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2 mai 2012

Are you prepared for the arrival of 'glocal' students

http://www.universityworldnews.com/By Rahul Choudaha. By 2015 nearly 100 million people will enter the ‘consumer class’, denoting those with an annual income of more than $5,000, in six South East Asian countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.
Another report, by the McKinsey Global Institute, asserts that between 2005 and 2025, China and India alone will see their aggregate urban consumption increase seven-fold and six-fold, respectively. This expanding consumer class in Asia will give rise to a new segment of students who are willing to pay for a global educational experience while staying in their home country or region. I call this segment ‘glocals’ – people who have global aspirations, but need to stay local.
‘Glocals’ are characterised by aspirations that usually outstrip both their ability to afford a full fee-paying overseas education and their academic merit to gain admission to an overseas institution with financial aid.
Traditionally, international students go abroad for a combination of reasons, including career advancement, the search for quality education, immigration purposes or to experience living abroad.
‘Glocals’ are different from this traditional group as they are looking for career advancement and quality education without having to go very far from home.
In addition to the limitations they face financially and academically, there is another reason why ‘glocals’ may decide to stay within their country or region. The current increase in regional mobility initiatives and the emergence of new study destinations may retain more talent mobility within the region. By 2015, the ASEAN Economic Community aims to transform the Southeast Asian region into a common market promoting the free flow of goods, services, investment and workers. Despite several challenges, the region is expected to see greater mobility of qualified service professionals through mutual recognition arrangements in seven professions, including medicine and engineering.
In addition, countries like Malaysia and Singapore are expected to attract more foreign students through their higher education internationalisation strategies. For example, Malaysia recently announced that it received applications from 25 foreign universities to set up branch campuses. It plans to reach a target of enrolling 150,000 international students by 2015. Malaysia is already the second most popular destination for Indonesian students, attesting to its emergence as a regional hub. Likewise, high-quality collaborations such as the partnership between Yale and the National University of Singapore, are likely to draw international talent.
Undoubtedly, the number of students who seek an overseas education will continue to grow, and will do so at a faster pace. It is the ‘glocal’ segment, however, that is likely to present the next big opportunity for institutions that want to increase their global profile. The needs of ‘glocal’ students, combined with a changing institutional, demographic, economic and political landscape in an emerging Asia, demand an innovative and strategic approach to engaging with internationalisation in Asia.
Changed internationalisation strategies needed
Internationalisation strategies need to move beyond student recruitment and target collaborative relationships of varying complexity and intensity, ranging from research collaborations to short-term exchanges to in-country branch campuses. Undoubtedly, strategies will vary according to the priorities and resources of institutions, but all higher education institutions need to be prepared to adapt to a major shift in student profiles, and corresponding engagement strategies with Asia. To sum up, a new group of students is emerging and they have global aspirations but will find more opportunities for education and employment mobility within their regions. This presents a vital opportunity for foreign institutions, who need to understand ‘glocals’ and strategically engage with them through innovative institutional collaborations. As the US psychologist Arnold Glasgow rightly said: “The trouble with the future is that is usually arrives before we're ready for it.”
* Dr Rahul Choudaha is director of research and advisory services at World Education Services in New York. He is an international higher education specialist with a focus on student mobility, enrolment management, collaborations and quality. He earned his PhD in higher education administration from the University of Denver and edits a personal blog on higher education trends. Email: rchoudah@wes.org.
26 novembre 2011

In the Global Competition for Students, a Country's Image Matters

http://chronicle.com/img/global-header-logo.gifBy Aisha Labi.Karen Birchard and David Wheeler contributed to this article. Last year when reports about a possible tripling of tuition for British students were making headlines at home in England, they also became news around the world. International students began worrying that steep hikes were in store for them as well. Their concerns intensified when the British government said it was tightening student-visa rules and eliminating the right to work after graduation.
What those students didn't know was that those changes would have little effect on many of them. But in a world where social media move faster than government clarifications, the damage had been done; Britain was gaining a reputation abroad as an unwelcoming place. And the higher-education establishment had to scramble to set the record straight.
Open Doors

