanarès 15. Transformation towards a World-Class University: Action and Prospects in the Case of King Abdulaziz University..................................... 275 Osama S. Tayeb and Zoheir A. Damanhouri About the Authors................................................................................................ 283
- 12. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors wish to thank Mr. Peter de Liefde, Sense Publishers, for his support in the publication of this volume; Professor Philip G. Altbach, Monan University Professor and Director of the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College; Dr. Jan Sadlak, President of IREG - International Observatory on Ranking and Academic Excellence; Mr. Derek Maxwell Elli Harris and Mr. Peodair Leihy, for the linguistic editing of the manuscript; and Ms. Yun Miao, for her hard work on formatting the text.
- 14. ix JAMIL SALMI AND NIAN CAI LIU PATHS TO A WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITY1 The 1998/99 World Development Report: Knowledge for Development (World Bank, 1999) proposed an analytical framework emphasizing the complementary role of four key strategic dimensions to guide countries in the transition to a knowledge- based economy: an appropriate economic and institutional regime, a strong human capital base, a dynamic information infrastructure, and an efficient national innovation system. Higher education is central to all four pillars of this framework, but its role is particularly crucial in support of building a strong human capital base and contri- buting to an efficient national innovation system. Higher education helps countries build globally competitive economies by developing a skilled, productive, and flexible labour force and by creating, applying, and spreading new ideas and technologies. Within the higher education system, world-class universities - regarded as research or elite universities - play a critical role in training the professionals, high-level specialists, scientists, and researchers needed by the economy and in generating new knowledge in support of national innovation systems (World Bank, 2002). In this context, an increasingly pressing priority of many governments is to make sure that their top universities are actually operating at the cutting edge of intellectual and scientific development. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITY? In the past decade, the term “world-class university” has become a catch phrase, not simply for improving the quality of learning and research in higher education, but also, more importantly, for developing the capacity to compete in the global higher education marketplace, through the acquisition, adaptation, and creation of advanced knowledge. With students looking to attend the best possible tertiary institutions that they can afford, often regardless of national borders, and with governments keen on returns on their investments in universities, global standing is becoming an increasingly important concern for institutions around the world (Williams and Van Dyke, 2007). The paradox of the world-class university, how- ever, as Altbach has succinctly and accurately observed, is that “everyone wants one, no one knows what it is, and no one knows how to get one” (Altbach, 2004). Becoming a member of the exclusive group of world-class universities is not achieved by self-declaration; rather, elite status is conferred by the outside world on the basis of international recognition. Until recently, the process involved a subjective qualification, mostly that of reputation. For example, Ivy League univer- sities in the United States (U.S.), such as Harvard, Yale, or Columbia; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom (U.K.); and the University of Tokyo, have traditionally been counted among the exclusive group of elite universities, but
- 15. SALMI AND LIU x no direct and rigorous measure was available to substantiate their superior status in terms of outstanding results, such as training of graduates, research output, and technology transfer. Even the higher salaries captured by their graduates could be interpreted as a signalling proxy as much as the true value of their education. With the proliferation of league tables in the past few years, however, more systematic ways of identifying and classifying world-class universities have appeared (IHEP, 2007). Although most of the best-known rankings purport to categorize universities within a given country, there have also been attempts to establish inter- national rankings. The two most comprehensive international rankings, allowing for broad benchmark comparisons of institutions across national borders, are those prepared by the Times Higher Education (THE) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). Notwithstanding the serious methodological limitations of any ranking exercise (Salmi and Saroyan 2007), world-class universities are recognized in part for their superior outputs. They produce well-qualified graduates who are in high demand on the labour market; they conduct leading-edge research published in top scientific journals; and in the case of science-and-technology-oriented institutions, they contribute to technical innovations through patents and licences. The few scholars who have attempted to define what world-class universities have that regular universities do not possess have identified a number of basic features, such as highly qualified faculty; excellence in research; quality teaching; high levels of government and nongovernment sources of funding; international and highly talented students; academic freedom; well-defined autonomous governance structures; and well-equipped facilities for teaching, research, administration, and student life (Altbach, 2004; Khoon et al., 2005; Niland, 2000, 2007). Recent collaborative research on this theme between UK and Chinese universities (Alden Figure 1. Characteristics of a world-class university: Alignment of key factors. Source: Created by Jamil Salmi.
- 16. PATHS TO A WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITY xi and Lin, 2004) has resulted in an even longer list of key attributes, ranging from the international reputation of the university to more abstract concepts, such as the university’s contribution to society, both very difficult to measure in an objective manner. In an attempt to propose a more manageable definition of world-class univer- sities, this report makes the case that the superior results of these institutions (highly sought graduates, leading-edge research, and technology transfer) can essentially be attributed to three complementary sets of factors at play in top universities: (a) a high concentration of talent (faculty and students), (b) abundant resources to offer a rich learning environment and to conduct advanced research, and (c) favourable governance features that encourage strategic vision, innovation, and flexibility and that enable institutions to make decisions and to manage resources without being encumbered by bureaucracy (Figure 1). PATHS TO TRANSFORMATION Two complementary perspectives need to be considered in examining how to establish new world-class universities. The first dimension, of an external nature, concerns the role of government at the national, state, and provincial levels and the resources that can be made available to enhance the stature of institutions. The second dimension is internal. It has to do with the individual institutions them- selves and the necessary evolution and steps that they need to take to transform themselves into world-class institutions. In the past, the role of government in nurturing the growth of world-class universities was not a critical factor. In this regard, the history of the Ivy League universities in the United States reveals that, by and large, they grew to prominence as a result of incremental progress, rather than by deliberate government intervention. Similarly, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge evolved over the centuries of their own volition, with variable levels of public funding, but with considerable autonomy in terms of governance, definition of mission, and direction. Today, how ever, it is unlikely that a world-class university can be rapidly created without a favourable policy environment and direct public initiative and support, if only because of the high costs involved in setting up advanced research facilities and capacities. Recent international experience shows that three basic strategies can be followed to establish world-class universities: – Governments could consider upgrading a small number of existing universities that have the potential for excelling (picking winners). – Governments could encourage a number of existing institutions to merge and transform into a new university that would achieve the type of synergies corres- ponding to a world-class institution (hybrid formula). – Governments could create new world-class universities from scratch (clean-slate approach). Table 1 summarizes the pros and cons of each approach. It should be noted that these generic approaches are not mutually incompatible and that countries may pursue a combination of strategies based on these models.
- 17. SALMI AND LIU xii Table 1. Costs and benefits of strategic approaches for establishing world-class universities Approach Conditions Upgrading existing institutions Merging existing institutions Creating new institutions Ability to attract talent Difficult to renew staff and change the brand to attract top students Opportunity to change the leadership and to attract new staff; existing staff may resist Opportunity to select the best (staff and students); difficulties in recruiting top students to “unknown” institution; need to build up research and teaching traditions Costs Less expensive Neutral More expensive Governance Difficult to change mode of operation within same regulatory framework More likely to work with legal status different from that of existing institutions Opportunity to create appropriate regulatory and incentives framework Institutional culture Difficult to transform from within May be difficult to create a new identity out of distinct institutional cultures Opportunity to create culture of excellence Change management Major consultation and communication campaign with all stakeholders “Normative” approach to educate all stakeholders about expected norms and institutional culture “Environmentally adaptive” approach to communicate and socially market the new institution Source: Created by Jamil Salmi. The establishment of a world-class university requires, above all, strong leader- ship, a bold vision of the institution’s mission and goals, and a clearly articulated strategic plan to translate the vision into concrete targets and programmes. Univer- sities that aspire to better results engage in an objective assessment of their strengths and areas for improvement, set new stretch goals, and design and implement a renewal plan that can lead to improved performance. By contrast, many institutions are complacent in their outlook, lack an ambitious vision of a better future, and continue to operate as they have in the past, ending up with a growing performance gap compared with that of their national or international competitors. The following key questions need to be answered by governments and institutions to guide the quest toward establishing world-class universities: – Why does the country need a world-class university? What is the economic rationale and the expected added value compared with the contribution of existing institutions? – What is the vision for this university? What niche will it occupy? – How many world-class universities are desirable and affordable as a public sector investment?
- 18. PATHS TO A WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITY xiii – What strategy would work best in the country context: upgrading existing insti- tutions, merging existing institutions, or creating new institutions? – What should be the selection process among existing institutions if the first or second approach is chosen? – What will be the relationship and articulation between the new institution(s) and existing higher education institutions? – How will the transformation be financed? What share should fall under the public budget? What share should be borne by the private sector? What incentives should be offered (for example, land grants and tax exemptions)? – What are the governance arrangements that must be put in place to facilitate this transformation and support suitable management practices? – What level of autonomy and forms of accountability will be appropriate? – What will the government’s role be in this process? – How can the institution build the best leadership team? – What are the vision and mission statements, and what are the specific goals that the university is seeking to achieve? – In what niche(s) will it pursue excellence in teaching and research? – What is the target student population? – What are the internationalization goals that the university needs to achieve (with regard to faculty, students, programmes, and so forth)? – What is the likely cost of the proposed qualitative leap, and how is it going to be funded? – How will success be measured? What monitoring systems, outcome indicators, and accountability mechanisms will be used? THE CHALLENGES OF ESTABLISHING WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITIES The highest-ranked universities are the ones that make significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge through research, teach with the most innovative curricula and pedagogical methods under the most conducive circumstances, make research an integral component of undergraduate teaching, and produce graduates who stand out because of their success in intensely competitive arenas during their education and (more importantly) after graduation. There is no universal recipe or magic formula for making a world-class university. National contexts and institutional models vary widely. Therefore, each country must choose, from among the various possible pathways, a strategy that plays to its strengths and resources. International experience provides a few lessons regarding the key features of such universities—high concentrations of talent, abundance of resources, and flexible governance arrangements—and successful approaches to move in that direction, from upgrading or merging existing institutions to creating new institutions altogether. Furthermore, the transformation of the university system cannot take place in isolation. A long-term vision for creating world-class universities - and its imple- mentation - should be closely articulated with: (a) the country’s overall economic and social development strategy, (b) ongoing changes and planned reforms at the
- 19. SALMI AND LIU xiv lower levels of the education system, and (c) plans for the development of other types of higher education institutions to build an integrated system of teaching, research, and technology-oriented institutions. Although world-class institutions are commonly equated with top research universities, there are also world-class higher education institutions that are neither research focused nor operate as universities in the strictest interpretation of the term. As countries embark on the task of establishing world-class institutions, they must also consider the need to create, besides research universities, excellent alternative institutions to meet the wide range of education and training needs that the higher education system is expected to satisfy. The growing debate on measuring learning outcomes at the higher education level is testimony to the recognition that excellence is not only about achieving outstanding results with outstanding students but ought, perhaps, to be also measured in terms of how much added value is given by insti- tutions in addressing the specific learning needs of an increasingly diverse student population. Finally, the building pressures and momentum behind the push for world- class universities must be examined within the proper context, so as to avoid over-dramatization of the value and importance of world-class institutions and distortions in resource allocation patterns within national higher education systems. Even in a global knowledge economy, where every nation, both developed and developing, is seeking to increase its share of the economic pie, the hype surrounding world-class institutions far exceeds the need and capacity for many systems to benefit from such advanced education and research opportunities, at least in the short term. As with other service industries, not every nation needs comprehensive world- class universities, at least not while more fundamental higher education needs are not being met. World-class research institutions require huge financial commitments, a concentration of exceptional human capital, and governance policies that allow for top-notch teaching and research. Many nations would in all likelihood benefit from an initial focus on developing the best national universities possible, modelled perhaps on those developed as the land-grant institutions in the United States during the 19th century or the polytechnic universities of Germany and Canada. Such institutions would emphasize the diverse learning and training needs of the domestic student population and economy. Focusing efforts on the local community and eco- nomy, such institutions could lead to more effective and sustainable development than broader world-class aspirations. Regardless, institutions will inevitably, from here on out, be increasingly subject to comparisons and rankings, and those deemed to be the best in these rankings of research universities will continue be considered the very best in the world. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS VOLUME Reflecting the above points, the present volume provides insights into recent and ongoing experiences of building world-class universities, both at a national level and at an institutional level. It collects fifteen essays, most of which originated
- 20. PATHS TO A WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITY xv from papers presented at the “3rd International Conference on World-Class Univer- sities (WCU-3)”, held in November 2009 in Shanghai, China, and organized by the Centre for World-Class Universities at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The book is structured into two inter-related parts, that is, “the Role of World-Class Universities in National Systems” and “Institutional Practices of Building World- Class Universities”. The Role of World-Class Universities in National Systems This section discusses the role of world-class universities in national education and research systems and addresses issues and concerns that governments need to take into account in making education policies. It also focuses on the nature of the elite research university in different socio-economic contexts, its contribution to the national higher education and research system, and its development in the current context of globalization and economic crisis. In Marginson’s chapter, the findings of ongoing research on global perspectives and strategies of Asia-Pacific research universities are presented. Marginson emphasizes that in spite of their varied strategic circumstances and resources according to national factors, the notion of world-class, such as global standing and institution effectiveness, has become the universal emphasis of research universities. As a result, strategies and actions of global, national as well as local dimensions need to be coordinated and integrated in universities’ transformation. Both Gallagher’s and Yonezawa’s chapters consider the policy tensions between developing world-class research universities and the quality and equity issues of research and education. Gallagher argues that a combination, that is, autonomous institutions operating in a market environment, with mission-based funding compacts as a means of safeguarding public good interests, allowing the universities the flexibility to be competitive and responsive. Drawing attention to the different contexts of world-class university policies among East Asian countries, in particular Japan’s “Global 30” scheme, Yonezawa highlights the practical difficulty of inter- nationalization of leading research universities without deteriorating research and education performance. Next, in response to the point raised above, that is, transformation of higher education should be closely articulated with a range of social, economic and educational factors in relation to their country, Agachi, Moraru, Cucuruzan and Curaj argue that the possible route for Romania to develop universities of excellence is to build research intensive universities, whilst in the mean time turning a few universities into the world-class category. Ruiz-Rodgers shares the National Univer- sity of Colombia’s experience of building an internationally recognized centre of research and teaching within a different context of acute social strife, economic downturns and civil violence. Van der Wende’s contribution shows that the proposed European university ranking, a multi-dimensional university ranking, covering the various institution missions of education, research, innovation, internationalization, community outreach
- 21. SALMI AND LIU xvi and employability. If this approach were adopted, it would have implications for national and institutional development, in terms of cooperation and competition, in that it would encourage and stimulate diversity of the European higher education system, whilst enhancing its convergence, and ultimately strengthen its position in global competition. Institutional Practices of Building World-Class Universities This section presents different strategies adopted by institutions around the world, in both developed and developing countries, in building universities and research centres of excellence. These practices can be mainly categorized into five main aspects, namely, building world-class universities requiring clear visions, strategic planning and strong management; high-quality research and teaching; effective human resources management; global/international partnership; and building a culture of quality. Reflecting on the current world financial crisis, Casteen emphasizes the role of “Effective University Management in Difficult Times”. In spite of the discrepancies among colleges and universities in the US, many institutions have experienced common challenges in recent decades. Universities, particularly public universities in the US, have been affected by massive reductions in state support with increasing demand for student enrolment at the same time. These pressures have forced the universities to seek greater operating autonomy from their respective state govern- ments, to reform tuition policy while ensuring access, diversity and affordability issues, and have led to increased dependency on private support. Casteen also points out that the current economic downturn offers opportunities in the US to re- examine common practices in each area, re-think university governance, cut back on nonessential spending, and find less expensive ways of achieving goals, whilst sustaining excellence in teaching, research and service. The experience of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) presented by Noukakis, Ricci and Vetterli reveals its own recipes to cope with academic challenges by asserting its mission, changing its structure and developing a new corporate culture. Specific strategies for other universities to draw on include designing clear positioning and action plans, improving quality of people at key managerial positions, encouraging competitive recruitment of senior and junior faculty, promoting interdisciplinary teaching and research, and diversifying funding resources. Zè Amvela’s contribution shares the University of Yaoundé’s experience of strategic planning and its concrete measures taken in the aspects of quality teaching and research, interdisciplinary research and international cooperation. Building world-class universities requires high-quality research and teaching. Marlin draws the readers’ attention to the tension between the desire of the university management to improve research performance and that of individual researchers to pursue their own research agenda. From Flinders University’s experience, Marlin argues that identifying the sources of research support and engaging the university research community in the selection process are of great importance in conducting strategic research planning.
