The Emerging Global Research University:Characteristics and Challenges

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The Emerging Global Research UniversityCharacteri
stics and Challenges

• Wanhua Ma Dr.
• Graduate School of Education
• Peking University
• Hma_at_pku.edu.cn

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Background of the Research

• The Fulbright project
• Higher Education in the 21st Century Global
  Challenge and National Response
• The World Collaborates30 scholars from around
  the world
• 1/3 from the United States and 2/3 were
  selected among 140 country, those were selected
  are from multi-disciplinary background (for
  detailed informationwww.cies.edu)

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Specific Themes

• Issues to be address for the whole project
• Issues of access, equity and academic quality
• Higher education and the development of civil
  society
• The future of the academic profession
• The role of research university
• The technological revolution
• The impact of WTO or GATTS on higher education

4
Context for the research

• Higher education worldwide, whether in developing
  countries or developed ones, has been under great
  transition with two processes
  internationalization and globalization

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Internationalization

• Internationalization for higher education has
  been defined in many ways. One of the most
  commonly used views is that Internationalization
  is a proactive effort on the part of universities
  to embrace their universal nature by opening
  their curriculum, research, classrooms, and
  networks to the world. (Egron-Polak, E.2005,
  p59), mostly focus on academy exchange.

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Globalization a different process

• But globalization is a different process
• Political, economical and educational.
• Political aspect interdependence,
  solidarity, and development.
• Economical aspect the rules of the game
  in trade or commercial exchanges are influenced
  or affected by WTO and GATS.
• Appearance of regional economical
  organizations, such as APEC, EU and etc.

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What is under GATS for Education?

• In the process of globalization higher
  education is viewed as a service sector of an
  economy (Egron-Polak, E. 2005, p60)
• The question is Could higher education be
  treated as commodity ?
• Currently, only 21 of the 144 WTO members have
  made commitments to higher education and 44 to
  education(Jane Knight, 2003, p91)

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What is for Higher Education?

• Changing the provision
• The emergence of new for-profit education
  providers
• the growth of alternate electronic
  delivery modes
• the response to the labor market
• the increase of international academic
  mobility of students, professors and programs
• Limited budget capacity of the government
  ( Jane Knight, 2003)

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New modes of educational provision under (Gats)

• Some of higher education providers act globally
  like multi-national forms
• Transnational
• Cross-border
• Borderless education

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The emerging model of global research universities

• In the process of internationalization and
  globalization,a new kind of global research
  university has merged.
• Current literature frequently used terms like
  global university, world-class university and
  global institutions

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Economist s oberservation

• In the Economist on Sept 10, 2005, an article
  entitled the Brains Business A Survey of Higher
  Education captured the term global research
  universities.
• It saysa most significant development in higher
  education is the emergence of a super-league of
  global universities of which is so
  revolutionary in the sense that these
  institutions regard the whole world as their
  stage, but also evolutionary in that they are
  still wedded to the ideal of a community of
  scholars who combine teaching with research.

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Current classification and Rankings

• Carnegies classification limitations
• Traditional ranking of university US news and
  world report since 1984
• Popularity of current ranking ltTimes Highgt and
  Shang-hai JiaoTong University
• Questions need to be addressed quantity
  vs.quality, science oriented vs. humanity and
  social sciences and etc.

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Characteristics of global research university

• Changes in knowledge production and in knowledge
  production process- emphasize on research for
  excellence, team work and international
  co-operations, and more on applied side, other
  than philosophical thinking.
• Change of academic profession with university
  becoming more comprehensive, multiple disciplines
  and research focused and becoming more
  entrepreneurial and competitive.

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Partnership and Networking of research
universities

• Like-minded research universities are becoming
  more globally connected, such as APRU. The
  networking of global research universities and
  marketing of education services on an
  international scale.
• Partnership relation between university, industry
  and the government has been strengthened in the
  process of globalization once universities are
  used as a center element for nations economic and
  developmental capacity building.(Weber, L, (2004)
  .Changing strategies for resources and for
  management Financing the research university A
  European Perspective, in Reinventing the research
  university, p186)
•       

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Institutional organization change

• The global research universities have become more
  comprehensive, multiple disciplines, with a focus
  on the development of professional schools and
  research centers ( Eg.in biomedical science).
  Inside the university, new organizations and
  research centers might have nothing to do with
  teaching and learning but research liaison
  between government and industries)

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The Financing of Global Research Universities

• No matter it is public or private global
  research universities, all of them use multiple
  resources for financing federal/national grant,
  industry and multi-national enterprise research
  fund, private donations, income by providing
  direct services domestically or globally.
  research fund,

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Change approaches in university management

• Recruiting university administrators, faculties
  and students worldwide.
• Resetting relationships between university
  administration and professional schools and
  colleges more internal autonomy to schools and
  colleges
• Adopting new approach for university management,
  such asresponsibility-centered management
  (Geiger,2004, p67)

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Becoming more socially involved

• Most of the global research university become
  more socially involved than before, they work as
  links or bridges between the local and the global
  communities in multi-cultural understanding and
  between transnational enterprises and local
  industries in regional economy development.

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Challenges for GRU

• There are many challenges, but to name only a
  few. The dominance of the global markets and the
  shrinking of appropriations from public sources
  for higher education create a hot competition
  between GRU for resources worldwide.
• The tendency of commercialization of the
  academy would put universities and faculties to
  set aside the fundamental values such as
  openness, academic freedom and their
  responsibility of being critical aside. (Zemsky,
  Duderstadt (2004) in Reinventing the research
  university)
• It was also noticed there is a great tendency for
  public GRU to lose their public purpose, and some
  even use public good for private benefit.
  (Zemsky, Duderstadt)
• There is also equity issues , using public fund
  to benefit only a few.

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Thank you