THE GLOBAL SPACESome strategic implications for research-intensive

universities, of cross-border flows and global rankings

Simon Marginson, Monash University, Australia(The University of Melbourne from 01.07.06)

‘Leading the Next Phase of Internationalisation’

U21 Symposium, Auckland, 10 May 2006

‘Globalisation’ and ‘internationalisation’

• Internationalisation - enhanced relations across borders between nations, or between individual HEIs situated within national systems

• Globalisation - the widening, deepening and speeding up of interconnectedness on a world-wide and meta-regional scale (Held et al., Global Transformations 1999, p. 2).

Internationalisation takes place in the border zones between nations. Global flows run through the centre of nations and are intrinsically transformative

Cross-border global flows – people, ideas, knowledge, policies, technologies, finance

Four spaces of strategy-making

global

national/local

HEIsnation-state

Inter-governmental negotiations on HE

HEIs as global players

System organization (New Public Management)

local servicing role of HEIs

SITE OF CHANGE

AGENT OF CHANGE

Forms of global transformation in higher education

1. The expanding role of integrative world-wide ‘systems’ that operate across nations and are largely beyond their control, e.g. the global labour market in researchers

2. World-wide tendencies driven by the global flows of people, ideas, knowledge, policies, technologies, and finance that engender changes in each nation (with some variation) and promote convergence and integration, e.g. academic publishing, the increasingly similar approaches to the PhD

3. Parallel reforms by different national governments, under their control, that over time promote some degree of global convergence, e.g. new public management (NPM) techniques

Globalisation, nations and higher education

• Nations and HEIs are both ‘positioned’ and ‘position-taking’ (Pierre Bourdieu) in the global higher education environment.

• Position is a function of the capacity to operate in the global environment, which is unevenly distributed between nations and HEIs on the basis of system and HEI size; quality of resources, especially in research; language; etc.

• Nations and HEIs have a greater range of position-taking options in the global environment than the national setting. There are more permutations and more scope for securing advantage via policy capacity, responsiveness, imagination

• We see the partial ‘disembedding’ of HEIs from the nation. (Varies by nation. All HEIs remain in part nationally dependent)

• There is enhanced and under-recognised potential for global public goods in and through higher education and research

Factors affecting the global options of nations/ HEIs

Position

(nations)

History, culture, identity. Size of system: big nations are less vulnerable, though smaller ones can have global impact. Prior location on world research map.

Position

(HEIs)

History, culture. Size of HEIs (but in some cases can be modified). .Prior location on world research map. National policy, resourcing, system steering.

Position-taking

(nations)

Size of HEIs. Specialisation/ diversification. Policy, system steering, resourcing. Future research capacity. National strategies, including pro-active strategies

Position-taking

(HEIs)

Mission and identity. HEI policy, resourcing (non-government), executive steering, management systems. HEI strategies, including pro-active strategies

Conditions of global self-determination1. Research intensive university

aspect of self-deter-mination

conditions enabling self-determination of research intensive university

strong resources

research capacity

academic autonomy

executive steering capacity

strong global connects

magnet for global staff

language plurality

developcourse ware

agency freedom

(identity)

# # #

potential for path-breaking strategies

# # # # #

freedom as power

(positive freedom

# # # # # # #

Conditions of global self-determination2. For-profit vocational provider

aspect of self-deter-mination

conditions enabling self-determination of for-profit vocaitonal provider

strong resources

research capacity

academic autonomy

executive steering capacity

strong global connects

magnet for global staff

language plurality

course-

ware

agency freedom

(identity)

# #

potential for path-breaking strategies

# # #

freedom as power

(positive freedom)

# # # #

One of the positioning factors: Global hegemony of the USA in HE

• Spends 2.6% of GDP ($11,000 billion) on higher education (2002)

• 17 the top 20 Shanghai Jiao Tong research universities, and 53 of the top 100 (2005)

• 3568 ISI HighCI researchers in USA compared to 221 in Germany, 215 Japan, 135 France, 20 China, etc

• 31% of the world’s scientific papers (2001)

• 102,084 (2004-2005) foreign doctoral students, which is half of the world’s cross-border doctoral students

• 28% of the total cross-border market in degrees (2003)

World scientific papers 2001

USA, 200870

Japan, 57420

UK, 47660Germany, 43623France, 31317

Canada, 22626

Italy, 22313

China, 20978

Russian Fed, 15846

Spain, 15570

Australia, 14788

Netherlands, 12602

India, 11076

Korea, 11037

Sweden, 10314

others, 111755

Top 100 research universities 2005 data from Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education

USA 53

UK 11

Germany 5

Japan 5

Canada 4

France 4

Sweden 4

Switzerland 3

Netherlands 2

Australia 2

others 7

Others: Israel, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Russia, Italy each 1.

