Global Competitions for University Rankings and its Implications for University

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1 A paper presented at the 2015 Academic Conference on Higher Education in East Asia 2015 November 14 (Saturday) International Christian University, Tokyo Global Competitions for University Rankings and its Implications for University Jung Cheol Shin Seoul National University, Seoul, S. Korea <Abstract> I have provided an overview of some of my academic work related to university rankings and world-class university. The challenges that higher education faces are related to globalization and competition between universities in the knowledge society, and the new environments are fertile for emerging and expanding global rankings. The World-class university is a social response to these new environments at the level of national and institutional policy. However, these new environments and policy initiatives have produced serious dilemmas for contemporary higher education. Academics are suffering from heavy workloads in teaching, research, service and entrepreneurial activities. Their students are becoming isolated from their universities where they are required to pay high tuition. This speech focuses on these challenges and tries to propose future directions for university based on my previous research publications. 1. Introduction The theme of the keynote speech is closely related to the early stages of my academic journey since after studying for my PhD in the USA from 1999 to My dissertation was closely related to institutional performance because my core research question was whether institutional performance increased after the adoption of performance-based budgeting and funding programs. To address my research question, I studied education policy and performance measurement at institutional and state levels. In my dissertation, my main measure of institutional performance was college graduation rate as a measure of institutional performance. The graduation rate is widely adopted as a measure of institutional performance in US higher education because it represents students satisfaction with their university, effectiveness of teaching, well designed financial supports, remedial services, etc. This makes sense in the US higher education context because student drop out is considered to be a waste of public resources and a sign of institutional failure. After my dissertation, I began to expand my research interests into the area of research performance because research productivity is a core concept in the knowledge society and building globally competitive research universities became a core policy at the Korean Ministry of Education where I served about 20 years. I applied institutional performance measures from a research point of view to classify higher education systems in Korea (Shin, 2009a). Also, I applied program evaluation terminology to evaluate the Brain Korea 21 Project and showed how the project contributed to the emergence of research universities in Korea (Shin, 2009b). The classification of the seven universities in my analysis is still valid because these universities are continuously listed in the Times 500 rankings. The 1

2 classification of Korean universities is frequently used in my other writings as a criterion for typology 201 Korean universities. Often, news media and policymakers have blamed Korean universities for their low competitiveness in global rankings. Institutional leaders are scared when it comes September and global rankings are released. However, Korean universities have caught up with leading global universities within a ten year period. While nobody praises the accomplishments of the Korean universities they have stopped blaming them. My next academic endeavor was understanding the neoliberal policy environment of higher education from the historical development of higher education. I conceptualized higher education from an historical development perspective and looked at how globalization affects current higher education. One core phenomena of globalization is borderless competition between universities, and ranking is a single and strong metaphor of global competitions. Simon Marginson (2010) calls the global rankings a symbolic currency because high ranking status guarantees resource generations. I organized an international symposium on global rankings and incorporated my studies on institutional performance in the discussion of university rankings. In collaboration with colleagues in the field of higher education, I edited a book on University Rankings in When I planned my University Ranking book, I intended to publish a series of books related to university ranking. One book was to focus on the world-class university which is a metaphor for globally competitive highly ranked universities in league tables; another book was intended to propose the future of the university after world-class university discourses. My keynote speech will focus on my research work and my publications. 2. New Challenges for Higher Education I examined major challenges for higher education under globalization since the mid-1990s. Higher education institutions interpreted the new wave as the social demands for internationalization of higher education. This internationalization might be interpreted as opening their country to other countries, exchanges of human resources, natural resources, skills and knowledge, etc. From that point of view, internationalization has been in place for a long time, even as far back as ancient Greece and Rome. However, the term globalization emerged after the falling of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s and globalization emphasizes borderless competition between companies and countries. The higher education sector interpreted the new wave as the social demands for internationalization which encourages increased mobility of students and faculty between countries. In addition, another underlining concept of globalization is the knowledge society because knowledge and innovation are considered to be a major factor in global competitiveness. Under this context, more education means more competitiveness. The European countries that used to believe that higher education was for the elite began to change their policy to one of mass higher education when the Eastern European countries began to catch up with former Western European countries in their tertiary enrollment rates. A policy issue is how to provide mass higher education with lower costs because most of these former western European countries are suffering from a shortage of resources. As a response in the public sector, managerialism has been widely applied in higher education practices even in the former western European countries. In addition, these systems began to find resources from other than public taxes with privatization appearing as an alternative approach to provide mass higher education at low public cost. I tried to explain these challenges and changes in a 2

conceptual framework in an article New Challenges for Higher Education: Global and Asia- Pacific Perspective (Shin and Harman, 2009) in a special issue in the Asia Pacific Education Review.