- 22. PATHS TO A WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITY xvii Making references to the National University of Singapore’s experience, Ramakrishna and Krishna offer six factors for developing and supporting leading research intensive universities, namely, strong commitment for global recruitment of faculty, effective educational and research network with world leading institutions, solid support on building research infrastructure, attracting best talent including students and faculty, development of multi-disciplinary research to address national and global issues and challenges, and positive and harmonious partnership with the private sector and policy makers. Following Ramakrishna and Krishna’s point on educational and research network, Grant provides an account of the Global Partnership Network (GPN) established among five universities from different parts of the world in 2008. The GPN is a sustainable, research-led, tight multilateral network, emphasising professional education and curricular innovation. In spite of its initial success, Grant argues that the GPN needs to ensure its internationally limited membership, strong mobility for both students and faculty at all levels, international benchmarking for teaching and research excellence, multilateral research innovation and close co-operation among the members in its sustainable development. Maurer and Zheng review the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s (UNMC) effort and policies to “Become a World- Renowned Health Sciences Centre in the Era of the Global Market”, particularly in the aspect of promoting academic talent. Agreeing with Grant’s argument, Maurer and Zheng propose that close international collaboration with prominent partners will enable their institution to achieve the goal of being world-class, as the strengths of each partner could be utilized towards a common goal, in this case that of meeting the healthcare needs of a whole population for our current global economy. In his contribution, Lanarès argues that going towards excellence means not only creating and operating a rigorous quality assurance system, but also developing a culture of quality. The experience of the University of Lausanne implies three steps are needed to reach a broad convergence of ways of thinking and acting about quality and associated values, that is, to identify core values and the creation of an adhesion to these values, to translate the values into both concepts and practices of the quality system, and to influence collective and individual practices. The development of a culture of quality is a long term process and requires critical evaluation. This book not only represents a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the topic of building world-class universities, but can be seen as being a continuation of the previous two volumes on this topic - “World-Class Universities and Ranking: Aiming beyond Status” and “The World-Class University as Part of a New Higher Education Paradigm: From Institutional Qualities to Systemic Excellence” (Sadlak and Liu, 2007 and 2009). NOTES 1 This introductory paper is based on the keynote speech of Jamil Salmi at the WCU-3 Conference. Part of the content is excerpted from Jamil Salmi’s book entitled ‘The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities’ published by the World Bank in 2009, reproduced here with the World Bank’s permission.
- 23. SALMI AND LIU xviii REFERENCES Alden, J., & Lin, G. (2004). Benchmarking the characteristics of a world-class university: Developing an international strategy at university level. London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. Altbach, P. G. (2004, January-February). The costs and benefits of world-class universities. Academe 90(1). Retrieved from http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2004/JF/Feat/altb.htm Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). (2007). College and university ranking systems: Global perspectives and American challenges. Washington, DC: IHEP. Retrieved from http://www.ihep.org/ assets/files/publications/a-f/CollegeRankingSystems.pdf Khoon, K. A., Shuko, R., Hassan, O., Saleh, Z., Hamzah, A., Ismai R. L., et al. (2005, December). Hallmark of a world-class university. College Student Journal, Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/ p/articles/mi_m0FCR/is_4_39/ai_n16123684. Niland, J. (2000, February 3). The challenge of building world-class universities in the Asian region. ON LINE Opinion. Retrieved April 10, 2006 from http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp? article=997 Niland, J. (2007). The challenge of building world-class universities. In J. Sadlak & N. C. Liu (Eds.), The world-class university and ranking: Aiming beyond status. Bucharest: UNESCO-CEPES. Sadlak, J., & Liu, N. C. (2007). The world-class university and ranking: Aiming beyond status. Bucharest: UNESCO-CEPES. Sadlak, J., & Liu, N. C. (2009). The world-class university as part of a new higher education paradigm: From institutional qualities to systemic excellence. Bucharest: UNESCO-CEPES. Salmi, J., & Saroyan, A. (2007). League tables as policy instruments: Uses and misuses. Higher Education Management and Policy, 19(2), 24–62. Williams, R., & Van Dyke, N. (2007, June). Measuring the international standing of universities with an application to Australian Universities. Higher Education, 53(6), 819–841. World Bank. (1999). World development report 1998/99: Knowledge for development. Washington, DC: World Bank. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/wdr/wdr98/contents.htm World Bank. (2002). Constructing knowledge societies: New challenges for tertiary education. Washington, DC: World Bank. Retrieved from http://go.worldbank.org/N2QADMBNI0 Yusuf, S., & Nabeshima, K. (2007). How universities promote economic growth. Washington DC: World Bank. Jamil Salmi The World Bank Nian Cai Liu Graduate School of Education Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
- 24. SECTION I: THE ROLE OF WORLD-CLASS UNIVERSITIES IN NATIONAL SYSTEMS
- 26. N.C. Liu et al., (eds.), Paths to a World-Class University: Lessons from Practices and Experiences, 3–27. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. SIMON MARGINSON 1. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES OF ASIA-PACIFIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES INTRODUCTION Globalization is the tendency towards convergence and integration on the world scale (Held, et al., 1999). All research universities are now immersed in processes of globalization. This is directly apparent in the power of the global research system in local affairs. The drive to publish in journals with international standing is now universal to the science disciplines in research universities. Another global system is apparent in the impact of university comparisons and rankings on the local and national status of universities. A comparative survey by Ellen Hazelkorn (2008) for the OECD showed that comparative rankings and research output metrics have been quickly adopted in the visions, performance measurement systems and policy goals of both national governments and institutions. Furthermore, they enter the funding decisions of corporations and donors, and affect student choices. Globalization is also apparent in the growing mobility of students and faculty (Enders and De Weert, 2009). In this regard, between 2000 and 2007 the number of cross-border students increased by 59%, an annual rate of 7%, reaching a total three million a year (OECD, 2009, p. 312). Doctoral student mobility and the short-term movement of faculty are also growing although the trend in long-term academic migration is less clear (Marginson, 2009). Policy borrowing and the partial convergence in policy frameworks and organizational templates, albeit with national and local rhythms and variations (King, 2009), are other forms of globalization in higher education. Individual universities, and individual national systems of higher education, do more than respond to globalization, as they are also primary drivers of global flows in knowledge, communications and people movement. Leading research universities are among the most internationalized and cosmopolitan of all human organizations and they constitute a world-wide network in which the Internet presence of each is visible to all the others. Rankings create the sense of a single common environment in education and research, such that all can be compared with each other. Meeting each other in conferences and on the web, in working together and through personnel exchange, research universities are continually reminded that they share essential attributes. Everywhere, university leaders instinctively understand - and tend to sympathize with - their counterparts across the world. Universities and national systems of higher education are together creating a remarkable new dimension of activity, the global dimension of action, which is
- 27. MARGINSON 4 positioned across and beyond the nation-state systems. In the last twenty years, especially the last ten, many cross-border initiatives and global strategies have emerged and Table 1 below provides a summary of these. Table 1. Developmental strategies that are creating the global dimension of higher education and knowledge Strategy Description/examples Global spatial meanings Strategies largely driven by national governments Capacity building in research Investment in research universities and institutes designed to lift the volume and quantity of research activity, with a view to strengthening national R&D-led innovation and/or the position of national universities in global rankings. There is now a global “arms race” in innovation spending in many countries. May be joined to policies of greater concentration of research in selected institutions, merger programmes, etc. e.g. China, Korea, Germany, France A long-standing policy option for “national competition states” that has taken on a new urgency and greater importance in the more global era. Recreation of nation/city as a “global hub” for education and research activities Building of the global role of local education and research institutions; together with investment in precinct, infrastructure and changes to policy and regulation, designed to attract: foreign education and research providers, students and investment capital. e.g. Singapore, Qatar Designed to pull global flows of knowledge, people and capital towards a particular locality. May be joined to national capacity building in research, and educational exports. Negotiation of a global system of free trade in educational services, through WTO-GATS Nations deregulate their education systems sufficiently to permit entry of foreign providers on the same terms as local providers, including subsidies etc. The recreation of worldwide higher education as a single space for business and trade. (This has had little support among either national governments or universities and has not happened).
- 28. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 5 Table 1. (Continued) Largely university- driven strategies Partnerships between universities Universities sign agreements with similar institutions in other countries; and carry out cooperative joint activities in: personnel and student exchange, curriculum, research, university organization, benchmarking, etc. e.g. All research universities A longstanding strategy used much more in the last two decades. The effect is to create a lattice-like network around each university as the node. Some of these nodes are much thicker than others, indicating broader and more intensive global connectedness. University consortia Formal networks consisting of a large number of university partners, typically 10-30. Sometimes more intensive micro- consortia are developed, with 3–5 partners. Activities are for university partnerships. e.g. Universitas 21, Association of Pacific Rim Universities Consortia are also positioning devices with universities drawing status benefits from the strongest of their partners. The level of activity conducted through these large networks varies, but some universities drive a significant proportion of global work this way. Others maintain a broad set of connections and options. Transnational campuses Universities establish branch campuses in another country, either in their own right (providing the premises themselves) or in alliance with a local partner that manages the site. Branch campuses are specifically permitted to operate by the local authorities. e.g. University of Nottingham (UK) in Malaysia and China, RMIT University (Australia) in Vietnam Such foreign campuses can influence local educational developments over time, and also encourage more multiple or hybrid approaches and reciprocal flows of influence, with potential to leak back to the “mother” institution. Global “e- Universities” Virtual delivery of programmes on the Internet, by either established universities or commercial providers specifically created for the purpose. Curriculum, student assessment, credentialing and administration are provided from one central location. Teaching intensity varies. e.g. Cardean University, U21 Global, the University of Phoenix online Between the mid 1990s and the early 2000s there were significant investments in stand- alone e-U’s, but they were unsuccessful in recruiting enough students. E-learning provided alongside or joined to face-to-face programmes, e.g. at the University of Phoenix, has been more successful.