As global competition for international students intensifies, reacting swiftly to news coverage as well as to actual changes in government policy has become an essential part of successful international-recruitment. Perceptions, even when flawed, can quickly affect reality, and for leading destination countries, that can translate into lost revenue. Australia, where international student recruitment declined steeply after an immigration crackdown and a reputational black eye from attacks on Indian students, offers the most telling recent example of the speed with which hard-won international reputations can be compromised.
Only now, some three years after the initial attacks that prompted a wave of negative coverage, especially in the Indian press, have the figures begun to rebound. The number of student visas granted by Australia in the nine months ending in September was up 30 percent compared with the same period of time a year earlier. The numbers rose sharply for students from India and China, two countries where Australian recruitment efforts had been stumbling.
Still, many of Australia's universities have fewer international students this year. The most recent quarterly data show 208,079 such students in Australian universities, down nearly 7 percent from the previous year. In August of last year, the government introduced stringent rules that required many students to prove that they had enough cash on hand to pay for their entire course of study.
In response to a great deal of lobbying and an official review of that policy, the government has begun to ease those restrictions. Starting this month, some students will only have to prove they can pay for two years of their education, instead of three, which is the normal duration for an undergraduate degree. The government also says that, beginning next year, it will streamline student-visa processing for many students and ease restrictions on how much students can work, from 20 hours every two weeks to 40 hours.
Changes Pay Off

Even as Australia struggles to regain lost ground in international-student recruitment, others have seized new opportunities. Canada has moved decisively, both at the federal and provincial level, to increase marketing abroad, streamline recruitment efforts, and make the application process easier. The changes are paying off. Canada's public-university system has seen an 11-percent increase in international enrollments over last year, to more than 100,000 students. At many universities, international students comprise at least 10 percent of the student body.
"We're seeing a much greater sophistication now by universities in developing internationalization strategies that combine student mobility, faculty mobility, and research collaboration in a targeted and prioritized way," says Paul Davidson, president of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.
"In the past, universities relied on individual interests. Now there's a much greater sense of a strategic approach."
He says a visit to India earlier this year by a delegation of 15 university presidents has brought about closer ties between India and Canada, with more follow-up to come.
Some of the biggest draws to studying in Canada are that both student and spouse can usually work while the student is enrolled and that there's a good possibility of working after graduation and becoming a citizen. The Canadian government has made it clear it sees today's foreign students as candidates to fill projected skilled-job shortages in its well-performing economy. Britain has taken a very different approach, including students in its efforts to cut overall immigration numbers, despite objections from the university sector. It also eliminated what was known as the "post-study work route," which gave students two years to remain in Britain and seek jobs after finishing their programs.
So far the new hard line does not seem to have deterred foreign students. That may reflect efforts by the government and universities to clarify that the crackdown on the visa process is focused on weeding out bad-actor private colleges. And while a blanket right-to-work route has ended, the government is planning to replace it with more focused options for university graduates. While the most recent official figures are for 2009-10 and thus do not reflect those changes, anecdotal reports suggest that enrollments this fall have continued to climb.
In 2009-10 the number of international students in Britain from outside the European Union rose nearly 12 percent, to more than 280,000. This fall the numbers appear to be continuing to rise, says Joanna Newman, head of the UK Higher Education International and Europe Unit. "We're maintaining our competitive edge in terms of recruiting."
31 octobre 2011

Globalisation: reflecting on the position and future of UK higher education

http://antoine-dupin.com/leblog/wp-content/uploads/TheGuardian-logo.jpgIPPR's Will Straw looks at UK higher education through the lens of globalised politics, arguing that UK HE needs to remain at the top of its game and maintain its traditional export power at all costs.
Introducing the new globalised regime

The continued fallout from the 2007-08 global financial crisis has shown clearly how economic power is shifting from west to east. While most advanced economies experienced a recession of some kind, many developing countries continued to grow – buoyed in many cases by significant stimulus packages. In its latest report, the IMF projects that advanced economies will grow by 2.2% in 2011 and 2.6% in 2012 compared with 6.6% for emerging and developing economies this year and 6.4% next.
China, in particular, stands out as an economic behemoth outperforming all others. It has grown at around 10% year for 32 years and now boasts the world's second largest economy. Measured in terms of purchasing power parities, China may overtake the United States in economic size within five years. The country is now the world's largest exporter of goods and the second largest importer. It contributed a staggering 18% of global growth in 2009 – more even than the US.
The good position of the UK

