The Emerging Global Research University:Characteristics and Challenges

1. The Emerging Global Research University:Characteristics and Challenges Wanhua Ma Dr. Graduate School of Education Peking University Hma@pku.edu.cn

2. Background of the Research • The Fulbright project: Higher Education in the 21st Century: Global Challenge and National Response • The World Collaborates:30 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 information:www.cies.edu)

3. 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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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)

8. 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)

9. New modes of educational provision under (Gats) • Some of higher education providers act globally like multi-national forms: • Transnational • Cross-border • Borderless education

10. 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”

11. “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 says:“a 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.”

12. Current classification and Rankings • Carnegie’s classification: limitations • Traditional ranking of university: US news and world report since 1984 • Popularity of current ranking: <Times High> and Shang-hai JiaoTong University * Questions need to be addressed: quantity vs.quality, science oriented vs. humanity and social sciences and etc.

13. 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.

14. 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)

15. 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)

16. 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,

17. 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 as“responsibility-centered management” (Geiger,2004, p67)

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. Thank you