- 29. MARGINSON 6 Table 1. (Continued) Strategies driven by both government and universities Export of education on a fully commercial basis Higher education in a national system deregulated as necessary to enable the provision of full fee places to international students, with provider institutions free to determine price and volume. e.g. the UK, Australia Now a large scale trading industry; and the one established form of global educational capitalism. It has accelerated cross-border student mobility and positioned universities and students as entrepreneurs/consumers, though both also engage in non commercial global activities, for example, in relation to research. Knowledge city developments Investment by universities, city authorities and governments in precinct and infrastructure, designed to attract foreign education and research providers, students and investment capital. A more modest version of the “hub” strategy that is often centred on promoting a small number of universities. e.g. numerous cities Versions of this strategy are widely practiced among nations with advanced education and research systems. Some cities place much emphasis on this kind of mission in their develop- ment profiles. The balance between commercial international education and R&D varies. Regional developments in higher education and research Agreed regional (pan-national) cooperation between national higher education systems, including: common research grant programmes; measures to align degree structures, curriculum contents and professional requirements; common systems for the recognition of institutions and qualifications, and quality assurance systems; comparison, ranking and evaluation of institutions on a regional basis. e.g. the formation of the European Higher Education and European Research Areas, via the Bologna reforms Regional system building and partial convergence in higher education and research in Europe is creating a meso-level of activity between the national and global dimensions, and in the longer run is aimed at positioning Europe so as to be able to act as a unit on the global stage. It also encourages enhanced investments in higher education and research in Europe. There are also embryonic regional developments in South America and Southeast Asia. Strategies pursued by multi-actors (universities, governments, publishing companies, etc.) Data-based global comparisons of universities, and of research and publication/ citation Comparisons of the number of leading researchers, publications and/or citations used to generate a vertical “league table” of university performance. e.g. Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, Leiden CWTS, Taiwan HEEACT Outside the USA, global comparisons have been decisive in imposing on all universities overarching measures of performance and status, relativizing national performance measures,
- 30. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 7 Table 1. (Continued) outputs on a university- wide or field specific basis. Comparisons of universities based on a range of elements combined into a single index and league table. e.g. Times Higher Education Supplement which are now constantly referenced in debates about higher education and in investment decisions by: students, researchers, business and industry, and governments. More than any other method global rankings create an imagining of the global dimension of higher education. The global dimension of higher education is being formed by three kinds of action. First, acts of imagination. As will be described below, leaders imagine the global dimension as a field of practical activity, and they imagine their institution’s global activity prior to the attempt to create it. Second, the global dimension involves acts of production - global outputs such as research knowledge, messages, open courseware and other web postings, and global teaching programmes, like com- mercial degrees and e-U’s. Third, the global dimension involves acts of regulation. Governments set many of the conditions of global activity, through the regulation of national systems, and via bilateral and multilateral negotiations. Many universities in the Asia-Pacific region are involved in the formation of the global dimension of higher education (Marginson et al., forthcoming). However, some are more intensively involved than others owing to both their conditions and their choices. Moreover, the pattern of global inequalities means that the different national systems, individual institutions and individual university leaders are located differentially within the global dimension of action, whereby some have more global options. In this regard, some can work the global dimension as an extension of their local/national space, whereas for others it is a much more difficult terrain to navigate. Nevertheless, for all national research universities the global dimension is proving to be inevitable in its demands and transformational in its effects. The chapter draws on a set of case studies of research universities in the Asia- Pacific region to review their global visions and strategies. Case studies were con- ducted in one leading national research university in each of 12 countries. The material drawn on in the paper is primarily taken from the interviews with the university head - the president, rector or vice-chancellor. A Note on the Research In this study, the Asia-Pacific region is broadly defined so as to include the Americas. The universities included are: Universitas Indonesia, the National University of Singapore, the University of Malaya in Malaysia, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, the Vietnam National University in Hanoi, the University of Tokyo in Japan, the Australian National University, the University of Auckland in New Zealand,
- 31. MARGINSON 8 the University of Toronto in Canada, the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) in the USA, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and two contrasting Netherlands universities, Leiden University, and the University of Twente, which allows for a comparison with Asia-Pacific institutions. Leiden is a leading research- intensive university, whereas Twente is a newer technological university of less storied status.1 In each institution, between 12 and 20 interviews were conducted, however, this paper draws almost solely on the interviews with the respective university president/ rector/vice-chancellor. The interviews focused on the university leaders’ imaginings of the global space, how they understand globalization; the tools they use to observe and interpret it; their perceptions of commonalities and differences between countries and universities; how globalization affects the imperatives confronting nation and university; the scope for initiative and response; the global/national/local interfaces, and whether and to what extent national policy helps or hinders the presidents; and their priorities for development of their own global operations. The case study programme was conducted in institutions broadly similar within their nations: all are leading research universities, and nearly all are generally understood to be the number one or number two universities in the country. All are national and public sector institutions, and have been historically shaped by govern- ment. When compared with each other, from a global perspective, the individual universities are very different from each other in their levels of: resources, research performance and their rankings. Differing levels of funding and historically accumulated resources, and different languages of use, all affect the relative position. Because a common template of institutional type is used, these global variations are not so much due to differences in the missions or statuses of these universities within their respective national systems, but rather the global variations shown here are shaped by differences between the nations in terms of resources and also by local factors in each institution that can be identified by studying its history and organization. In this manner, the study helps to map the global dimension of action in higher education, by clarifying the place each national system has within the global setting and the same time eliciting local specific factors. Local factors like history, organizational cultures, systems, policies and leadership closely affect institutions. For example the Universities of Tokyo and Indonesia, Vietnam National University and Chulalongkorn all train capital city elites, but only Tokyo was built by the nation into a global research powerhouse. UNAM plays the overwhelming role in Mexico; it conducts 30 per cent of all research and is closely affected by national politics. It is also less global in orientation than some other universities. Leiden in the Netherlands is very international in mission. Like- wise the Australian National University has specialized in research and international networking since its foundation in 1946. GLOBAL STRATEGIES OF UNIVERSITIES In the emerging global dimension of higher education and research, some global strategies are led by governments, some by universities or their units, and others by
- 32. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 9 publishing companies and other corporations. Often, a key initiating role is played by individual university executive leaders. Table 1 summarizes the strategies. These global strategies have changed the possibilities, and the necessities, affecting all national systems and research universities. They are a mixture of old and new. There was always some international activity in higher education, but the global work has been greatly facilitated by synchronous electronic communication and one-world visualization enabled by the Internet. The global strategies employed today include: research concentrations; education hub strategies designed to pull global flows into the city or nation; cross-border collaborations, alliances and consortia; region-building in higher education, especially but not only in Europe; the com- mercial marketing of international education at home; the creation of transnational (offshore) campuses on a partner or stand-alone basis; and the creation of global “e-universities”, designed to reach students everywhere. Some universities pursue a number of these strategies simultaneously. At the same time, two other kinds of initiative have contributed to shaping and defining the global dimension of higher education and research. One is the process of multilateral trade liberalization through WTO-GATS, though the momentum for that development now seems to have slowed. The other is global comparisons, rankings and moves towards a world classification of the higher education sector. The global strategies of universities and systems have been partly recession proof, thus indicating the universal creative momentum of globalization. In this regard, during the global financial crisis, with its downward pressure on budgets in most countries, much cross-border activity kept growing, for example, commercial exports and research collaborations. However, the fact that the financial capacity of some universities and national systems has been reduced must have inhibited some cross-border activity - after all the recession has inhibited activity in higher education as a whole, and cross-border work has to be subsidized from local and national resources. Nevertheless, cross-border activity has not been the first item jettisoned, which might have been expected a generation ago. This suggests that global activity is not longer considered ephemeral or at the margins of more substantial national and local functions, and that global activity has now become central and essential to the “Idea of a University”. WORLD-CLASS GLOBAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES (WCGRU) At the institutional level the creation of global activity would appear to proceed through three phases, which are sometimes pushed together. First, the institution or nation concerned builds the capacity to operate globally, for example in research. Second, it focuses on improving global connectivity, not just electronically, but through partnerships, networks and the ongoing exchange of: personnel, staff and students. The third phase is global activity. University executives sometimes see building capacity and connectivity as ends in themselves, but capacity and connectivity are also conditions for global activity, in that once global capacity and global connectivity are established, the institution (or national system) has the freedom to act globally.
- 33. MARGINSON 10 The global capacity of the individual university depends on its infrastructure: financial resources, physical resources such as communications and transport, facilities and specialist equipment, cultural/linguistic and intellectual resources, and organizational and regulatory mechanisms, including internal cultures and the rhetoric, systems and policies of the institutional and academic leaders. However, mission statements can be reinvented quicker than university resources, which are history-bound and practice dependant. Global capacity is also created and sustained in processes of institutionalization, the regularization of global relationships and interactions to embed them in the life of the institution (Held et al., 1999, p. 19). In this process, the university becomes not just self-referenced and nationally- referenced, but globally-referenced and this perspective is crucial, in that it needs to be able see its position in the global context if it is going to develop optimizing strategies. Moreover, global referencing is powerful in its effects on university thinking and in the present era of communicative globalization there has been the emergence of a new “Idea of a University”, that of the “World-class Global Research University” or WCGRU. The term “world-class university” (SJTUGSE, 2009) has been criticized, for being normative, thereby lacking an objective definition and thus immediately leads to the posing of the question: “What is world-class?” It has been lampooned by some scholars, particularly those in the United States, where all research institutions are secure in their global status, but the term is entirely meaningful for those nations and those universities who aspire to it. “World-class university” is an aspirational notion, one which reflects the desire to be globally effective and to be seen as such by the entire world. In this context the term “Global Research University” (GRU) (Ma, 2008; Marginson, 2008) provides an objective descriptor that gives content to the notion of a “world-class university”. A GRU must be globally networked, globally recognized and effective in local, national and global action. Moreover, it must house a global research capability and output in several fields, and maintain staff capable of inter- preting and applying findings in most fields of knowledge. Furthermore, it needs to have a viable local doctoral programme in some fields. Nowadays, owing to widening of aspirations, the research university functions of knowledge creation, dissemination, storage and transmission, and also research training, are now spreading from a limited group of nations to the majority of nations. In addition, a GRU must also pay academic faculty enough to attract and hold those staff with the potential to be globally mobile; or alternatively, inspire an affective commitment to university or nation that is strong enough to compensate for salaries below globally competitive levels, so as to be able to maintain stability in policy, funding and organization and to make the local setting acceptably habitable for staff and students. Research capacity is central to the WCGRU for four reasons. First, knowledge is the common currency, the medium of exchange in which research universities deal and collaborate and in fact is often even more important to them than money, for it is already a global public good of economic value (Stiglitz, 1999). Further, in its natural state it flows freely across borders and is used everywhere without losing its value. Arguably, globalization has enhanced the universal character and intrinsic
- 34. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 11 importance of knowledge. Second, the creation, interpretation and codification of knowledge, in the form of research, distinguishes such universities from other educational institutions, and almost all social organizations. Third, research capacity is closely associated with dominant notions of the “Idea of a University”. Fourth, it is taken into nation-building strategies. This embedding of the university in research is grounded in the historical military and economic role of science and technology, which predates communicative globalization. Above all it was installed by the cre- ation of the nuclear weapons that closed the Second World War. Thus research performance has long been the marker of university status, even in relation to first degree education where, strictly speaking, research is not in play. In the interviews with Asia-Pacific presidents the aspiration to be a WCGRU was especially strongly felt in the universities most marginal to the global metropolis: Universitas Indonesia, Vietnam National University and the University of Malaya. It also concerned the University of Auckland, whose leaders nursed a sense of inadequacy in relation to the university’s global position, even though Auckland was in the top 300 on research performance. Our ambition is to meet international standards. To be in the top 200 univer- sities in the world. Of course, this is the long-term vision. Not in one day… Our mission is to become a research university that meets international standards. We focus all our efforts to achieve that. (Mai Trong Nhuan, President, the Vietnam National University Hanoi) The dividing line between being a WCGRU as opposed to not is a crucial distinction of each national system, for it demarcates the global sector from the rest. It is also expressed within institutions, in the distinction between on the one hand, research and graduate research or doctoral education, which are global activities, and on the other, first degree teaching and medium level graduate professional programmes (Horta, 2009). Several of the presidents emphasized that building global research activity in their institutions was central to their aspirations for WCGRU status. Moreover, they also expressed the view that English language publications have become more important than before: Q. What impact has globalization had on a public research university like the University of Malaya? A. We are now putting a lot of effort, money and resources and manpower into the research field… promotion to professor and associate professor now depends largely on publication. (Hashim Yaacob, Vice-Chancellor, University of Malaya) Research development was touched upon in one way or another by all presidents. In this regard, the leaders of the Universities of Toronto, Illinois, Tokyo, Leiden and the Australian National University, all located in the Shanghai Jiao Tong Univer- sity top 100, all expressed the view that they were secure about their standing as research universities, but took for granted the need to continually improve research outcomes.