These extraordinary figures are viewed by many in the west as a threat to the current levels of prosperity. But globalisation is not a zero-sum game and the rise of China (and the rest) presents a huge opportunity for the UK. McKinsey predicts that annual spending by the global middle class will rise from $6.9tn today to $20tn over the next decade. Much of this will come in the form of increased demand for consumer goods such as cars, household appliances and electronics, where Britain is poorly placed. But some of this increased demand will be met by services too.
The UK currently runs a trade deficit, with imports outpacing exports by around £50bn per year – just over 3% of GDP. But this masks a markedly different performance between goods and services. While Britain runs a huge deficit in relation to goods, it runs a modest surplus on services. Indeed, the value of services exports grew twice as fast goods exports from 1998 to 2008 and the UK is the second biggest exporter of services after the US.
A globalised service asset: UK HE in demand

An important part of this growth has been due to higher education. Higher education institutions are worth £59bn to the UK economy annually and are a major export earner. Last year they brought in £5.3bn or around 3% of all services exports. Through their international activities, these universities are one of the UK's fastest growing sources of export earnings with the number of students coming to the UK growing fast. In 2008-09, there were just under 370,000 foreign students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate level degrees at UK universities – up 16% over five years.
Reflecting wider shifts in the global economy, the top two countries of origin for these students are China and India. In 2008-09, more than 47,000 came from China while 34,000 came from India. In 2007, the UK was the second top destination for international students after the US. And while the US had slipped back from providing a quarter of all international places in 2000 to 19.7% in 2007, the UK had held firm with 11.6%. Meanwhile, Universities UK is quite rightly encouraging Britain's universities to export our HE provision to these countries and others by setting up campuses overseas. The reason for this strong performance is clear. The UK is home to three of the world's top 10 higher education institutions and 29 of the top 200 as judged by the Times Higher Education Supplement. Only the US, which dominates the list, does better.
Attracting international students: risks and challenges

Nonetheless Britain's status as a leading destination for international students is under threat and faces four key risks. First, Britain's HE performance against international standards is slipping. As recently as 2008, the UK had four universities in the top 10 while in 2007, Cambridge and Oxford were tied for second place with Yale. Those ancient institutions have slipped back to joint 6th while University College London has fallen from 7th to 22nd. Meanwhile, despite large increases in higher education enrolments, average increases elsewhere mean that the UK has slipped to mid-table in the OECD's rankings and is now below the average.
Second, the government's tighter visa regime is likely to reduce the number of students coming to the UK to study. The UK government proposes reducing net migration from its current level of around 240,000 to "tens of thousands". The burden of this reduction is likely to take place through restrictions on non-EU work, family and student migration. The Migration Advisory Committee has suggested that to achieve their target, net migration via student routes will have to fall by almost 88,000 a year by 2015.
Analysis from the Institute for Public Policy Research shows that even halving the number of student visas from outside the European Economic Area will only reduce net migration by about 40,000. This is because seven in 10 students return to their country of origin after completing their degrees (and so don't show up in the net migration figures). Much of this anticipated squeeze will undoubtedly fall on countries where growth is expanding most rapidly. The only hope is that the government abandons its unachievable target when it realises the damage it is placing on our HE sector.
Third, Britain's total spending on higher education lags many other countries in the rich world. While spending rose from 1% of GDP in 2000 to 1.3% in 2007, it is still below the OECD average of 1.5%. Indeed, the US, which unsurprisingly tops the list, spent 3.1% of GDP. And while overall expenditure has risen, public spending has fallen. According to the OECD, the UK government spent 0.7% of GDP on higher education in 2000 but just 0.5% in 2007. This represented a fall in the share of HE funding contributed by the state from 68% in 2000 to 36% in 2007. This trend is set to continue with all of the additional tuition fee income following the Browne review being used to replace cuts to the government's overall higher education budget. The 2010 spending review, for example, outlined cuts to teaching budgets of 40% with public support for arts and humanities cut to virtually zero. It will be unclear until the new fees regime has had time to bed down whether the increased fees are enough to cover the government cuts.
Fourth, and related, there is a danger that the lived experience of international students in the UK goes backwards. Even before the government's recent reforms, the student visa regime placed huge strain on the experience of students looking to earn a degree in the UK. Those coming from outside the EU are expected to prove independent means by showing that they have over £7,000 in a bank account and to pay an administrative fee of at least £255 for the privilege of gaining a visa. Making this system more onerous is likely to harm further the impression that international students have of the UK as a place to study.
International students may also find that their facilities are squeezed as universities respond to increasingly assertive domestic students who have to pay fees of £9,000 per year. In many universities, international students are already treated like second-class citizens in relation to student accommodation and facilities. There is a grave risk that this will become the norm. If allowed to flourish, higher education can continue to become an important part of the UK's economic response to globalisation. The UK's universities are second only to the US and attract thousands of students every year from China, India and many other countries around the world. These trends will continue so long as the UK remains a welcoming place for students from around the world. The great concern is that the government's new student visa regime and its funding reforms, in particular, place this opportunity under severe threat.
Will Straw is associate director of
The Institute for Public Policy Research. This is an excerpt from the Higher Education Careers Services Unit's autumn edition of Graduate Market Trends. The full article can be viewed at hecsu.ac.uk.
9 octobre 2011

