世界级大学的代价和好处

大学要想进入世界级的行列,是要花很大代价的。对获取世界级地位的过分强调,也许会败坏一所大学甚至是整个学术体制。各国在制定高教发展规划中,应采取一种客观而现实的策略,即集中力量建设一些跟本国或本地区的经济社会密切相关的“国家级”或“地区级”的学术机构,而不是一味地追逐“世界级”。     

Defining standards for rankings: An investigation of global university rankings according to the Berlin Principles

The role of universities as the engines of knowledge-based economies drives global internationalisation of higher education. This contributes to a competitive environment where higher education rankings indicate market value. Even though rankings are influential and are used a lot, ranking systems have been heavily critiqued. One of the problems is that there are few if any external checks on how rankings are created. The purpose of the study on which this article reports was to evaluate ranking systems. Within the scope of the study, we have sought to reveal to what extent current ranking systems comply with the Berlin Principles—prepared to create certain rules for rankings, and to ensure that rankings represent quality. A document analysis of publicly available documents online was carried out together with a review of printed and electronic publications on ranking systems. An evaluation form was prepared and used in this study for field experts to fill in. Findings show that ranking systems comply with the Berlin Principles in terms of methodology, transparency, and acceptability at a level that ranges from moderate to low. Overall, rankings do not consider differences in higher education and are not transparent about the processes by which rankings are developed. Rankings should for this reason be interpreted carefully and methodological weaknesses of rankings that can lead to false inferences should be recognised.     

世界一流研究型大学中人文社会科学的作用及发展趋势

当今世界一流研究型大学的办学理念和学科门类均具有文理结合、学科齐全的显著特点。人文社会科学的地位与作用越来越重要。未来人文社会科学在研究方法、研究领域、概念理论等方面均有新的发展趋势,我国高校人文社会科学研究主题也应有所转变。     

‘Profitable for the country’. An Australian historical perspective of the contested purpose of public universities

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the social contract formulated between state and university, in the period 1850–1930. Using contemporary records – for example, legislation, parliamentary debates, university acts, newspaper articles, senate and professorial board minutes, and similar – this article examines how Australia’s early scholarly community contested and negotiated what it believed to be the purpose of higher education, with a sometimes-conflicting view held by the state. The analysis indicates that, from the outset, certain paradoxes have inscribed into these foundational negotiations. Conflicting narratives of opportunity and privilege positioned universities, simultaneously, as agents for social inclusion and maintainers of social privilege. The purpose of knowledge as either/both pure and practical has been another point of contestation. Consequently, universities vacillate between acts of social conservatism and progressivism. These tensions remain apparent in the modern purpose of higher education institutions.     

大学评价体系及其排行榜透视

尽管目前国内大学评价体系还不够完善，但因其排行榜所产生的社会影响关系到一所学校的知名度和美誉度，并且具有增进社会公众对大学的了解、引导学生选择报考学校和社会投资流向、促进社会公众及高校关注高等教育质量问题、推动大学之间展开合作与竞争等方面的作用，因此高校必须重视大学评价及其排行榜，研究和利用它来为学校发展服务。     

Students positioned as global citizens in Australian and New Zealand universities: A discourse analysis

ABSTRACT

Higher education plays a critical role in producing society’s leaders by preparing graduates with the knowledge, capabilities and disposition to appreciate diversity and address social injustice. Many higher education institutions within and beyond Australia have aimed to internationalise their curricula to ensure students achieve capabilities that enable them to contribute to an evolving global knowledge economy. However, the inclusion of global citizenship as a graduate attribute embedded in internationalised curricula, and the processes to achieving this, are highly contested. Guided by a discourse analysis approach, this study explored how Australian and New Zealand universities position students as global citizens in public web pages. Publicly available policy and other text documents on university websites relating to internationalisation and/or global citizenship were collected and screened. Those that met inclusion criteria were analysed to identify discourses and to further understand how higher education institutions describe their plan to advance and achieve global citizenship agendas. Two key themes were generated: expressions of internationalisation policy and global citizenship as an obscured educational intention. These findings are further elaborated, providing an outline of the possible implications for higher education policy and practice relating to the internationalisation of curriculum for global citizenship and its potential impact on educators and students.     

大学战略规划在英国高等教育管理中的作用

大学战略规划在英国高等教育管理中的作用和影响体现在四个方面:(1)在政府的高等教育宏观管理中发挥信息收集与政策导向功能;(2)确立大学发展方向和优先选择发展的领域;(3)转变大学内部管理的权力分配方式,尤其凸显了大学校长的领导作用;(4)转变大学内部管理文化;(5)促进高等教育的分层管理与定位。     

Trapped in university rankings: bridging global competitiveness and local innovation

ABSTRACT

For over a decade, global university rankings have played a growing role in the status competition in higher education. More recently, we have seen a proliferation in rankings of innovation and urbanization. In this article, we argue that while these new measurements bring with them some conceptual adjustments, they draw heavily on existing rankings and embrace the embedded competitive logic. Local rankings of innovation objectify higher education as an element of global competitiveness. Furthermore, we argue that this logical shift is made with the help university rankings that now come to bridge global competition and local innovation; the existing global university rankings are directly used in the composite indicators of local innovation or their methodology is copied. Consequently, political imaginaries of global competition are now projected to regional and city level.     