- 35. MARGINSON 12 ACTS OF IMAGINATION Sources of the Imagination In the study, interviewees were asked how they gathered information about global trends and developments on a continuing basis. For the most part, they emphasized networking with other presidents, consortia and other international meetings, and data gathered by their own personnel working on international matters. Moreover, person-to-person contact was seen as more effective than videoconferencing and the Tokyo executive vice-president, a member of the OECD committee for Science, Technology and Policy emphasized the importance of the regular OECD meetings: “That is a very big source”. Only a small number were extensive readers, but all were regular and active users of email, and most used the Internet directly and frequently, for media and other sources. Now it is the era of information. We get lots of information from personal networking, and university organizations overseas, which always conduct workshops about the development of universities in the era of globalization. We also get information from the Internet, and journals of higher education, which can give us perspective. Next week I go to England for a meeting of Indonesian rectors on university management. We have been invited by the British Council. (Usman Chatib Warsa, Rector, Universitas Indonesia) The trick, of course, is to filter out what’s good and useful. You have to be careful not to be too driven by your own prejudices. To some extent you talk to people with whom you’re comfortable. So it’s a matter of trying to step away from that and think about different ways of doing things. (Stuart McCutcheon, Vice-Chancellor, University of Auckland) It’s absolutely astonishing how much one now draws information from all over the world in making any decision about any aspect of the university … I’m old enough to remember when travel was quite exotic, when colleagues would come back with slides from some remote place. In the small town where I grew up, you would have the high school auditorium filled with travelogue presentations, where some individual would present a speech and show slides. This was remarkable and highly entertaining, and would keep an audience spellbound. And now of course airplane travel is not a romantic or glamorous luxury, it’s a nuisance, a necessary nuisance. Electronic communi- cation occurs instantly, and you have information and embedded slideshows on every imaginable structure and institution. You can do a virtual tour of half the universities of the US. (David Naylor, President, University of Toronto) The leaders saw it as being crucial to maintain an open outlook, imagining what was a potentially very heterogeneous set of strategic options, which created issues of monitoring and selection: “Our fundamental problem is that we try to do too much” (Stuart McCutcheon, Vice-Chancellor, University of Auckland). Several presidents emphasized strategic focus, but only the National University of Singapore (NUS), with its fully crafted global strategy, replete with active portfolios in each selected
- 36. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 13 part of the world, seemed fully on top of this problem. Another problem mentioned by some presidents was the lack of discretionary time in which to imagine, speculate and explore the different strategic options. Figure 1. Shaping of the global dimension by nations and institutions. Understandings of Globalization The most common definition of globalization used by the presidents referred to convergence and integration on a world-scale. In particular, the communicative aspect was emphasized: Globalization, to me in general terms, is the increasing convergence and inter- dependence of economies. In higher education globalization is the increasing convergence and interdependence of higher education systems. (Frans van Vught, Rector, University of Twente, Netherlands) The term “globalization” connotes an array of outcomes going far beyond the conventional view of closely linked world markets. In tandem, leaps of techno- logy and the Internet have shrunk time and space as well as levelled the global playing field. We live in a shrinking, flattening world. (Shih Choon Fong, President, National University of Singapore) The president of the Vietnam National University noted that globalization could not be measured. “It is not scientific, not exact”. It is a “feeling”. Globalization makes the world more connected, more collaborative, more flat. That’s my feeling about globalization. Reducing geographical boundaries. No geographical boundaries. Making the distance less. And you cannot live and work alone. Before you could. Now you cannot. You cannot do everything your own way. (Mai Trong Nhuan, President, Vietnam National University Hanoi) GLOBAL UNIVERSITY DIMENSION Acts of imagination Acts of regulation Acts of production
- 37. MARGINSON 14 A sense of “one-worldism” came through in several interviews. In both Mexico and at the University of Tokyo, globalization was discussed in terms of global ecology. The President of Chulalongkorn University in Thailand stated that: The world will become one. It’s not that countries disappear or that the barriers between them will go away, no. But the system of the world will be more of a unified system. People can reach each other. (Khunying Suchada, President, Chulalongkorn University) “Chula” graduates could be expected to work in many countries and should be prepared for that, she said. Graduate labour mobility was a key aspect of globalization for several presidents. Most stated that globalization created a more competitive, a more open and a more opportunistic environment for graduates and for universities. Half of the presidents noted that global competition in higher education had a downside. Some referred to the 1990s definition of globalization as world economic markets. One president said that while he was strongly in favour of “international- ization”, which was central to the mission: I don’t actually see globalization as a universal good. It has created more problems than it has given value in many instances. For us it means potentially hugely increased competition and a level of uncertainty that adds an un- necessarily difficult dimension to managing complex institutions…. I do see benefits from freeing markets from unnecessary constraints, but you can’t make them totally free. For a university like this, I’m confident that we could survive in a much freer more competitive environment. But if it’s totally de- regulated no Australian university would survive. (Ian Chubb, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University) Similarly the Provost at the University of Illinois, Linda Katehi, advocated “inter- nationalization” as learning from other countries and cultures, changing one’s own outlook, and acquiring a sense of living in “a much larger world”; whereas global- ization was defined in imperial terms as “assimilating others to what we do rather than changing ourselves”. Other nations saw the global expression of their own national cultures in positive terms and they wanted to be more globally influential. The Rector at the University of Indonesia and the President of Chulalongkorn in Thailand, both felt that the positive potential of globalization lay in the possibility of bringing distinctive attributes associated with their nations to the larger world setting. I think the Thai people are special in the way they behave... we are considerate of other people’s feelings. I think that is a unique Thai way. We smile a lot, we are courteous, and we work very hard. Those that work offshore, they are mostly smart and they work hard, and at the same time they have these interpersonal skills that can work with other people. I would love to think that my students also have morals and good governance in their heads and the integrity of being a good citizen of the world. (Khunying Suchada, President, Chulalongkorn University)
- 38. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 15 At the University of Toronto there was a typical Canadian enthusiasm for cultural openness, mixing and cosmopolitanism. Within the case study group this attitude was shared, in more muted fashion, by the representatives from the ANU, Illinois and Leiden. “I think there is optimism about globalization in Canada that is probably greater than in any other nation” (David Naylor, President, University of Toronto). However, global openness was often seen as threatening for non English speaking cultures (see below). The Global Higher Education Sector The global dimension was imagined, above all, as a sphere of comparison. Perhaps the most important single influence in shaping the global sector was university rankings, except in the USA and Mexico. A bad global ranking hurt the university in the halls of national government, although a good ranking did not necessarily strengthen the university’s position with government. At Chulalongkorn in Thailand a high ranking in the Times Higher table one year (121) might even have contri- buted to the university’s continued funding problems. Yeah, that’s what they said. Even though we don’t give Chula lots of money they can still do well, they can survive. Don’t worry about them. (Khunying Suchada, President, Chulalongkorn University) In Malaysia, a declining ranking in the same Times collection generated public disquiet and may have contributed to the decision of the government not to reappoint the vice-chancellor, which the vice-chancellor himself felt was the case. Some presidents focused on the biases inherent in the rankings process, but regardless, they fed a strategic approach to rankings into their internal priorities and their incentive and reporting systems. Notwithstanding the methodological and political problems with rankings, it was generally accepted that they could not be ignored. A few presidents emphasized the need for a greater steering capacity in relation to academic units and behaviour, so as to promote global activity. This was a particular concern for President Takeshi Sasaki at the University of Tokyo. However, most respondents seemed to be generally comfortable about their capacity to influence the international activities of the university. When considering the global dimension of higher education as a whole, all the leaders emphasized the standing and influence of the American sector. When asked to name the institutions that most impressed them as models, they listed such institutions as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley and/or the University of California system as a whole, and sometimes large public research universities, such as Wisconsin. Cambridge in the UK was also mentioned several times. The major European universities were rarely acknowledged by name, except by the Rector at Leiden. In the non-English speaking countries in Asia there was a strong desire, albeit expressed in general terms, to source models of universities from Europe (especially Germany) as well as the USA/UK.
- 39. MARGINSON 16 It was generally agreed across the whole study that the Chinese research univer- sities would succeed in their ambition to develop as world-leading institutions. There was also general agreement that the NUS was particularly impressive, not just in its international work, but in all other aspects and nearly every other university had an active partnership with this institution. One university in the group that appeared to be highly internationalized, in terms of the volume and intensity of its global networking, was Illinois in the USA. Illinois had just negotiated a major agreement with the NUS and its leaders sang the praises of the Singapore institution. The National University of Singapore was unique in the extent to which it had devised a detailed global strategy and was implementing it, and in the degree of emphasis placed on the global factors in university development. This advanced global orientation was a function of Singapore’s own position as a nation: Singapore is a tiny island with some big neighbours, e.g. Australia, China, India, Indonesia and Japan. With no retreat or hinterland, globalization is not an option but a necessity for Singapore. We have no choice but to think “global”, breathe “global” and to be “global”. We constantly have to ask ourselves: “How can we build mutual respect?” “How can we be useful and relevant to the world?” … Singapore was global before the term “globalization” became fashionable…. In a global economy characterized by intense com- petition for talent, ideas and capital, Singapore’s universities have also had to re-make themselves to stay relevant and thrive… the NUS has undergone a dramatic transformation, from a predominantly teaching institution training competent manpower for Singapore, to a research-intensive university respected in the global arena, and from a governance and management system closely aligned to the civil service to one based on performance and global best practice. (Shih Choon Fong, President, National University of Singapore) The universities generally preferred to network actively with like-missioned insti- tutions in other countries of roughly equivalent status to themselves, that is, with other universities of the type researched in the study - leading universities in the state/national/public sector. At the same time all the non-American universities were conscious on global inequalities, which had two vectors. One was linguistic and cultural, the other was understood in terms of political economy. In relation to cultural aspects of globalization, the presidents from non English- speaking countries were concerned about the dominance of the Anglo-American world in higher education. Most stated that rankings criteria favoured the USA. Q. What do you understand by the term globalization? A. The unification of culture by the United States. It’s a very bad aspect of the present phenomenon of globalization. The idea of globalization should mean that all people can access the Internet equally. Japan is an advanced, developed country. We have a completely different culture from the Western world. I think this is quite special. (Hiroshi Komiyama, Executive Vice- President, University of Tokyo)