Tertiary education in small states. Planning in the context of globalization

http://www.iiep.unesco.org/uploads/RTEmagicC_Martin-Bray_Smallstates.jpg.jpgEdited by Michaela Martin and Mark Bray. Small states have in common a number of challenges and opportunities, including in the domain of tertiary education. They face particular constraints in the organization of tertiary education because of their limited pools of highly qualified human resources and the difficulties in achieving economies of scale in administration and management.
In many small states, the tertiary sector has undergone considerable change. Enrolments have grown rapidly, the institutional fabric has been diversified, and technology-based and networked models have been developed. Small states have also been part of expanded crossborder provision, much of it positive but some involving degree mills and other challenges.
This publication takes stock of recent reforms in the tertiary education of selected small states. It presents regional and national experiences from different development contexts. The book concludes with a discussion of policy issues, including sustainable funding and technological solutions to overcome the constraints of small states. It notes some ways in which the challenges facing small states can be turned into opportunities. Download Tertiary education in small states.
28 août 2011

Globalisation and higher education -Rankings as globalization

http://uv-net.uio.no/wpmu/wp-content/blogs.dir/9/old-media/OUlogo230.jpgCHERI’s ‘last report’ has now been published. It is entitled Higher Education and Society in Changing Times: Looking back and looking forward. As the title suggests, the report looks back at developments in higher education, roughly over the lifetime of CHERI, but it also looks forward to the future, to the challenges facing higher education and at the changes that can be expected in the coming years.
Globalisation and higher education, by Roger King
Introduction