Reflections on a Decade of Global Rankings: what we've learned and outstanding issues

Ten years after the first global rankings appeared, it is clear that they have had an extraordinary impact on higher education. While there are fundamental questions about whether rankings measure either quality or what's meaningful, they have succeeded in exposing higher education to international comparison. More so, because of the important role higher education plays as a driver of economic development, rankings have exposed both an information deficit and national competitiveness. Accordingly, both nations and institutions have sought to maximise their position vis-á-vis global rankings with positive and perverse effects. Their legacy is evident in the way rankings have become an implicit — and often explicit – reference point for policymaking and higher education decision-making, and have reinforced an evaluative state's over-reliance on quantitative indicators to measure quality. They are embedded in popular discourse, and have informed the behaviour of many stakeholders, within and outside the academy. This paper reflects on three inter-related issues; i) considers the way rankings have heightened policy and investment interest in higher education, ii) discusses whether the modifications to rankings have resolved some of the questions about what they measure, and iii) looks at how rankings have influenced stakeholder behaviour. Finally, the paper reflects on what we have learned and some outstanding issues.     

Learning,using and exchanging global competence in the context of international postgraduate mobility

The paper offers a theoretically grounded analysis of international postgraduate students’ perspectives on the importance and development of global citizenship knowledge and competences while they are studying, and how these are valued and enacted afterwards. It draws on a series of interviews with non-Western international postgraduates during their studies in the UK and upon return to their home countries. It uses the concepts of social and cultural cosmopolitan competences as a framework to discuss the perceived benefits of educational mobility, and the possibilities and limits of social connectedness and openness in the internationalised university environment.     

UNDP and educational development: An institutional policy analysis

The role of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in shaping educational development has been considerable. For more than half a century, the scale and reach of UNDP education projects have been significant, yet have not been adequately researched. For both UNDP and its precursors, the evolution of policies for development and for educational development is traced. UNDP's project priorities in education are considered, as is the role of UNESCO as a key implementing agency for UNDP. The rationale underlying UNDP's recent abandonment of education as a designated priority sector is also examined, as are its implications.     

To be a first-class department in a first-class university: perceived effects of a world-class initiative in two departments in a Taiwanese university

This study aimed to investigate and compare the impact of pursuing top university status on the management and academic practices of two departments in a top-ranked institution in Taiwan. Qualitative interviews, official policy documents, website resources and relevant documents were the main sources of empirical data. Interview data were collected from 10 interviewees, the department heads and four full-time academics in both departments. This study found that departments and academics were required to plan and work in accordance with the university’s overall development plan and the two departments played different roles in contributing to various aspects of the university managers’ idea of what a world-class university is. This should be understood within the unique and complex academic tribes of different subject fields and the deeply rooted dimensions of Chinese culture in Taiwan.     

The nature and implications of the growing importance of research grants to Canadian universities and academics

This paper analyzes a significant but virtually unexplored recent development within Canadian higher education, namely the growing importance of research grants to universities and academics. It addresses three main questions. First, the paper examines why and how research grants are becoming more important to Canadian universities and academics, focusing in particular on the role played by federal higher education policy. Next, it explores how the growing importance of research grants is transforming relations between and among the key players in Canadian higher education and academic research, including university administrators, academics, government, and the broader community. The paper’s final section takes up some of the actual and potential implications of these changes and raises concerns about detrimental effects on Canada’s universities and citizens. Prospects and possibilities for reform are also addressed.     

The problem of student attrition in higher education: An alternative perspective

Student attrition continues to be a significant and costly challenge for higher education institutions across the globe. In Australia, universities cite the importance of addressing student attrition through strategic statements and policy documents, and expend time and resources on the problem. Despite vast expenditures, they have made little impact on student attrition, which continues to negatively impact reputation and revenue. Using a regional Australian university as a case study, this paper analyses a student exit survey to identify the complex and inter-related array of factors that contribute to student attrition. It was found that attrition would be better conceptualised as a wicked problem, which is one that cannot be strategically addressed using traditional approaches to problem-solving. The practical implications of these findings reinforce that current approaches to attrition are likely to fail. Therefore, the wicked nature of the attrition problem needs to be taken into account when developing strategies or policies within higher education.     