3 conceptual framework in an article New Challenges for Higher Education: Global and Asia- Pacific Perspective (Shin and Harman, 2009) in a special issue in the Asia Pacific Education Review. The conceptual frames are represented as a simple format in Figure 1. <Figure 1> Conceptual Frameworks for Globalization and Higher Education Source: Shin, J. and Harman, G. (2009). New challenges for higher education: Asia-Pacific and global perspectives. Asia Pacific Education Review, 10(1), As well as these system changing efforts, a measure of institutional competitiveness emerged in the early 2000s: namely, global rankings. Although university rankings were developed earlier than the Shanghai Jiao Tung in 2003, these rankings did not try to compare universities between countries because university systems are quite varied and it seemed impossible to compare systems in different countries. However, the Shanghai ranking pioneered a new approach in 2003 by providing global rankings. Since then, many commercial rankings have emerged to provide information on institutional competiveness and also to generate economic benefits from them (I think). Now, global rankings are a very popular political slogan in seeking to reform higher education systems. Policymakers often use global ranking as a rationale for reforming their universities and even targeting certain numbers of universities in top 100. Although not many people trust the internal mechanisms of the global rankings, global rankings have become one of the core policy goals and drivers for higher education in many countries. 3. University Rankings In 2011 I co-edited a book University Rankings: Theoretical Basis, Methodology and Impacts on Global Higher Education where I discussed the organizational effectiveness of rankings as the major theory underlining global rankings. In one chapter, I proposed five major categories of organizational effectiveness (teaching, research, service, student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction, and employer satisfaction) based on the literature. Of these, global rankings reflect only two dimensions (research productivity and employer satisfaction) while domestic rankings reflect a wider range of domains (teaching, research, students satisfaction, and employer satisfaction). Considering these, global rankings are very weak measure of organizational effectiveness. The indicators in global rankings are primarily based on 3

4 research productivity and internationalization of the campus (number of international students and international faculty). In comparison, domestic rankings include a wider range of domains in many ranking surveys. The universities that seek a top tier status in global rankings are much less interested in teaching, especially undergraduate teaching, and community services because these are not major indicators in the global rankings. However, teaching is a critical function for human resource development, and community service is the way in which a university contributes to its local community and its national society. Although global ranking provides some indication as to which universities are globally competitive in terms of research, this dimension does not fully explain what the university is supposed to do in their society. Based on these discussions, I proposed combining different dimensions of domains through a hybridization of quality assurance, accountability, and rankings. The future rankings might be more multi-league, customer-centered, regional, and discipline-based systems. As well as these domains of ranking indicators, there are many discussions on how rankings are calculated, e.g., weights of indicators and calculation methods. We can arbitrarily change the ranking status of university by applying different weights. William Locke (2008) reported that rankers do a lot of simulations to generate ranking tables before these rankers release their ranking tables to the public. I assume this is a way that they can continue to attract the attention of institutional leaders and students. In addition, the way of calculating raw data also fluctuates depending on which counting method is used. For example, co-authored papers might be highly evaluated in collaboration indexes; however, collaborative research is discouraged by fractional counting of publications and citations. Figure 3 shows how the ranking status of leading Korean research universities changes by applying fractional counting of citations. <Figure 2> Change of Ranking Status by Different Measures of Citation Source: Leydesdorff, L., & Shin, J.C. (2011). How to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation imp acts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(6), World-class University Notwithstanding the huge shortcomings in global rankings, national politics strongly 4

5 encourage their top-tier universities be involved in global ranking games. A policy initiative for enhancing global ranking status is the so called world-class university initiatives. The initiatives are called by different names in countries. However, their goals are simple. They seek to build globally competitive research universities that rank in the top 100, 200, and 300 in global rankings. The initiatives originated as a policy decision to reform Chinese universities, then in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and also in Western European countries. In 2012 I edited Institutionalization of World-class University in Global Competitions. This book analyzed the strategic approach in each country to build globally competitive universities and their accomplishments in global rankings. As shown in Table 2, most East Asian countries show rapid growth in global rankings. Japanese universities were very competitive before hand, and competitive research universities are emerging in other East Asian countries such as China, Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong mostly with strong world-class university initiatives other than Hong Kong. However, not many scholars in these emerging research universities believe that their universities are already competitive research universities. The rapid growth was strongly supported by funding programs. Among the three core components of a world-class university proposed by Jamil Salmi (2009), sufficient funding and talented personnel are the strong drivers of these rapid developments in the East Asian higher education. However, one problem is their premature academic culture within their own university. The academic culture should be more open, flexible, and meritocratic. However, academic culture in these countries lags behind western higher education. A core feature in the book is the conceptual discussion of a world-class university. I proposed a concept of world-class university from a comparison with national-class and local-class University. The world-class university is to educate students to be global leaders who contribute to the betterment of human life, their research focus on pure research, and their service for human society focused globally and not bound by national boundaries. I tried to highlight the fact that most national initiatives for building a world-class university do not fit into the concept of world-class university because most national initiatives seek to build a university to improve national competitiveness in global economic competitions. <Table 2> World-class, National-class, and Local-class University Functions WCU National-class University Local-class University Research. global issue. basic/pure > applied. long-term research. by public fund. national issue. Applied & pure. Long & short term. by public/private. local issue. Applied>pure. Short>long term. public/private Teaching. global leader. creativity. liberal arts. national leader. Know. trans & creativity. liberal arts< subject knowledge. local leader. Know trans>creativity. liberal arts & subject knowledge 5

Service. Global>national>local. non for profits. indirect service. National>global>local. non/for profits. direct/indirect. Local>national>global. non/for profits. direct/indirect Source: Shin, J.