The top 20 in 2005 from Shanghai Jiao Tong University data

1 HARVARD USA 11 Yale USA

2 Cambridge UK 12 Cornell USA

3 Stanford USA 13 UC San Diego USA

4 UC Berkeley USA 14 UC Los Angeles USA

5 MIT USA 15 Pennsylvania USA

6 Caltech USA 16 Wisconsin-Madison USA

7 Columbia USA 17 Washington (Seattle) USA

8 Princeton USA 18 UC San Francisco USA

9 Chicago USA 19 Johns Hopkins USA

10 Oxford UK 20 Tokyo Japan

National research performance compared to economic capacity 1

share of world economic capacity %

share of Jiao Tong top 100 universities %

share of Jiao Tong top 500 universities %

USA 41.8 53.0 33.6

UK 4.6 11.0 8.0

Germany 6.3 5.0 8.0

Japan 10.4 5.0 6.8

Canada 2.9 4.0 4.6

France 4.6 4.0 4.2

Sweden 0.6 4.0 2.2

Switzerland 0.8 3.0 2.2

Australia 1.7 2.0 2.8

Netherlands 1.3 2.0 2.4

China 3.2 0 6.5

National research performance compared to economic capacity 2

Nations with research capacity greater than their economic wealth suggests(in order of performance)

Israel, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Netherlands, Canada, Finland, Denmark, Australia, USA

Nations with research capacity about on par with economic wealth

Germany, New Zealand, Hungary, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Chile, France, Hong Kong, South Africa

Nations with research capacity less than their economic wealth suggests

Ireland, Brazil, Japan, India, Portugal, Czech Republic, Russia, Italy, Korea, Spain, Poland, Greece, China, Argentina, MexicoItalics: over 20% of students in independent private sector

Exporters of cross-border degrees 2003 OECD data

USA 28%

UK 12%

Germany 11%France 10%

Australia 9%

Japan 4%

Russian Fed. 3%

Spain 3%

others 20%

Languages with more than 100 million voices world-wide

millions

English 1000

Putonghua (‘Mandarin’) 1000

Hindi/ Urdu 900

Spanish/ Portuguese 450/ 200

Russian 320

Arabic 250

Bengali 250

Malay-Indonesian 160

Japanese 130

French 125

German 125

Another positioning factor: Rankings and the intensification

of global competition• Universities are widely judged by research performance which

is foundational to reputation, and operates as a proxy for degree power and even teaching quality. Now Shanghai Jiao Tong has provided a credible set of data on research performance. The Times Higher data also help to shape reputation

• Marketing (‘we are world-class’, ‘we are a research university’ etc.) is no longer enough - the data must confirm the claim

• Governments/nations now want ‘super-league’ universities. Leads to concentration, stratification, selective investment

• Every university (except Harvard) wants to lift its rankings, every university in the top 500 wants more HICi researchers. This generates price effects

Jiao Tong rankings: weightings

criterion weighting

Alumni of institution: Nobel Prizes and field medals 10%

Staff of institution: Nobel Prizes and field medals 20%

High citation (HiCi) researchers 20%

Articles in Nature and Science 20%

Articles in citation indexes in science, social science, humanities 20%

Research performance (compiled as above) per head of staff 10%

total 100%

HiCi researchers selected universities, 2005

Stanford USA 91

UC Berkeley USA 81

Harvard USA 72

MIT USA 72

all USA combined 3568

Cambridge UK 42

Oxford UK 29

all France combined 135

all China combined 20

Global salary competition 2000-2004 data, various sources, Purchasing Power Parity

nation data year

Professorial salary

USD p.a.

USA (salary only, 9-10 months) 2003-04 $101,000 average

Singapore 2001 $92,000-130,000

Australia 2003 $75,000

Korea (private sector only) 2000 $71,000 average

Germany, Netherlands 2002-03 $60,000-70,000

France, Spain, Finland 2002-03 $40,000-70,000

…but too normative a ranking system closes off strategic possibilities

• All rankings are purpose driven, and they are partial in coverage, i.e. all rankings perpetuate biases. The rankings used so far favour English-speaking science-strong universities against all others. Worse, the Times Higher rankings are a rigged game promoting UK (and as an unintended effect Australian) university marketing

• Little can be accurately measured on a comparative basis aside from financial inputs and publications/citations

• Even when differences between universities are not statistically significant, they are rank ordered in league tables anyway

• The rationale for rankings is student choice. Yet data on research performance, student-staff ratios, etc can tell us nothing about the quality of teaching or of professional preparation!

• Rankings reflect and manufacture university reputation. Subjective opinion-based rankings reinforce the pecking order in circular fashion. This blocks genuine merit and upward mobility

• Rankings might generate a lemming-like rush to poor policy, e.g. research concentrations without increasing research funding

Times Higher rankings: weightings

criterion weighting

‘Peer review’ (survey, not transparent) 40%

Global employer review (survey, not transparent) 10%

Internationalization of academic staff 5%

Internationalization of student body (quantity measure) 5%

Student-academic staff ratio (proxy for ‘teaching quality’) 20%

Research citations per head of academic staff 20%

total 100%

Good rankings are…

• Clean. The data are free from self-interest

• Coherent. The measures do not mix chalk and cheese, and the conclusions are consistent with the reach of the data base

• Transparent. The measures and weightings are theorised, and data collection is an open process

• Purpose-driven. Different purposes and different criteria for outcomes each require their own customised measures

• Informative. Data on specifics, e.g. disciplines, research, are more informative and accurate than wholistic university places

• Customer-driven. e.g. the select your own criteria interactive web-based rankings by Germany’s CHE/Die Zeit