The social structure of global higher education, both inter-state relations and the more a-territorial conceptions of global networks and national borderlessness, has become increasingly ‘thicker’ in recent years. Social interaction is now more intense, extensive, and elaborated between the individuals, institutions and states that constitute global higher education than two decades ago. Moreover, policy internationalization and diffusion, leading to isomorphism and similar forms of policy ‘synchrony’ between higher education states, appear widespread and characterized by such models as the New Public Management (NPM) and the Global Research University (GRU). International organizations such as the OECD, the WTO, the EU, and UNESCO have become more prominent and influential in higher education; and global rankings of universities have begun to exert powerful forces on both national states and many of their higher education organizations.
Prominent elements of globalization can be understood as the growth of shared forms of social coordination as the world reconstitutes itself around a series of networks – increasingly interlinked – that are strung around the globe on the basis of increasingly advanced communication technologies. By ‘network’ we refer to an interconnected group of people linked to one another in a way that makes them capable of beneficial collaboration (such as through the exchange of goods in markets, or through the exchange of ideas, or by possessing a common language). The way in which these networks operate, however, depends on the standards, the models - the norms of practice - that the individuals in them share, in a similar manner, say, to how standardized but technical protocols or codes enable computer networks to function.
Globalization is characterized increasingly in higher education by the worldwide dominance of particular models and ideas, which follows a process of diffusion best explained, at least after a certain level of adoption of the model, by social network and normative pressures on agents rather than necessarily following strictly rationalist calculation by such agents. Some models, such as the NPM, become widely diffused across a range of quite different local circumstances. As we shall explore, the fact that social relations such as networks and their standards are largely a function of ideas, does not hide the fact that they nonetheless confront actors (not necessarily oppressively) as external social facts with real, objective effects. Inequality and exploitation exist even when they are constituted predominantly by ideas rather than material resources. The meaning of power and the content of interests in such networks of social relations are constituted by knowledge (including the shared ideas found, for example, in the relations of production in capitalist economies, as outlined by Marx).
Yet it continues to remain important to avoid the perils at the other end of the agent-social structure continuum - the ‘over-socialisation’ that may occur, for example, in some theories of ‘world polity’ where actors are viewed as simply enacting global cultural scripts, sustained by symbolic and other rituals of legitimation, and producing forms of isomorphism and homogeneity within the global system as a direct cultural consequence.
In summary,
1) The global higher education structure predominantly is a social rather than a material phenomenon. As the basis of sociality is shared knowledge we may regard the system as being predominantly structured ideationally and as characterized by a distribution of knowledge – the socially-constituted beliefs and expectations that individuals, universities, and states respectively have of each other. Although material power and interests are still important, their meaning and consequences rest upon the system’s social structure. Moreover, the idea of social construction incorporates what is sometimes referred to as a ‘productive’ or discourse-generated sociality. For example, globalization has been created as a powerful discursive construct, by signs and significations in language. Yet, we retain the view that materiality and realism have their part to play in our social theories, that globalization refers to real observable developments upon which discursive notions of globalization then depend for their believability, as somehow referring to a materiality ‘out there’. Globalization is not simply a made-up fiction. Nonetheless, politicians and others are able to harness the discursive power of such constructs to argue rhetorically for a range of ‘inevitable’ policy directions, for strong or lighter regulation of the banks, for example.
2) The global system of higher education as much constructs agent identity and interests as reflecting them, although construction at the national domestic level remains important for both states and universities. Nonetheless, their identities are increasingly made possible by, and are embedded, in a global systemic environment.
Global sociality

