The World-Class University

UNESCO-CEPES Publishing. Higher Education for a Knowledge Society, which is a joint series between UNESCO-CEPES and Cluj University Press, dedicated to substantial research on contemporary trends in higher education.

The World-Class University as Part of a New Higher Education Paradigm: From Institutional Qualities to Systemic Excellence. SADLAK, J. and LIU, N.C. (Eds.).

The volume contains fifteen essays, most of which originated from papers presented at the "2nd International Conference on World-Class Universities (WCU-2)", held in November 2007 in Shanghai, China.
Introduction to the Topic, "World-Class": Aspirations and Reality Checks, Jan SADLAK and LIU Nian Cai
Reasoning behind Excellence and Quality Differentiation To begin, the present-day level of mass development of higher education inadvertently makes it clearer than ever the need to look anew to “academic excellence” and “quality differentiation” at global, national and local levels. While the term that has recently gained some notoriety, i.e., “world-class university”, represents an institutional setting for this development, its definition still fosters ongoing debate.
The very term “excellence” reflects and is an issue of scarcity, that is, not everyone can reach it but everyone can aspire to it. For whatever has been the reason for seeking or claiming “excellence” and “world-class” status, it has become such a broad phenomenon over the last few years – ranging from “tongue-in-cheek” sarcastic observations of a questionable value of such claims to exaggerated statements about the “battle for world-class excellence”, and then to a much-preferred serious analyses of this phenomenon and relevant policy decisions at the institutional and national level. However, it should be pointed out that any categorization is quite arbitrary and carries with it only a limited, brittle notion of “superior performance” which does not fit well in particular regard to a highly complex organization as the modern university.
It needs to be accepted that only a limited number of higher education establishments have already or can realistically aspire to world-class status with regard to their teaching and research performance. Many other universities may be well aware of the international concept of world-class standards, but this knowledge alone does not make them globally competitive. In fact, the majority of universities in the world are not directly concerned or affected by the world-class global competition yet there should be no doubt that such higher educational institutions remain vital as they serve a majority of students and communities present in any tertiary system. It is them who are performing these essential functions (such as serving the national needs of economic and social development by training qualified citizens and workers) among other functions. But as will be discovered in specific chapters of this volume, the world-class university is now part of a new higher education paradigm.
Part One of the book contains five chapters, including “The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities” by Jamil Salmi, “Peripheries and Centers: Research Universities in Developing Countries” by Philip Altbach, “What World-Class Universities Should Not Adopt from the American Higher Education Model” by Kathryn Mohrman, “Elite Scientists and Global Academic Competition” by Nicola Owen and her colleagues, and “The Evaluation of World-Class Universities: Differences between Nations in the Definition of Evaluation Criteria” by Monique Canto-Sperber.
There are five chapters in Part Two: “Implications of World University Rankings for the National and Institutional Research Strategy of Small Developed Nations” by Tony Sheil, “The New Direction of Japanese Higher Education Policy: Tensions between Global and Domestic Objectives” by Akiyoshi Yonezawa, “Strategic Principles of Building World-Class Universities in the Russian Federation” by Irina Artyushina and Vladimir Troyan, “The Restructuring of the French National System of Research vis-à-vis the World-Class Universities” by Bertrand Bellon, and “Strategies Fostering World-Class Universities among Thai Higher Education Institutions” by Kampechara Puriparinya.
Part Three has also five chapters, including “Quality Assurance and Promotion of Excellence in the Swiss University System” by Hans Weder, “Strategies for Developing a World-Class University in a Complex Context: the Case of the Valencia University of Technology” by José-Gines Mora and his colleagues, “Combining Vision, Mission and Action: Tsinghua’s Experience in Building a World-Class University’” by Jing Huan Shi, “Korean Initiatives Promoting World-Class Universities and the Performance of Seoul National University (SNU)” by Gilsun Song, and “The Pursuit of ‘Scale and Focus’ at the University of Adelaide” by Richard Russell and his colleagues.
To some extent, this book not only represents a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the topic of WCUs but could be seen as a continuation of the editors’ first volume on this topic, World-Class Universities and Ranking: Aiming beyond Status (Sadlak and Liu, 2007).