- 40. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 17 Globalization has brought Indonesia into a big arena where the countries become borderless… globalization comes into all countries. The problems are different from country to country. Other countries may be more prepared than Indonesia in facing globalization. If Indonesia is not prepared, the country will become the consumer of developed countries… Western culture can now easily come into Indonesia. (Usman Chatib Warsa, Rector, Universitas Indonesia) The President of the Vietnam National University made a similar point about the openness of Vietnam to American media and the potential for regressive cultural transformation, especially in the rural areas and among the uneducated. However, he was less worried about the potential dangers for the university, with its longer history of cross-border flows. The economic form of inequality was stressed by the interviewees from each of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Mexico. In this regard, in Indonesia and Vietnam the universities could not afford subscriptions to basic journals. In Malaysia, which saw itself as an emerging economy, the financial firepower of Singapore was a constant reminder that the university was not yet a WCGRU: Globalization [ideally] would be a world without borders. But we must always be aware that in the globalized world the field has not developed this way. The players are not the same size. What will be good for the bigger power may not be good for the smaller power…. What we are looking forward to in the globalized world is that things become freer and things become shared, but they must be shared… if it is rules of the jungle, best man wins, we are all dead. (Hashim Yaacob, Vice-Chancellor, University of Malaya) Globalization affects differently each country and each group of countries. It has a completely different impact in the strongest economies, such as the United States and many of the European countries, and the newly developed Asian economies, than it has in countries such as Mexico, and the effect it may have in the least developed countries. It has an impact that really increases inequities. That has made it very difficult the dialogue at global and internal institutions, because the effects are perceived by government and society in one country as different from the effects that are perceived in another. (Juan Ramon de la Fuente, Rector, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) Relational Geographies Nearly all presidents discussed the strategic significance of proximate neighbour countries. With respect to this, for the Dutch universities European developments were crucial. Leiden itself had initiated the League of European universities, a consortium of most of the strongest research-intensive institutions on that continent. At both Toronto and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico, higher education in the USA exerted the main outside influence on faculty work. In the former, where there was always a choice in regionalization strategy between looking north and looking south, the rector felt that Latin America had been neglected, as very few UNAM students went to Spanish speaking countries,
- 41. MARGINSON 18 apart from Spain. He was hopeful that a small scale regional scholarship scheme might start to shift the field of vision. All of the Southeast Asian institutions net- worked within the ASEAN group. At Tokyo and at the Vietnam National University, the presidents noted regular meetings of East Asian presidents. At the ANU one of the four founding research and graduate schools had been the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Internationalization is important for us because we’re a small country stuck at the bottom of the world with many more populous neighbours around us and if we don’t have good relationships with our region life it is problematic. (Ian Chubb, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University) Beyond proximity, globalization was associated with a broadening of international ties to include most world regions. Thus for example the University of Auckland in New Zealand had traditionally related primarily to the UK. In the 1980s it broad- ened to North America; in the 1990s it belatedly discovered Asia. However, all four English-speaking countries in the study acknowledged that their personnel and students were not sufficiently effective in working in studying in non English- speaking contexts because of language factors. The mono-lingualism of those countries prevented a more reciprocal pattern of people flows and retarded univer- sity collaboration. The spread of facility in Chinese national language, especially, was seen as a priority for development. However, no large-scale schemes to achieve this were underway. ACTS OF PRODUCTION All of the presidents discussed research collaboration, staff exchange, foreign student enrolment, local student exchange abroad, partnerships and networking. But the other universities’ productive global activities were dwarfed by those of the NUS. This university had more than thirty joint degrees, with 19 partner univer- sities around the world and 220 student exchange agreements in 38 countries, with over 1600 student places per annum. Moreover, the goal had been set to send 20% of undergraduates abroad for one semester each. There were also summer programmes or field trips in China, Indonesia, Belgium, USA and Australia. Further- more, there were five joint research laboratories as well as numerous research collaborations. People Mobility Issues Most interviewees mentioned a recent growth in cross-border people traffic, which applied to both official visits, and ongoing faculty activity at discipline level. Individual level exchange has become much more intense and extensive. (Hiroshi Komiyama, Executive Vice-President, University of Tokyo) A diverse student body was universally seen as positive and nearly all the presidents could name the number of countries from which their students had come. At Leiden, the rector, Douwe Breimer, talked of creating “a mini global environment” inside
- 42. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 19 the university, which would expose the student to “different views and different opinions”, thereby becoming “more of a global citizen”. A similar concept was mentioned by Richard Herman, chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. Sending local students abroad for part of their studies was considered to be much more difficult, except in the cases of Leiden and Twente in Europe and the NUS in Singapore, with NUS aiming to ensure that at least one fifth of all first degree students spent a semester abroad as part of their studies. Moreover, NUS had established a worldwide network of study centres and partners with WCGRU status. Elsewhere, the barriers to outward mobility were cost and in the English speaking nations, lack of student motivation and foreign language capacity. Issues related to the global mobility of talent - how to stop researchers from leaving after graduation, how to draw high quality people from abroad, and how to keep them happy once inside the university - preoccupied all the presidents: In today’s knowledge-driven global economy, talent, ideas and intellectual capital have taken centre stage…. The NUS has to compete in the global arena against universities with access to broader and deeper talent and resource pools. We believe that the quality of faculty is the single most important determinant of the quality of education and research. (Shih Choon Fong, President, National University of Singapore) There were many unresolved issues in relation to people movement that affected global capacity. These issues absorbed a significant portion of the interviews. Lack of sufficient money for scholarships for international doctoral students was an issue cited by most presidents. Lack of student accommodation was mentioned at Tokyo and Leiden in the Netherlands. At Illinois there was concern about a recent slow- down in the supply of international graduate students from China - in engineering and the technologies foreign graduate students had become an indispensable compo- nent of the University’s staffing. At a number of universities brain drain and unequal inward/outward flows were burning issues. In Mexico a large proportion of the best doctoral and post-doctoral personnel were lost to the USA every year. The rector at UNAM wanted the government to introduce a “brain gain” program that would bring in high quality academic labour to compensate for the outward movement. In New Zealand, Auckland was losing staff to better paid and more globally metro- politan locations. There was no apparent solution to brain drain at Vietnam National University and Universitas Indonesia given the rates of pay; though some world- class researchers and professors stayed in the country, or returned from working abroad, because of their commitment to the nation and its educational development. A principal problem was the difficulty of attracting and/or employing foreign researchers. Inward mobility was often retarded by national regulation and in some countries this was joined to traditional academic protectionism. When pay rates were fixed centrally presidents had little discretion. In most countries it was difficult for foreigners to obtain permanent employment. The other issue was relative salaries. For example at Malaya faculty were locked into public service salary levels and it was impossible to offer foreigners a permanent position. The best they could obtain
- 43. MARGINSON 20 was a three-year contract. The salary level meant that Malaysian employment was attractive to staff from poorer nations such as Indonesia, and to some extent to staff from India, but has limited pulling power in the Middle East and none in Europe or the English-speaking world. Meanwhile neighbouring Singapore was paying US- level salaries, four times the level of Malaysia, and recruiting vigorously from everywhere including the University of Malaya. In Thailand pay rates were again too low to be globally competitive. In the Netherlands, there was political ambi- valence about immigration. Visa delays were a key issue. In Japan the language factor inhibited potential recruits. This was an open concern at the University of Tokyo which wanted to grow foreign professors. Universities in the settler societies of Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand were more readily accessed by foreigners than were universities in low immigration countries, but the pulling power of the USA overshadowed the others. Borrowing However, global openness had an upside for Vietnam, and to some extent Thailand and Malaysia. It was seen to facilitate improvements in higher education quality. The National University of Vietnam sourced approaches to teaching, research and governance from across the world, particularly the USA. The College of Science has requested the University of Illinois to assist with the teaching of chemistry. We submit the curriculum and subject requirements [for consideration for the Illinois science faulty]. Physics uses the Brown University teaching program. Mathematics has gone to Wisconsin. The College of Economics draws on the Haas business school. We adapt the curricula of the best universities for implementation here. Of course we adapt it to suit our conditions. We also use their teaching technology, with modifications - that’s very important. Also our staff go to the American universities to be trained and learn new ideas… every university has unique conditions and values/ it is not so easy to follow a whole university. But it is possible to learn from part of their activities. For example, in relation to the links between universities and industry, we have learned a lot from the Taiwan universities. For information technology I visit Carnegie Mellon. For social sciences and law, Harvard. For applied technology, MIT. So each university has very specific value. By adapting all of these examples we can make our own pathway. (Mai Trong Nhuan, President, Vietnam National University Hanoi) Global linkages thus utilized could enhance the university, if it worked out as planned, provided local strategic and organizational coherence were maintained. ACTS OF REGULATION From the viewpoint of national authorities, the global dimension of higher education creates a dilemma. All national governments want “their” universities to be outstanding on the world scale. Most governments believe that strong research
- 44. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 21 universities are essential to economic growth, because research powers innovation, and strong universities attract talent, build gravitational power of cities, and syn- chronize the nation with the global knowledge economy. But these economic payoffs are long-term and indirect. Further, good graduates and new research may leak offshore without being captured by local business. Most research becomes open global knowledge. It is impossible to target investment in universities for optimal national returns. Governments may feel that they can better achieve direct objectives by investing in schools or industry training. There is an ongoing tension between the national and global roles of universities. In the interviews, relations between nation-state and university varied from case to case. The extreme case of close fit between government policy and institutional strategy was Singapore. NUS had been engineered as an instrument of national policy, with a principal role in shifting Singapore to a focus on knowledge-intensive products and services, which included the attraction of high skill global labour to the island. The national strategy was focused on global agendas, so that both parties shared an unusually strong focus on the global dimension. I don’t see a contradiction between the global mission and our national mission…. We call ourselves a global knowledge enterprise… We have to be global and national. I see that as the destiny. (Shih Choon Fong, President, National University of Singapore) Elsewhere there was a weaker fit between government policy orientation and university global strategy orientation. A typical concern across all universities in the study, except the NUS, was that government was insufficiently focused on the global dimension of university activity, and its regulation of higher education was some way from the optimal form for global work. The view was commonly expressed that national governments expected universities to perform but provide insufficient support or interfere and cut across the institution’s judgement about global priorities and strategies; or nation-centred regulatory requirements created barriers to global work, particularly in relation to foreign recruitment. All of the presidents indicated a close knowledge of issues related to govern- ment politics, policy, funding and regulation. The national dimension was a natural home for them, one more closely defined and understood than was the global dimension because of their longer experience with it. But the problem was to reconcile and synergize the national and local dimensions of actions with action in the global dimension. This illustrates the point that universities are active at the same time in three dimensions, the local, national and global dimensions. We are in a glonacal era in higher education, in which imagining and production are global, national and local at the same time (Marginson and Rhoades, 2002; Marginson, 2007a) - even though regulation remains primarily national and local in form. In the glonacal setting activity in one of the global, national or local dimensions creates conditions of activity in the others. Universities that effectively coordinate action in the three dimensions, so that each tends to produce the other, will benefit.