Simon Marginson (2010a), in analyzing the effects on the knowledge economy of the communicative globalization of the contemporary age (‘the emergence of one-world systems operating in real time in communication, information and finance’), emphasizes the importance of agency, reflexivity, choice, and ‘imaginings’ in creating our global spatiality and the projects that both extend and take advantage of it. Both the socially-constructed and the more materialist self-organizing individual – in our terms - seem to be necessary for such an analysis, which stresses openness, creativity, and change. Yet, as Marginson notes, there are also less open dynamics at work in the global arena that a social theory of global higher education needs to take into account. These include ‘strategies of closure’, the attempts to maintain and promote status, power, identity, and material resources by shutting out the competition. Preserving ‘first-mover’ advantages, through instruments of status hierarchy and exclusive ownership (exemplified, respectively, by university rankings and intellectual property), are as much a dynamic of global space as openness and meritocracy. Some of the models and templates that help serve such processes of closure (the systems of research performance evaluation advocated by elite universities, for example) come to possess properties of dominance and marginalization.
The impact of social marginalization and exclusion as forms of power in the current global age are underlined by strong urges held by individuals: to communicate and empathize with others as human beings, to value common understandings, and to desire to be connected socially in an electronically-mediated world. These human attributes tend to produce imitative behaviour of many kinds (or ‘global synchrony’, see Marginson 2010a and 2010b). Simon Marginson (2010a: 138-9) illustrates these processes well (using the term ‘institution’ to apply to what we have referred to as ‘organization’). He notes that ‘imitation is a means of entering systems and signalling empathy with their requirements’. In policy terms, ‘voluntary convergence is apparent in the reform of higher education institutions in many nations to bring them closer to the dominant template, that of the comprehensive, science-based university on Anglo-American lines. This form of institution, which could be called the Global Research University, is powerfully valorized by university ranking systems. At bottom, national systems want to synchronize effectively with each other; the individual institutions want to synchronize with each other; and both want to be seen to do so....in the global knowledge economy all nations, and all institutions, share desires for global capacity, connectedness and success as measured by recognized templates. At bottom they do so because they have been drawn together into the single interdependent system of the global knowledge economy to which isolation is punished and there is no choice but to engage...the spontaneous synchronies of individual scholars with each other, researchers with each other, and institutions with each other are matched by mimetic approaches in government’.
Only the USA appears able to stand apart from such processes but it is the American model that provides the global exemplars, and world university rankings reinforce the strength of dominant models. Yet Marginson’s research indicates that all university leaders value the connectivity of consortia and other networks, often as much symbolically as instrumentally. Moreover, the accelerating conceptual notion of global ‘networks’ provides encouragement to the view that connectivity is vital. However, global university rankings effectively enjoin universities to be sure to connect with those of similar status (exceptionally, as Simon Marginson notes, the commercial exploitation of international student markets sees a relaxing of such injunctions in favour of economic joint ventures by those universities with differential statuses but a potentially lucrative division of market resources that can be operationalized to maximize earnings and ‘share’).
Consequently, Marginson notes that cross-border research collaborations and university partnerships are expanding quickly. He refers to Castells (2000) who describes the dynamic of networks as inherently expansionary. That is, when networks grow, the costs rise in a linear fashion but the advantages outstrip these as a result of a much higher volume of connections. Consequently, the disadvantages for being outside the network expand considerably (we consider this notion of ‘power as exclusion’ in more detail in our later discussion of network power, including as found in global higher education). Following Bourdieu, Marginson highlights the ‘field of power’ in the domain of global higher education which both includes and excludes: ‘the global power of the sub-field of restricted production (in the elite) rests on the exclusion of most institutions and nations from the global field and the subordination of the rest’. Although, as sustained by global rankings and international comparators of research performance, status rather than economic hierarchy predominantly characterizes the higher education domain, nonetheless this can often be parlayed into considerable financial holdings, as found amongst the high-status, richly-endowed Ivy league universities in the USA. But high student selectivity and a global lead in knowledge formation, rather than mass growth, is the key to value for universities in both status (predominantly) and economic hierarchization.
As we have noted, a key concept here is ‘synchrony’, or concurrence, or imitative similarity, which derives from sociability and the urge for meaningful connection to others. Consequently, ‘synchrony is more than simply establishing a communicative link across borders...it is part of the process of imagining ourselves close to those in distant locations’ (Marginson 2010b). It is often based on loose, frequently disposable, and fluid connections between people that are sustained in the current globalization predominantly through the Internet. Global research and science is increasingly ‘synchronized’ in this way despite the close regulatory and funding interest in such activity by national governments. Global model diffusion is not new, of course. Since the Treaty of Westphalia states have long regarded themselves as not only independent (at least for domestic purposes) but also as equal and often quite similar to each other in their ‘nationhood’ (Jakobi 2009). In Asia, for example, where learning from Western liberal democracy and capitalism is long-established, states are reforming their higher education systems to generate more international outlooks and connections as a means of enhancing creativity and innovation, economically and culturally. The Chinese government lays heavy stress in encouraging its leading universities to ally with world-class universities abroad, while Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan are seeking to raise the quality of their higher education systems through accessing high-status global higher education networks. In some cases, such movements are the product of imitative (or risk-avoiding) action by universities; in other cases, national states adopt templates and models from elsewhere and broadly impose them on their systems. The emergence of global benchmarks and rankings serve to reinforce such tendencies.
This global diffusion is hardly composed of independent events as their ‘wave-like’ unrolling suggests high levels of interdependence (King 2009; Wildavsky 2010). As we shall see, the pressures predominantly are normative, encompassing voluntary elements of emulation, learning, and imitation, but increasingly with diffusion of powerful models becoming more heavily and structurally constraining and ‘involuntary’ as a consequence of the sheer weight of existing model adopters. This is not to suggest a uniform convergence; both local conditions and the position of individual states in the world economy generate variations in model adoption and clustering based on location in the ‘world system’ of economic relationships, but the essential ‘DNA’ of the models remain. Although a number of explanations are offered for global model diffusion, such as US hegemonic promotion (although US higher education is quite inward-looking compared to many nations), and technological and politically-induced national competitiveness and globalization, here we focus more on how particular states find their own decisions increasingly hedged in by the prior choices of other states. Particular models and standards establish the means of access to important social networks by setting the conditions for interaction. This is a social process of accelerating structural power that establishes the constraints that strongly influence agent beliefs and action, in ways analogous to the programming of network protocols (Castells 2000).
Global culture