6 Service. Global>national>local. non for profits. indirect service. National>global>local. non/for profits. direct/indirect. Local>national>global. non/for profits. direct/indirect Source: Shin, J., & Kehm, B. M. (eds.) (2012). Institutionalization of World-class University in Global Competition. Springer 5. The Future of the Post-massified University The world-class university initiatives push universities and academics to focus on research activities and the internationalization of their academic activities. However, a strong research orientation causes too many problems for education, especially undergraduate education. Professors are not very interested in classroom teaching when there is a strong research orientation. Although the ideal of research-driven teaching was successful in German universities and its successors, it is still a controversial in university practice. In academic research, many studies arrive at inconclusive conclusions on the nexus between research and teaching which means that more and better research does not always lead to better teaching. I outlined some of the dilemmas between the teaching and research from the higher education development perspective in my book The Future of the Post-massified University at the Crossroads. <Figure 3> Higher Education Development and Teaching and Research Source: Shin, J., & Teichler, U. (eds.) (2013). The Future of the Post-Massified University at the Crossroads: Restructuring Systems and Functions. Springer In the book, I explained how the modern university developed its teaching and research functions, then conceptualized the gap between teaching and research based on the conceptual framework. In the early stages of the modern university, good researchers were good teachers because good researchers had cutting edge knowledge that students wanted to learn. However, in the post-massified university, students are under prepared to learn all knowledge produced by the researchers. Based on the conceptual framework, I argued that current national initiatives for building world-class universities mislead university education. 6

7 I tried to explain logically how different types of research (pure, applied, and development) are related to two levels of education (undergraduate and graduate education). These conceptual discussions led me to propose a way to functionally coordinate undergraduate and graduate education and between three types of research. I propose to focus more on education research for better education as well as the conventional three types of research. 6. Concluding Remarks I have provided an overview of some of my academic work related to university rankings and world-class university. The challenges that higher education faces are related to globalization and competition between universities in the knowledge society, and the new environments are fertile for emerging and expanding global rankings. The World-class university is a social response to these new environments at the level of national and institutional policy. However, these new environments and policy initiatives have produced serious dilemmas for contemporary higher education. Academics are suffering from heavy workloads in teaching, research, service and entrepreneurial activities. Their students are becoming isolated from their universities where they are required to pay high tuition. What is more, students are often not confident about future employment after graduation. Business leaders are skeptical about the technology and knowledge that academics produce, and they complain about a mismatch between industrial needs and college graduates competency and skills. At this stage, contemporary higher education is facing the need for structural reform of its fundamentals. With the socio-economic changes caused by globalization, the university as a social institution may no longer fit within the new environment, as many critics argue. Some scholars propose concentrating on liberal arts education in Universities. Most scholars in the humanities tend to strongly support this argument. On the other hand, other groups of scholars, mostly in engineering, business and bio-medical sciences tend to support the idea of an innovative and entrepreneurial university that is encouraged to become more actively involved in generating benefits and maximizing its economic value as a social organization. In practice, most universities try to incorporate both ideas which means that the university tries to emphasize liberal arts education and entrepreneur activities at the same time. Unfortunately, these two are not complementary and may not co-exist very easily. I think that this complexity is the core of the dilemma facing the modern university. I will finish this talk with some comments on the Future of the Post-massified University at the Crossroads: We set out to discuss and analyze in order to propose university ideals for the third wave, but we ended up at the crossroads because the new phenomena confronting the contemporary university are too complicated. Our next journey is to better understand the university as a social system in the globalized society. We can never correctly predict our future, or even understand what is going on in the present world. (Shin and Teichler, p.250). References Leydesdorff, L., & Shin, J.C. (2011). How to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation impacts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(6),

8 Locke, W., Verbik, L., Richardson, J. T. E., & King, R. (2008) Counting what is measured or measuring what counts? League tables and their impact on higher education institutions in England, Report to HEFCE. Bristol: Higher Education Funding Council for England. Marginson, S. (2010). The Global Knowledge Economy and Culture of Comparison in Higher Education, in Sarjit Kaur, Morshidi Sirat and William G. Tierney (eds.), Addressing Critical Issues on Quality Assurance and University Rankings in the Asia- Pacific. n2_chapter.pdf Shin, J. & Harman, G. (2009). New challenges for higher education: Asia-Pacific and global perspectives. Asia Pacific Education Review, 10(1), Shin, J. (2009). Building world-class research university: the Brain Korea 21 project. Higher Education, 58, Shin, J. (2009). Classifying higher education institutions in Korea: a performance-based approach. Higher Education, 57 (2), Shin, J., & Kehm, B. M. (eds.) (2012). Institutionalization of World-class University in Global Competition. Springer Shin, J., & Teichler, U. (eds.) (2013). The Future of the Post-Massified University at the Crossroads: Restructuring Systems and Functions. Springer Shin, J., Toutkoushian, R. & Teichler, U. (eds.) (2011). University Ranking: Theoretical Basis, Methodology, and Impacts on Global Higher Education. Springer. 8

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