- 45. MARGINSON 22 Figure 2. Dimensions of higher education. Thus WCGRUs have to be strong enough in the global dimension to participate in its circuits or flows of activity. They must be embedded in a local setting that enables stable activity and adequate levels of support. And they must sustain investment from national government in a regulatory and policy setting that both enable global activity and maintain and develop reputation and custom at home. There was variation across the study in the degree to which the university and its executive leaders were free to act globally on their own behalf. If the university has freedom it can develop knowledge without limit. (Usman Chatib Warsa, Rector Universitas Indonesia) The capacity of the president (or rector or vice-chancellor) to act separately from the government was enhanced if the leader was not appointed directly by them, but was chosen by the university’s governing body or community. This was true for the NUS in Singapore and the interviewees from Japan, the Netherlands the USA, Canada and Australia. In Thailand, government appointment was a formality after the main recommendation is made at university level, whereas in Malaysia govern- ment exercised direct control over the appointment and this affected leader behaviour. The term of office in Malaysia was three years and although there was provision for reappointment, vice-chancellors regarded by the government as being too inde- pendent were not appointed for a second term. In Vietnam President Mai Trong did not question the process of government appointment, but focused on the need for executive autonomy: When I met the president of Vietnam I said: “I do not ask you for more money. Give me more autonomy”. More freedom. More responsibility. More transparency. More flexibility to meet the requirements of our society and globalization. More autonomy. We have full autonomy in teaching and research. But not in staffing and finance. (Mai Trong Nhuan, President, Vietnam National University Hanoi) Global Local National RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
- 46. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 23 All of the universities had been touched to some degree or other by New Public Management (NPM) reforms instigated by government. In Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan the university had been newly modelled as entrepreneurial and encouraged to seek private funds. At the time of interview in Indonesia and Japan the process of change was incomplete and still seen as in doubt. At Chulalongkorn in Thailand a reform to enhance university autonomy had stalled. New Public Management systems were well established at NUS in Singapore and at Auckland and the ANU. The global freedom of the university was greater if it could generate its own resources at scale and was not wholly dependent financially on government. In all universities in the group, there had been an increase in private income in recent years. But in most cases this trend had been accompanied by constraints or reductions in government spending, and continued controls over government funded activity. In Singapore government funding continued to increase but that case was unique in the group. Cuts to the state budget were hurting in Illinois though this was less of an issue in Toronto. ANU and Auckland were sharply constrained financially. On the whole, private income raising was more strongly established in Australia, New Zealand and the United States than elsewhere in the case study group; though ANU in Australia was not a major player in the commercial international market in which most Australian universities were very active. ANU received special research funding from government. All of the case study universities were partly or wholly constrained in their capacity to vary tuition charges to domestic students, which set a limit on their capacity to be a quasi-private university as imagined in corporatization reforms. Overall New Public Management reform had left all but Singapore worse off in financial terms, especially given the expansion of subsidized global activities. It is ironic that the National University of Singapore, the one institution with especially strong public financing, was also the institution where imaginings of higher education as a capitalist economic market were more pronounced than elsewhere. Global Public Goods One manifestation of the national/global tension was that the university presidents often had a different notion of the contribution of higher education to public goods, to that held by national government. Public goods produced in higher education are goods that (1) have a significant element of non-rivalry and/or non-excludability, and (2) are made broadly available across populations; and are inter-generational in that they meet needs in the present generation without jeopardising future generations. Goods without attributes (1) and (2) are private goods (Samuelson, 1954; Kaul et al., 1999; Marginson, 2007b). Some public goods take the form of “externalities” or “spill-overs”, whereby an individualized good received by one person creates benefits for others who did not purchase the good in question. For example, the training of a technician can enhance the productivity and wages of other workers; the training is partly non-excludable. Other public goods include collective benefits, for example the joint value created by enhanced communication or knowledge systems, where the outcomes are non-rivalrous.2
- 47. MARGINSON 24 Generally governments, influenced by the economic policy constructs of the role of higher education, tend to emphasize the competitive aspect of university work more than the cooperative aspect. This includes activity in the global dimension, where universities are mostly seen as an extension of the nation-state as a competition state. Where public good outcomes are noted by governments, the public goods are mostly understood in nation-bound terms, circumscribed by citizen identity and geography, for example, the role of higher education in providing equitable social opportunities, or contributing to employment creation in local areas. However, the presidents interviewed for this study were aware that universities contribute to more than the mix of public and private goods within the nation, and to more than the competitive position of the nation offshore. For active as they were in research and cross-border people flows, they thus had the potential to contribute to global public goods. Global public goods are goods that have a significant element of non- rivalry and/or non-excludability and are broadly available across populations on a global scale (Kaul et al., 1999, p. 2–3). Examples of such global public goods are disinterested research focused on worldwide problems in relation to the: environment, water and disease control. Several universities in the study - Tokyo, Leiden, Toronto, Illinois and the ANU among others - were extensively involved in producing collective global public goods, with the central element being mostly knowledge, its production and dissemination. Illinois’s contribution to capacity building in the National University of Vietnam, which was granted as being very helpful in Hanoi but generated few pay-offs for the American university, was another example of a global public good. More generally, research universities contribute to global relations and understanding by building bridges between nations and enhancing intercultural mixing, and several presidents referred to this. Most presidents evidenced a strong normative commitment to their work in creating global public goods. For example, there was across-the-board support for research focused on monitoring and managing climate change, regardless of the level of resources of the university concerned. The presidents were personally attracted to the larger purpose embodied in the global role, and some were conscious that it helped to position their universities as players in the evolution of global civil society, thus moving beyond the limitations not only of their own nation-state and its priorities, but of the nation-state in general. But the question that arose was “how can global public goods be funded?”, for national governments are generally reluctant to support extensive work on activities that primarily benefit people in other countries. This means that unless the research university can fund global public good activity from its own resources much of its potential contribution will be unrealized. CONCLUSIONS Worldwide higher education and research is a relational environment in which all research universities both contribute to the environment itself, and work within the positioning options possible in that environment. They can also develop new options. Global perspectives in higher education and research, which are shaped in the
- 48. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 25 imaginations of university and system leaders, are continually evolving and further radical changes in global connectivity, capacity and activity are to be expected. Global strategies have differing space-making effects and they create relation- ships of varying shape. Some open a new global zone of activity that anyone can enter, like open source publication (such as MIT’s open courseware initiative). Others build more bounded spaces within the global dimension, but spaces that multiply, as in the commercial market in degrees. Some global activities involve the same institution moving across or between different country sites, as in transnational education. Some create world-spanning networks with no intrinsic centre; others are grounded, working outwards from a single national location, such as the hubs. Some work with a small slice or corner of the global dimension, such as student exchange with proximate neighbours. A few global moves have been set out to reconstitute the whole of global higher education as a single space, such as e- universities, the process of WTO-GATS negotiations, and global university rankings. The global dimension of higher education is a collective work in progress and there is much freedom for action and innovation, especially where universities act by themselves without direct regulation by governments. If universities are to fulfil their potential in the creation of global public goods, such freedom is essential. However, across the world there is a notable inequality in each of the three elements of university capacity, freedom to act, and national capacity in higher education. Universities need a minimum threshold capacity in resources and ability to act in order to be significant global players. Those with advanced capacity, many in North America, have more strategic options than do others. A primary issue of global public good is the need to develop WCGRUs in developing countries. This is a “glonacal” era (Marginson and Rhoades, 2002) in which universities are simultaneously active in the local, national and global dimensions. That is, action in one dimension can affect the potential for action in the others. For instance, doing well in global rankings may strengthen the position at home with government and local students or a local restructuring of the curriculum might make the university more attractive to global partners. National governments can build global capacity, or strangle it in red tape. Government funding enables local modernization and augments global research capacity. Universities that effectively coordinate action in all three dimensions tend to benefit. In this study those universities include NUS in Singapore, the University of Toronto in Canada, and Leiden in the Netherlands. Some global strategies have been more successful, and will have longer lasting and deeper effects, than others. Much global activity is superficial. Of the global strategies in the table, national capacity building in research can only lifts the relative global position of when it is on a large scale, as has happened in China, Taiwan China, Korea and Singapore. Networks only have lasting effects when collaboration is embedded in longer-term arrangements such as combined degree structures. Of the three attempts to remake the whole global dimension, the WTO- GATS initiative to turn higher education into a world trading system has had only modest impact. Most nations retain policy control of their regulated and protected national systems, for these are expected to generate not just market (private) goods, but national public goods such as contributions to national economic capacity and
- 49. MARGINSON 26 social equity. The second attempt, the global e-universities, failed spectacularly. Most students find virtual degrees unattractive. But the third attempt to remake the global space, global ranking and research comparisons, has changed everything. Some global strategies in higher education are brilliantly imaginative. When they first emerge they can be as creative as works in the arts and sciences; though their originality is soon hidden by all the imitators. Examples are Singapore’s hub strategy, transnational education by Australia and the UK, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranking system which first appeared in 2003, the CHE web-based design- your-own university comparisons, and the Webometrics ranking. Leaders and organizations need certain skills for this kind of creativity, such as having imagination to see the “big picture” and reconcile the different trends, contexts and changes. They need to adopt a long-term view amid the short-term policy world and to hold onto their strategy without being distracted too much by knee-jerk markets. They need to be outstanding macro communicators and interpersonal networkers. They need a grasp of science, culture and business. They need to be cosmopolitan, whilst maintaining a strong sense of their own identity, agenda and goals. They need to be politically astute, because it is likely that national/global tensions will worsen. Good presidents need to be both dreamers and realists. NOTES 1 Further studies are planned in the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Korea and one or two universities in China. A study in India is under consideration. 2 Goods are non-rivalrous when they can be consumed by any number of people without being depleted, for example knowledge of a mathematical theorem. Goods are non-excludable when the benefits cannot be confined to individual buyers, such as social tolerance, or law and order. Few goods are both fully non-rivalrous and fully non-excludable, but many have one or the other quality in part. REFERENCES Enders, J., & De Weert, E. (Eds.), (2009). The academic profession and the modernization of higher education: Analytical and comparative perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer. Hazelkorn, E. (2008). Learning to live with league tables and ranking: The experience of institutional leaders. Higher Education Policy, 21, 193–215. Horta, H. (2009). Global and international prominent universities: Internationalization, competitiveness and the role of the state. Higher Education, 58, 387–405. Kaul, I., Grunberg, I., & Stern, M. (Eds.), (1999). Global public goods: International cooperation in the 21st century. New York: Oxford University Press. King, R. (2009). Governing universities globally: Organizations, regulation and rankings. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Ma, W. (2008). The University of California at Berkeley: An emerging global research university. Higher Education Policy, 21, 65–81. Marginson, S. (2007a). The new higher education landscape: Public and private goods, in Global/ National/Local Settings. In S. Marginson (Ed.), Prospects of higher education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Marginson, S. (2007b). The public/private division in higher education: A global revision. Higher Education, 53, 307–333.
- 50. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES 27 Marginson, S. (2008). “Ideas of a University” for the global era. Paper for seminar on “Positioning university in the globalized world: Changing governance and coping strategies in Asia”. Centre of Asian Studies, The University of Hong Kong; Central Policy Unit, HKSAR Government; and The Hong Kong Institute of Education. 10–11 December 2008, The University of Hong Kong. Retrieved September 12, 2009 from: http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/people/staff_pages/Marginson/Marginson. html Marginson, S. (2009). The academic professions in the global era. In J. Enders, & E. de Weert (Eds.), The academic profession and the modernization of higher education: Analytical and comparative perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer. Marginson, S., Kaur, S., & Sawir, E. (forthcoming). Higher education in the Asia-Pacific: Strategic responses to globalization. Dordrecht: Springer. Marginson, S., & Rhoades, G. (2002). Beyond national states, markets, and systems of higher education: A Glonacal agency heuristic. Higher Education, 43(3), 281–309. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD. (2009). Education at a glance. Paris: OECD. Samuelson, P. (1954). The pure theory of public expenditure. Review of Economics and Statistics, 36(4), 387–389. Shanghai Jiao Tong University Graduate School of Education (SJTUGSE). (2010). Academic ranking of world universities. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm Stiglitz, J. (1999). Knowledge as a global public good. In I. Kaul, I. Grunberg, & M. Stern (Eds.), Global public goods: International cooperation in the 21st century, 308–325. New York: Oxford University Press. Simon Marginson Centre for the Study of Higher Education University of Melbourne, Australia
- 52. N.C. Liu et al., (eds.), Paths to a World-Class University: Lessons from Practices and Experiences, 29–66. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. MICHAEL GALLAGHER 2. THE ROLE OF ELITE UNIVERSITIES IN NATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH SYSTEMS, AND THE CHALLENGES OF PROSECUTING THE CASE FOR CONCENTRATING PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN THEIR DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA1 INTRODUCTION Around the world there is an interest on the part of governments in the capacity and performance of elite research universities within national higher education and innovation systems (Salmi, 2009). However, the level of interest and initiative varies, and for many countries, the motives are mixed and the measures vexed (Altbach and Balan, 2007). Some countries (notably England and the United States) have well-established elite (talent rich, asset deep, prestigious) universities and research institutes, founded centuries ago in the origins of their higher education and research systems, currently performing at international heights. Other countries (e.g. China, Germany, Japan) are looking to promote some among their existing (including longstanding) institutions to become (again in some cases) world leaders. A few are appraising the international standing of their leading national universities, with some (e.g. Malaysia, India, Vietnam) building at the pinnacle of their national systems new institutions designed to become internationally reputable2 . Elsewhere and mainly in second world economies (e.g. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa), a number of institutions are seeking to break out from national (or provincial) policy and financing frameworks that have levelled-down the performance peaks by distributing the available resources widely, in an effort to raise (or not let diminish in a period of participation growth) overall systemic quality, or for egalitarian objectives or, as in the case of South Africa, for historical redress of systemic dis- crimination. Another set of countries that have previously not participated at the forefront of knowledge advancement (e.g. in Latin America, and Africa) seek now to do so, alongside some former centres of intellectual and cultural distinction (and some newcomers) in the Middle East and former Eastern Bloc countries. The divergent approaches being adopted between and within countries may reflect the interaction of several factors, including the economic strength and development position of nations, the balance of responsibilities between national and provincial jurisdictions, the general quality of their higher education systems
- 53. GALLAGHER 30 and the international standing of their leading universities, and the political trade- offs that are necessary within specific national contexts, particularly around issues of equity. Hence, in some countries the state may be seen to reinforce institutional positioning strategies, and in a few cases may push for strengthening, whereas in other countries the state plays a retarding role, dampening institutional differentiation and holding back the aspirations of the national elite, or adopting the stance that the elite will prosper irrespective of the national policy settings. A major purpose of the concentrating countries is to step up their international economic competitiveness through increased national innovativeness - not only to adopt and adapt the product of innovations developed elsewhere, but also to generate the breakthroughs that provide the foundations of competitive advantage. At the core of the interest in the relative strength of nationally elite universities, is an understanding that the bar has been raised for participation internationally in the advancement of knowledge at a level sufficient to sustain “national” economic competitiveness, or at least boost the performance of enterprises or sectors within nations. That understanding is based on some real lifters of a higher bar including the increasing complexity of research problems being addressed across disciplines on large scales with the aid of sophisticated and powerful technologies, the associated rising threshold of input costs, and the intensifying competition for intellectual talent, particularly in the aggregations often needed for big scientific breakthroughs3 . Often the issues associated with raising the performance peaks of the leading universities in a nation are being played out amid unsettled higher education policy and financing frameworks, including disputation over the sharing of costs and degrees of tuition pricing flexibility, alongside the accommodation of changes in the volume of student participation, whether to undertake expansion in some regions or contraction in others. And these contests are taking place in a broader context of rising claims for public expenditures in health, environment, security and other areas, recently complicated in several countries by the imperative to rein in aggregate government spending over the future medium term, as a means of moving back to fiscal balance following the economic stimulus measures introduced during the 2008–09 global financial crisis. The issues can be hotly contested. In circumstances of expanding tertiary edu- cation participation, for instance, central funders have to make broad trade-offs between scale and quality. In this context, skewed distributions for research-related functions can be seen to divert available resources, without guaranteed or proportional returns, and reduce the scope for achieving reasonable education-related compro- mises. With regard to the allocation of public funds for university research, the trade- offs are more narrowly contested, and the apparent tendency is for competition in a more market-like, yet prestige-driven environment, so as to emulate research univer- sities (Van Vught, 2008). On the one hand, given the inability of any nation to afford an entire system of “world-class research universities”, emulation results in second rate imitation, where efforts are focused more on improving reputation than per- formance, and this diverts institutions from developing the programmatic diversity needed to accommodate varying student needs and circumstances (Meek, 2000).