It is useful to conclude these early sections on social theory with a reference to what has been termed ‘world polity theory’ or the idea of globalization as an enactment of world culture, not least because of its applied empirical work in organizational and higher education studies. World polity theory strongly employs a cultural ontology and epistemology (including the notion of symbolic rituals) in both understanding and explaining social reality and explicitly avoids notions of material causality (Boli and Lechner 2009: 332). Meyer (2006), a leading exponent, highlights the culturally and institutionalized embedded nature of agency. In education, for example, schooling has advanced, in a self-propelling and self-generating manner, in all regions of the world. It has become regarded as a sign of ‘nationhood’ (rather than necessarily because it fulfils economic functions) and its rise has been independent of a nation’s ‘material’ characteristics, such as levels of economic development. Formal education has become a global process, mandated effectively by global culture that nations ignore at considerable loss of esteem and standing. It is a standard feature of a global cultural model of the state (Frank and Gabler 2006; Meyer 1994).
Many other features of the modern world have similarly ‘gone global’, such as the widespread worldwide extension of women’s rights, the initial adoption of which originally following pressures from nationally-based movements but which eventually snowballed into ‘a global script’ for nearly all nations once the model became consolidated (Finnemore and Sikkink 1999). Thus, in this view actors (such as states and other organizations) enact the cultural models that the wider, increasingly global culture provides (nations generally claim, however, that such actions follow processes undertaken on the grounds of rational calculation, values, and interest, although this often may be construed as after-the-event rationalization). The result of these global cultural scripts
is a considerable structural and rhetorical isomorphism exhibited by states and other organizations in their organizational structures. Imitative behaviour by states may be particularly noted when they are located in environments of considerable complexity and uncertainty, and where the requirements for legitimacy (an objective for states as they adopt cultural scripts) are particularly strong.
In these world culture models, international governmental bodies (OECD, UNESCO, WTO, and so on) are influential formers and transmitters, as are increasingly international non-governmental or civil society actors, not least the economics profession, formulating and pushing normative claims derived from the global moral order. Undoubtedly, such an approach can be highly suggestive. In the field of higher education, for example, Jakobi (2009:2) evidences recently what is described as ‘the emergence of an international norm that sees the promotion of Lifelong Learning as a necessity for modern statehood’. Jakobi skilfully demonstrates its promotion as tied to other cultural ideas, such as those for economic competitiveness, democracy, and participation. More especially, she regards international organizations (the OECD particularly) as playing a large part in constructing and globally diffusing the model of Lifelong Learning. The result is that ‘there appears to be little choice over whether or not governments address Lifelong Learning issues’; they are compelled to do so culturally. International organizations are thus moving the locus of education policymaking from national to global referents. Consequently, the widespread policy adoption of Lifelong Learning is driven by policy goals found at the global level and appears little if any connected to particular national circumstances. The result is a strongly homogenizing process as states converge around globally-shared ideas.
Although world culture models of this kind are valuable in helping to construct a social theory of global higher education, there is a danger that the agency dynamics of change, innovation, and structural diffusion become over-determined by culture. It is still necessary to explore the processes of power and contestation that underlie global cultural processes and this involves a consideration of global networks and the often powerful role of universalizing models and standards.
International standards