Producing global citizens for the future: space,discourse and curricular reform

This article inquires into discourses of globalisation as they are put to use to accelerate higher education’s seemingly ready acquiescence to the demands of the market. We maintain that globalisation operates as a way to reason about space that produces images and narratives of universities, knowledge and students. We focus our analysis on curriculum reform as a way universities materialise the seemingly abstract economic logic of the so-called ‘knowledge society’ at the level of student-citizens, who are to be educated to become economic globalisation’s next agents. In order to locate curriculum’s productive role within university respatialisation, we offer a discourse analysis of the circulation of ideas about globalisation and higher education through intergovernmental and national documents, which take material form in a US state university system’s attempted curricular reform of its general education core. We inquire into the ways space, as a rationality, acts to create systems of reasoning about institutions, knowledges and subjects that furthers the production of a neoliberal global imaginary.     

Nation-building universities in a global environment: The case of Australia

The mass system of higher education in Australia is a product of the publicly financed nation-building strategies of the 1955–1990 period. The nation-building university is now undergoing a three way crisis brought on by the governmental retreat from nation-building and from the funding that sustained it, the stand-off between corporateand academic practices inside universities, andthe need for new strategies in a globalisingenvironment, in which national policies arerelativised but remain important. The crisis isexacerbated by Australia's location on theAmerican `periphery', associated with globalvulnerability and fluctuating economic andcultural dependence. In response the primarystrategy should not be to imitate Americanuniversities, a course of action which islikely to deliver modest returns, but tostrengthen the academic identity andplace-based identity of Australianinstitutions, enabling them to make adistinctive contribution to global highereducation underpinned by a renewed partnershipbetween nation and university.     

现代大学与院校研究(上)——美国院校研究发展述评

现代大学与 19世纪传统学院在组织与管理上有根本的不同。 19世纪传统学院规模较小 ,以联系紧密的学者学生共同体和经验管理为基础 ;现代大学规模较大 ,以科层制和专业化管理为基本特征。院校研究是在大学由传统学院向现代大学转变过程中作为现代大学管理的参谋而出现的。可以预见 ,在中国由精英经大众走向普及高等教育的过程中 ,中国大学也会发生类似的变化 ,也会需要院校研究。     

Anticipated developments: East Africa's private universities and privatisation of public universities in the global context

Abstract

The growth and development of private universities has been one of the most dramatic features of African higher education in the last two decades. Using the three East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as a case in point, this analysis examines the extent to which developments in the region echo international trends, as well as how they illustrate contrasts. The analysis focuses on three key themes: (a) growth and historical antecedents; (b) institutional developments in terms of continuity and innovation; and (c) internationalism. While only relatively recent phenomena, private universities in East Africa and the increasing privatisation of public universities mirror developments in other parts of the world with a longer tradition of private university developments in terms of growth and historical antecedents, continuity and innovation in institutional development, as well as in internationalism. However, there are some situations in which the East African case is exceptional.     

An exploration of the effect of servicescape on student institution choice in UK universities

In recent years there has been increased discussion of the subjective, emotional and sociological factors influencing student choice of university. However, there is a dearth of information exploring what constitutes these feelings. This exploratory paper uses the conceptual model of the servicescape to provide insight into the emotional factors driving student choice. In-depth interviews with prospective students revealed that first impressions really do count. Students are deterred by poor physical environments and excited by enthusiastic staff and students. Most significantly, the study revealed the necessity of a restorative servicescape to provide both a sense of escape and feeling of belonging. This paper contributes to broadening the application of the servicescape model and to a greater understanding of the impact of the environment on prospective students, and creates an opportunity to inform policy by providing university marketing decision makers with a better understanding of what constitutes the university environment and what makes it appealing to prospective students.     

我国世界一流大学建设政策的成效研究——基于双重差分模型的经验证据

在首轮“双一流”建设周期期满之际,评价世界一流大学建设政策成效具有现实意义。本研究在归纳出世界一流大学建设政策成效的评价维度后,收集2015—2019年39所世界一流大学建设高校、57所世界一流学科建设高校的校际面板数据,采用双重差分法构建计量模型,评估了世界一流大学建设的政策效应。结果显示,世界一流大学建设政策的实施在综合实力、学科建设、师资队伍建设、社会服务能力方面对入选高校产生了积极影响,且政策效应估计值具有统计学意义,总体而言通过一系列稳健性检验。然而,少数反映世界一流大学建设政策成效的指标呈现的影响虽为正向但不显著,这反映了该政策效应与政策目标相比仍然存在一些差距和不足。基于此,本研究展望新一轮世界一流大学建设的政策导向:在学科建设上需关注“冷门绝学”,适当增添人文社会科学“色彩”;在师资队伍建设上需更注重“内源”发展,坚持“外援”“内源”相结合;在社会服务能力提升上需注重构建科技成果转化的长效机制。