- 54. THE ROLE OF ELITE UNIVERSITIES 31 On the other hand, the very suggestion of greater selectivity and concentration in the funding of university research meets with strong opposition from those insti- tutions which do not see themselves as benefitting. Although this is chiefly a battle among contending higher education institutions, such opposition can be potent as, in real politics, the relative “losers” (in reputational relegation, even if they are not financially disadvantaged) are by definition more numerous than the probable “winners” and are likely to be located in politically sensitive electorates4 . Regardless of the complaints of governments about the perils of provider capture in prestige- driven higher education markets, their own actions can be captured by political demands to protect weak providers. Consequently, notwithstanding demand pulls, including expectations of local communities for universities to serve their needs, governments can be reluctant to promote or support the strengthening of universities already seen to be relatively strong in the national arena, even if by various comparisons they are not strong enough on the international stage. For their part, the universities that understand how much they need to increase their capacity and raise their performance in order to stay with the international pace-setters, also know they cannot stand by idly wishing for a government to gather courage, because elsewhere others are not waiting for them to catch up. This paper considers the policy tensions for governments and explores options for research universities. First, the paper scans the changing context for higher education and university research. Second, it reviews the traditional roles of elite universities and outlines the main characteristics of contemporary elite universities and expect- ations about their contributions. Third, there is consideration of the arguments for and against the main policy drivers of elite outcomes: system diversification, institutional differentiation and investment concentration. Finally, the options for government policy relating to system structure and steering mechanisms, and for university positioning are outlined. THE CHANGING CONTEXT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITY RESEARCH Figure 1 depicts the range of relations that universities might have within national contexts (Clark, 1983). This is to regard higher education institutions as embedded in common frameworks of societal expectations, regulatory frameworks, and co- operative or competitive linkages (Guri-Rosenblit, Sebkova and Teichler, 2007). Notionally, the locus of power can reside in any of the four corner forces. The academy is here understood loosely as the forums through which scholarly leader- ship is exercised. The interaction of the academy with the locus of power may shift according to political changes, including through the alliance of different forces, such as state-civil society alliances of the traditional European bent or state-market alliances of the neo-liberal school. A key point is that the university cannot be self-referenced, not merely because it is not self-sufficient, in that it cannot sustain itself entirely without external support, but also because its core functions require it to be socially interactive in
- 55. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 56. The fruit is a berry a half inch or less in diameter, bright red when fully grown in early summer, and changing to purple when ripe. The seeds are brown and very small, and each berry contains from five to ten. When circumstances are favorable, the tree is a prolific bearer, the slender branches bending beneath the weight. The tree need not reach any particular size before beginning to bear. On some of the severely burned summits of the Alleghany mountains in West Virginia, 4,000 feet or more above sea level, this tree, when only two or three feet high, bears abundantly. Such trees are probably sprouts from roots of older trunks destroyed by fire. At its best, it reaches a height of forty or fifty feet and a diameter of one or possibly two feet. Trunks of largest size occur among the southern Appalachian ranges. The wood is heavy and very hard and strong. It is liable to check and warp in seasoning, is satiny, and is susceptible of a good polish. Medullary rays are very numerous, but obscure; color, dark brown, often tinged with red. The wood is stronger, stiffer and heavier than white oak. It possesses most of the properties to make it a wood of great value, but its scarcity, and the usual small size of the trees, relegate it to the class of minor woods. Some use is made of it in turnery and for other small articles. It is frequently planted in gardens for its bloom and berries. In such situations it lacks some of the charm which it holds as part and parcel of the wildwoods where its early spring bloom is thrown against a background of leafless branches. Western Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) is also called pigeonberry and sarvice. Its botanical name refers to the resemblance of its leaves to those of alder. Its range covers a million square miles, and the species reaches its best development on islands and rich bottom lands of the lower Columbia river. It is found as far south as California, north to Yukon territory, east to Lake Superior and northern Michigan. It is nowhere a tree of attractive size, and is usually a shrub about ten feet tall and one inch thick. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The
- 57. fruit is blue-black and sweet, and pleasant to the taste if not overripe. Indians in the northern and western range of this tree gather the berries industriously while they last, and many of the white settlers do likewise. The birds flock to the thickets for their share, and though the berries are small, the bears in the region consider them worthy of prompt and continued attention. The berries are generally a little more than half an inch in diameter, and ripen in July or August, depending on latitude. Cattle, sheep, goats, and deer find this small tree or bush a source of food. They do not object to eating the berries when obtainable, but their principal attack is on the leaves and tender shoots which afford excellent browse. Fortunately, the serviceberry is so tenacious of life that it is next to impossible to browse it to death. If eaten down to the ground, with little left but bare and barked trunks sticking up like bean poles, the roots will throw up sprouts year after year, making the service thicket a permanent browse-pasture. Fire is not able to destroy such a thicket, for, when the tops are burned off, the sprouts will quickly spring up with vigor unimpaired. As a source of food for insects, birds, beasts, and men, few trees, in proportion to size and quantity, are the equal of western serviceberry. Flowers, fruit, leaves and sprouts are all food for something. Longleaf Service Tree (Amelanchier obovalis) is by some regarded a variety rather than a species. It occupies in part the same range as serviceberry, but runs much farther north, reaching the valley of Mackenzie river in latitude 65. It is found in North Carolina and Alabama, but it is only a shrub in the extreme southern part of its range. The fruit ripens in early summer and is reddish purple. Trees are seldom more than thirty feet high and eight inches in diameter. A variety with large fruit is occasionally planted as an ornamental tree. Unless the crop of serviceberries is unusually plentiful in a locality, the most of it is eaten by birds which temporarily abandon nearly all other sources of food and give their undivided attention to the perishable harvest which must be garnered in at once or it will be lost.
- 58. Narrowleaf Crab (Malus angustifolia) is one of the wild crabapples of the United States. They are of the genus Malus and the thousands of varieties of cultivated apples are derived from them, or from other species found in the old world which are very similar. They belong to the rose family. The narrowleaf crab is found from Pennsylvania to Florida and westward to Tennessee and Louisiana. It thrives best in open spaces in the forest and is often found in glades and along the banks of streams in the North, while in the South it occurs in depressions in the pine barrens. The flowers are much like those of apple, very fragrant, and in color are white, pink, or rose. When in full bloom, the tree is a beautiful object, and its odor is carried long distances. The fruit is an apple in all respects except size and taste. It is somewhat flattened, and is an inch or less across. It is fragrant when fully ripe, and many a person has been led by appearances to taste, only to meet disappointment. The flesh is hard and sour, and unfit for food in its natural state, but by cooking and artificial sweetening, it is made into preserves. The tree reaches a height of twenty or thirty feet and a diameter of eight or ten inches. It is smaller than the sweet crab. The wood is hard, heavy, light brown, tinged with red, with thick yellow sapwood. It is not put to many uses, but is occasionally made into small handles, and levers. It has been much used as stock on which to graft apples. Farmers who wanted orchards formerly dug up small crabapples in the surrounding woods and fields, planted them in an orchard, and when securely rooted, the apples of desired kinds were grafted on. If successful, the apple finally replaced the crab by spreading its own bark and wood over the entire trunk, until no part of the original stock remained visible. The sweet crab was also employed as a stock on which to graft apples. Sweet Crab (Malus coronaria) is the wild crab of the northeastern states, although it intrudes on the region to the southwest to a limited extent. It finds use in ornamental planting in the region of best growth. It is known as American crab, sweet scented crab, crab apple, wild crab, crab, American crab apple, and fragrant crab. Its range extends from the shores of Lake Erie in Canada, south
- 59. through New York and Pennsylvania, along the Alleghany mountains to Alabama; west to Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Louisiana, and eastern Texas. It needs moist soil for good growth and the best types are found in the lower Ohio basin. In height this tree rarely exceeds thirty feet and it is bushy, having short rigid limbs. The leaves are rounded and sharply toothed, the blossoms generally white and very fragrant; the fruit small, dry, yellow, tinged with red. The wood is heavy, not strong, heart light red, sapwood yellow. It is used for tool handles, small turned articles, and for carving and engraving. Oregon Crabapple (Malus rivularis) grows wild from the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, southward to central California, and is of largest size in Washington and Oregon where trees are occasionally forty feet high and eighteen inches in diameter, but they are generally about ten feet high and form dense thickets. The fruit is oblong, ripens late in autumn, is greenish, or reddish, or clear lemon yellow in color, and rather pleasant to the taste. The tree grows slowly, the wood is hard, and light reddish-brown in color, and is suitable for tool handles. Iowa Crab (Malus ioensis) grows from Minnesota to Texas and is the common crabapple of the Mississippi basin. Large trees are twenty- five feet high and a foot in diameter. It is believed that this tree crosses with the common apple, and produces a variety known as the soulard apple (Malus soulardi). Wild apple (Malus malus) is a European species introduced into this country and now running wild. Mountain Ash (Pyrus americana) is closely related to the crabs. It occurs from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and southward along the mountains to North Carolina. Trees have compound leaves, red berries the size of small cherries, and reach a height of thirty feet and a diameter of a foot or more. There are several forms or varieties, among them the small fruit mountain ash (Pyrus americana microcarpa) of the Alleghany mountains.
- 62. RED HAW Red Haw
- 64. T RED HAW (Cratægus Coccinea) his tree belongs to the rose family, and the genus Cratægus consists of a large group of small, thorny trees, scattered through many parts of the world. They are known by their thorns, but comparatively few of them are known by name to the ordinary observer, and they afford a perpetual source of study, victory, and bewilderment to the trained botanist. “No other group of American trees,” says Sudworth, “presents such almost insurmountable difficulties in point of distinctive characters. It is impossible, and fortunately unnecessary, for the practical forester to know them all, and exceedingly difficult even for the specialist.” More than one hundred species of these thorn trees occur in the United States, exclusive of shrubs. Their bloom resembles that of apple and pear trees. Bees and insects swarm round the flowering trees, assisting in cross fertilization. The various species are aggressive. They force their way into vacant spaces, and their thorns protect them against browsing animals. The wood is sappy and heavy, and for most of the species it is valueless. The growing brambles, however, perform an important service in forest economy. Seeds of various valuable trees are blown by wind or carried by birds and mammals into the thickets where they germinate and get a start under the protecting shelter of the thorns. Finally the seedlings overtop the brambles, gain the mastery, shade the thorns to death, and develop valuable forests. The thorn trees shed their leaves annually. Their seeds are slow to germinate, some not sprouting until the second year. The fruit is worthless for human consumption, but some of it has a tart and not unpleasant taste. It is of many colors and sizes, depending on species.
- 65. No attempt is here made to name or to list the species. Such a list would, for most people, be a dull catalogue of names, and many of them in Latin because there are no English equivalents. A few representative species are given. The red haw, though not the most abundant, is widely distributed, and is probably as well known as any. Its range extends from Newfoundland westward through southern Canada to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, thence south to Texas and Florida. It covers one-half of the United States. In the northern part of its range the red haw is confined to the slopes of low hills and along water courses, but south in the Appalachian mountains it grows at an elevation of several thousand feet. It has various names in different regions. It is called scarlet haw, red haw, white thorn, scarlet thorn, scarlet-fruited thorn, red thorn, thorn, thorn bush, thorn apple, and hedge thorn. The fact is worthy of note that it is well known and is clearly recognized in every region where it grows, though various names are given it. The red haw never reaches large size. In rare cases it may attain a height of thirty feet and a diameter of ten inches, but it is usually less than half that size. Where it grows in the open it develops a round crown. The branches are armed with chestnut-brown thorns from an inch to an inch and a half in length. The bright scarlet color of the fruit gives name to the tree. It ripens late in September or in October, and at that time the tree presents a beautiful appearance. The branches frequently remain laden with fruit after the leaves have fallen. The wood of red haw is of a high character and but for its scarcity would have wide commercial use. It is among the heavy woods of this country. A cubic foot of it, thoroughly seasoned, weighs 53.71 pounds. The tree is of slow growth and therefore the annual rings are narrow, and the wood is dense. The evenness and uniformity of the rings of yearly growth make the wood susceptible of a high polish. The medullary rays are very obscure in red haw, and for that reason the appearance of the wood is much the same, irrespective
- 66. of the direction in which it is cut. In that respect it is similar to the wood of most members of the thorn family—usually being too small to be quarter-sawed. However, even if the trees were large enough, quarter-sawing would bring out little figure. Red haw is a lathe wood. It is well suited to some other purposes, and has been used for engraving blocks, small wedges, and rulers, but the best results come from the lathe. If it is thoroughly seasoned it is not liable to crack or check, though cut thin in such articles as goblets and napkin rings. The turner sometimes objects to the wood because of its hardness and the rapidity with which it dulls tools. This drawback, however, is compensated for by the smoothness and fine polish which may be given to the finished article. Red haw checker pieces have been compared with ebony for wearing quality. In color the ebony is more handsome, and on that account is generally preferred. Perhaps the most extensive use of red haw is in the manufacture of canes. Most of the species of thorn are suitable for that purpose on account of their weight, strength, and hardness. Red haw is not specially preferred, but is used with others. As a source of wood supply, the tree will never be important, but as an adornment to the landscape it will always be valuable, and at the same time will fill a minor place in the country’s list of commercial woods. Summer Haw (Cratægus æstivalis) is a southern species which contributes more or less to the food supply of the people within its range. It is known also as May haw and apple haw. The flowers appear in February and March, are about one inch in diameter, and flushed with red toward the apex. The fruit ripens in May, is bright red, very fragrant, and is from half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The flesh is of a pleasant taste, and is gathered in large quantities by country people for making preserves and jelly. It is sold in town and city markets, particularly in New Orleans. The range of this thorn tree is from South Carolina and Florida, to Texas. It attains a height of twenty or thirty feet, and a diameter sometimes as great as eighteen inches. It reaches its largest size in Louisiana and Texas.
