Day: August 4, 2016

Gerard A. Postiglione https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/05/asian-universities-are-rising-in-the-ranks-but-opposition-to-foreign-scholars-could-hold-some-back/ Asian universities continue to stun the academic world. In just one year, four more have joined the ranks of the world’s top 200 universities. Now, almost one-eighth of the world’s top 200 universities, ranked in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-15, are Asian. At this pace, a quarter of the world’s best universities could be Asian by 2040, excluding Australian universities – which some consider as being within the Asian block. Of the 24 Asian universities in the top 200, the University of Tokyo retained its crown as the highest-ranked at No. 23 in the world, with the National University of Singapore (25th) and the University of Hong Kong (43rd) in the second and third slots yet again. The surprise this year is Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, which jumped 15 places to 61st. Also included in the list as part of the Asian continent is Turkey, which had four universities, topped by the Middle East Technical University, and...

William Tierney and Gerard Postiglione http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1832071/vital-role-academic-freedom-creating-world-class-university The international race to have a "world-class university" in Hong Kong has been in full swing for more than a decade. Whether you use the QS ranking, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities, or the UK's Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the vast majority of the top 100 are in the US and Europe, with the former having the lion's share of the top 25. Not surprisingly, other countries are trying to ape what they think of as the "American model". Many observers think fiscal and organisational structures enable universities to be world class. Some of the best universities - Harvard, Stanford, the University of Southern California - are private and do not rely on government largesse. Even so-called state universities in the US get little funding from government any more. The implication for other countries is that their universities should be more entrepreneurial. Universities in many countries have begun to sing the...

Gerard A Postiglione and Philip G Altbach http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130917161309755 Universities continue to position their professoriates for internationalisation. As the heartbeat of the university, the professoriate clearly has a special role in helping to drive knowledge economies. This is particularly true in developing countries with aspirations for closer integration into the global system. However, internationalisation is a double-edged sword for many countries. A university can hardly become world class without it. Yet it wildly skews the balance of ‘brain power’ in the direction of those few countries with world-class universities. In order to get the best out of globalisation, the professoriate in all countries would need to increase their profiles and attitudes geared towards internationalisation. At present, the willingness of the academic profession everywhere to deepen international engagement appears stalled. It would seem obvious that those who teach at a university – the academic staff – are key to any academic institution’s internationalisation strategy. After all, it is the professors who teach classes at branch campuses,...

Gerard Postiglione and Xiaoyu Chen http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160614185825616 As China finds itself inching closer to becoming the world’s innovative largest economy, it looks to its universities to sustain the pace of economic growth. More than a few scholars question whether this is possible with the limited autonomy accorded by the state to China’s universities. China already has the largest system of higher education and more research funding and scientific publications than any other nation except the United States. Top universities can recruit from Shanghai secondary schools, where students outperform their counterparts in 60 OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – countries in mathematics and science achievement. Over the past 20 years, universities have made major changes. The 'iron rice bowl' of the planned economy is gone. After years of studying for free, students now pay tuition fees. Small universities have been merged to create economies of scale. Teaching is more regularly assessed. Faculty research productivity determines promotion. Experimentation is occurring within the curriculum to...