- 67. It grows well on land which may be submerged several weeks in winter. The wood has not been reported for any use. Cockspur (Cratægus crus-galli) may be taken as the type of more than twenty species of cockspur thorns growing in this country. Its other names are red haw, Newcastle thorn, thorn apple, thorn bush, pin thorn, haw, and hawthorn. It grows southwestward from Canada to Texas, and extends into Florida. The largest trees are twenty-five feet high and a foot in diameter. The fruit is dull red, half inch in diameter, ripens in September and October, and hangs on the branches until late winter. Hogs eat the fruit when they can get it, and boys utilize the small apples as bullets for elder pop guns. The thorns are formidable slender spines from three to eight inches long, strong, and extremely sharp. They were formerly used as pins to close wool sacks in rural carding mills. The many species of cockspur thorns are multiplied by numerous varieties. Fence posts and fuel are cut from the best trunks. Pear Haw (Cratægus tomentosa) is a representative of at least ten species. It is called pear haw without any very satisfactory reason, since the fruit bears little resemblance to pears. It is half an inch in diameter, dull orange red in color, and sweet to the taste, but it is of little value as food. The tree has been occasionally planted for ornament, but never for fruit. The flowers are showy. Trees at their best are fifteen or twenty feet high and five or six inches in diameter. They have few thorns and such as they have are small. The tree’s range extends from New York to Missouri, and along the Appalachian mountains to northern Georgia, and west to Texas and Arkansas. It is known in different parts of its range as black thorn, red haw, pear thorn, white thorn, common thorn, hawthorn, thorn apple, and thorn plum. Hog Haw (Cratægus brachyacantha) is distinguished by its blue fruit. The name indicates that the fruit is unfit for human food but is eaten by swine. In some parts of Louisiana the dense thickets produce considerable quantities of forage for hogs. The range is not extensive, being confined to Louisiana and eastern Texas where the
- 68. tree occurs in low, wet prairies. The largest specimens are forty or fifty feet high and eighteen inches in diameter. It is one of the largest of the thorns, and the best trunks are of size to make small, very short sawlogs, but it does not appear that the wood has ever been manufactured into commodities of any kind. The tree is occasionally planted for ornament. Black Haw (Cratægus douglasii) reaches its best development on the Pacific coast where trees occur thirty or more feet in height and a foot and a half in diameter. The principal range is west of the Rocky Mountains, from British Columbia to northern California, but it extends eastward to Wyoming, and the tree is found also in northern Michigan. The fruit is black or very dark purple, is edible, and matures in early autumn, falling soon after. The heartwood is brownish-red. No use for the wood has been found on the Pacific coast. Washington Haw (Cratægus cordata), also known as Washington thorn, Virginia thorn, heart-leaved thorn, and red haw, grows on banks of streams from the valley of the upper Potomac river southward through the Appalachian ranges to northern Georgia, and westward to Missouri and Arkansas. Flowers are rose-colored, the fruit ripens in the fall and hangs till late winter. Trees are twenty or thirty feet high, and a foot or less in diameter. Washington haw is frequently planted in this country and in Europe. English Hawthorn (Cratægus oxyacantha) was introduced into this country from Europe and has become naturalized in some of the eastern states. Thirty or more varieties are distinguished in cultivation. It is worthy of note that, although the United States has more than 130 species of thorn trees of its own, with varieties so numerous that no one has yet named or counted all of them, a foreign thorn has been introduced and added to the number.
- 73. T MAHOGANY (Swietenia Mahagoni) his tree belongs to the family Meliaceæ which has about forty genera, all of which are confined to the tropic except Swietenia to which mahogany belongs. This tree has made its way up from southern latitudes and has secured a foothold in Florida where it is confined to the islands and the most southern part of the mainland. No attempt is here made to settle or even to take part in the disputes among dendrologists as to what mahogany is. There are said to be more than forty different trees which pass as mahogany in lumber markets. Various descriptions and keys have been published for the purpose of separating and identifying different woods which are bought and sold as mahogany. These woods grow on every continent except Europe; but those which pass as mahogany nearly all come from Africa or America. Some are well known, both as to origin and botany, while others are doubtful. Logs sometimes appear in markets and no one knows where they come from, or the species which produce them. It has been maintained that annual rings will separate true mahogany from the false—that the true has no annual rings. At the best, this evidence is only negative and is worth little, since many tropical trees show no annual rings, and yet are no kin to mahogany. Neither is it certain that true mahogany shows no yearly rings. Some trees do not, but others may. The ring, as is well known, is produced because the tree grows part of the year and rests part. In the tropics where growth is continuous, the ring may not exist, but it sometimes does exist, and thus upsets the theory. Besides, it proves little in the case of mahogany which has a range extending from south of the equator northward into the temperate
- 74. zone, where there are seasonal changes. It also grows near sea level and at considerable altitudes, and elevation alone might make considerable variation in the character of the wood. The two most important mahoganies of commerce—leaving botany out of the question—grow in Africa and in America. The most important of the African mahoganies is Khaya senegalensis, and of the American is Swietenia mahagoni. It is the latter which extends its range into the United States, and it alone will be considered in these pages as true mahogany; the status of foreign woods which pass as mahogany will not be discussed. Leaves of the mahogany tree are three or four inches long, and an inch or more wide. They are compound, with from three to five pairs of leaflets. The tree is an evergreen and presents a fine appearance. The flowers appear in July and August, are small and cup-shaped. Fruit is four or five inches long and two or more wide. It ripens in late fall or early winter. The nearly square seeds are three-fourths of an inch long. In Florida the tree rarely exceeds fifty feet in height and two in diameter; but in tropical countries it may exceed a height of 100 and a diameter of eight or ten. The bark is thin. The wood is practically of the same weight as white oak, but is stronger and more elastic. It is exceedingly hard, very durable, and is susceptible of high polish. Medullary rays are numerous but small and obscure. The color is rich reddish-brown, turning darker with age, but the thin sapwood is yellow. It is known in Florida as mahogany, madeira, and redwood. The uses of mahogany are so many and so well-known that it is unnecessary to speak of them in detail. There were importations into the United States nearly three hundred years ago, and it has been coming ever since. One thing about this wood deserves mention: the price has not varied much in three hundred years. Different prices have prevailed, owing to distance from supply and differences in grade and quality; and that holds true today; but for similar grades, the prices have been remarkable for their evenness.
- 75. Florida never figured largely in the world’s supply of mahogany. At their best, the trees were neither large nor numerous, but their quality was good. Cutting of this timber ceased in Florida about three-quarters of a century ago. The islands and the small area of the mainland where the timber grew, were stripped. The logs were shipped to the Bahama islands and it is said they found their ultimate market in England. A few trees were overlooked here and there, and some that were small seventy-five years ago, have grown to merchantable size since. These have been cut, a few at a time, and the cutting is still going on. The total is now only a few thousand feet a year, and one of the markets for the logs, probably the chief market, is Miami, Florida. The logs are small, and are generally cut and brought in by negroes who find a tree now and then, cut the logs, and float them as near to market as possible, and haul them the rest of the way. The scarcity of the trees may be inferred from the fact that the average resident of south Florida, where the range of the mahogany lies, never saw one. In appearance the tree when seen at a little distance, resembles a young, vigorous black walnut tree. China Tree (Melia azedarach) belongs to the same family as mahogany but is of a different genus. It is not native in the United States, but has been extensively planted and is running wild. It is a forest tree in some parts of Louisiana, but is found under pure forest conditions only here and there. As such, the trunk and thin crown look like a forest grown butternut tree in Wisconsin. It is abundant in yards and along streets, where it is often called Chinaball tree. A little of the wood is used. The color resembles mahogany, but the texture is much coarser. Annual rings are clearly marked by rows of large pores, and the wood does not polish well. It is sometimes known as pride of India, which country is its native home, or it was carried there from Persia at an early date. A variety, commonly known as the Texas Umbrella tree (Melia azedarach umbraculifera), has been widely planted, and is known by its short trunk and dense, round crown.
- 76. Soapberry (Sapindus saponaria), known also as false dogwood, is a species of south Florida, and is one of three soap trees in this country. It has no family kinship with mahogany, but the appearance of the trees leads some persons to conclude that they are related to the China tree. In fact, one of the species is locally known as wild China and Chinaberry. They are called soap trees because their fruit has a property which causes water to foam, and the natives of the West Indies once used it for soap. The botanical name Sapindus means “Indian soap.” The tree is twenty-five or thirty feet high, and ten or twelve inches in diameter. The bloom appears in November in Florida, and the fruit ripens the following spring. The wood is heavy, rather hard, and is light brown, tinged with yellow. It reaches largest size on the Thousand Islands, Florida. Another species is Sapindus marginatus which attains size similar to that of the first. It is found in southern Florida, but is not abundant. It grows as far north as the mouth of the St. John river. A third species is Sapindus drummondi which has its range from western Louisiana, Arkansas, and southern Kansas, through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, to Mexico. The flowers appear in May and June, and the fruit ripens in September and October, but it hangs on the trees until the following spring. When first ripe, it is half an inch in diameter, and yellow, but when it dries it turns black. Trees attain diameters up to two feet, and heights of forty or fifty. It is commonly supposed to be the Chinaberry, by persons who judge by general appearances, but the two are not related. The wood’s appearance suggests the heartwood of ash. It probably reaches its best development in Texas where it is manufactured into boxes, crates, and even furniture, but not in large amounts. It is reputed to be a rapid grower, and it may be under the most favorable circumstances, but it is usually of rather slow growth. The wood splits readily into thin strips which are employed in making baskets for harvesting cotton. In western Texas it is made into pack saddle frames. Mountain Mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius) is not a mahogany, and is not even in the same family. It belongs to the rose family, and is closely related to the crabapple; but since it is commonly known as mahogany, it is proper to mention it here. Extensive consideration is unnecessary, for the tree is not important as a
- 77. source of wood. Three species are recognized by some botanists, four by others. All are western, and are noted for their long-tailed fruit. The generic name refers to that feature. The seed, with its tail, is carried by the wind, or it catches in the wool of sheep and the hair of cattle and goats, or the feathers of birds, and is carried far and near. The mountain mahogany sometimes is thirty feet high, and two in diameter. It grows from 5,000 to 9,000 feet elevation, sometimes on steep cliffs. Its range extends from Wyoming and Montana to Oregon, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The wood is bright, clear red, or rich dark brown. It reaches its largest size on the mountains of central Nevada. Another species is known as valley mahogany (Cercocarpus parvifolius). It ranges from Nebraska to Oregon, and Texas to California. Its rate of growth is very slow, and it seldom exceeds a height of thirty feet and a diameter of ten inches. The wood is reddish- brown. A third species, called Trask mahogany (Cercocarpus traskiæ) is chiefly notable on account of its restricted range. It occurs as far as known, in a single canyon of Santa Catalina island, off the southern coast of California. Some of the specimens are twenty feet high and six inches in diameter. A fourth species, or a variety, is known as short-flower mahogany (Cercocarpus parvifolius breviflorus). It occurs in western Texas, southern New Mexico and Arizona, usually at elevations about 5,000 feet above sea level where the largest trees are not more than eight inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high. Vauquelinia (Vauquelinia californica) belongs to the same family as the so-called western mahoganies, that is, the rose family; but it is of a different genus. Its range is largely south of the international boundary, but it extends into southern Arizona where the best development of the species occurs about 5,000 feet above the sea on grassy slopes. It is seldom more than a bush, and the wood is very heavy and hard, and is dark-brown, streaked with red.
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