Here we draw on aspects of network theory as discussed above and the observations on social connectivity made by Castells (2009) and Marginson (2010a; 2010b). Globalization is a form of social coordination, expressed in the growth and inter-linkage of networks worldwide. It is characterized by the sphere of sociability and the desire of individuals to interact with each other in networks or run the risk of social marginalization. This includes governmental policymakers and their interconnections, too. Networks are governed by standards. Rather like diplomatic and computer protocols, standards enable network members to access one another. They are necessary to regulate relationships, as members are independent and not formally organized hierarchically. Interdependence occurs, therefore, on the basis of independence. Outside the standards there is no network. The standards are used as structures and resources by agents to constitute the space, the network, through their interactions and thus to reproduce and, over time, potentially to change the character and the power of the network. The emergence of international standards particularly has enabled us to coordinate our actions on a worldwide scale, facilitated by the modern technological compression of space. Dominant standards or models enabling global social coordination – the conventions, rules, norms, languages, and so on – display a form of network power (Grewal 2008). But as well as enabling access to one another, they also tend to elevate one solution (set of standards, a model) for solving coordination problems above others and threaten the elimination of alternative solutions.
When we say that dominant or universalizing models have ‘network power’, we mean that they have the capacity to pull in people who are current non-adopters. This derives from their normative strength as indexed by the number and status of users, an attraction which accelerates particularly once a certain threshold of adoption has been reached. Although the temptation is to use concepts such as ‘snowballing’ we need to be careful here, as individual autonomy – choice - is still at work; adoption is not inevitable or the result of overwhelming – ‘knockout’ – force. Rather, late-adopters come to the view that any rationalistic evaluation of the merits of competing models is almost hopeless as the normative strength of the universalizing model accelerates the disadvantages – the costs – of other standards and models as coordination solutions for networks. Dominant models privilege access to powerful networks as forms of worldwide social coordination. Consequently, network power implies that: a) standards are more valuable when greater numbers of people use them, thus constituting network membership; and b) that after a certain’ tipping point’ or level of adoption of a model, their pulling power to non-adopters gains increased velocity. Such a capacity serves as a structural – a cultural - constraint on individual choice. Such choice consequently feels increasingly non-autonomous (unfree). Such constraints are both liberating and entrapping – the standards provide access to important networks but, locally, they appear as being difficult to influence.
Thus, in the applied context of global higher education, national policymakers make higher education policy, for example, in the context of decisions taken by other autonomous states. And the choices of other countries produce constraints (and opportunities) that can lead to policy convergence and isomorphism through increasingly common model adoption. The models and standards that other states adopt can result in mechanisms of strong structural inhibition. The human search for connectivity and synchrony reinforces the network power of universalizing models. Policymakers are nearly always confronted by structuration dynamics, in which the free choices of individual agents (here, national states) generate structures of constraint which then act back on individual choice.
Of course, standards and models usually are rather abstract and generic entities. It is this very generalizability and transposability that allows solutions to apparently similar problems worldwide. Yet ‘domestication’ and the relative malleability of models do not necessarily hinder the increasing appeal of such models (rather they may enhance it) and the inherent core of the model is generally retained in global diffusion.
Private standards and sociability

Global university rankings especially are establishing influential models that exhibit the characteristics of network power. They confront university leaders with processes of structuration – rankings are utilized by those in higher education for their own purposes and in the context of being confronted by structures over which they have little control but feel forced to take serious account of as having major external and internal impacts. Rankings thus strongly constrain their purposeful options, despite such actors being formally free to set their own courses of action. Yet these very practices then ensure the social reproduction of such structures as key universalizing models.
The dynamics of league table power have emerged, for the most part, through private forms of standardization and sociability. Rankings have developed less as an act of collective decision-making and deliberative democracy (sovereignty) than from the accumulation of decentralized, individual decisions (to produce them, to use them) that, taken together as acts of sociability, produce a set of structural constraints for higher education actors.
Ideal typically we can distinguish two routes through which our social relations (including the mediating role of standards) take form. One is through an accumulation of decentralized, individual decisions that come to constitute over time large-scale social structures, including global standards and models, which coordinate users in worldwide networks. This is a form of power through sociability, or connectivity and synchrony, as outlined in earlier sections, and are found in markets as well as in, say, global science. The other route is when our social relations take place through political procedures (sovereignty or governmentalism). This works not through the collection of many individual decisions aggregated over time but through instances of collective decision-making by specially constituted (such as democratically-elected) political bodies.
Of course, in real situations sovereignty and sociability intermingle. The growing range of state-collected and other standardizing data on universities has made possible – and credible – the idea of formalizing and disseminating judgements on the hierarchical standing of universities as found in higher education league tables (and at an affordable cost). Governments have sought increased information about the institutions that they fund as part of policymaking and accountability objectives. This public function provides a key underpinning for the private authority exercised by the league table compilers. The decision by the EU to devise its own ‘alternative’ multidimensional global ranking system (to include the non-natural sciences, and teaching and learning indicators) and to ‘softly’ regulate other rankings may be regarded as an attempt to return university rankings to processes of sovereignty and governmentalism.
Consequently, consent to power is provided in two distinct ways. Either, as in relations of sociability, individuals consent to their individual circumstances through their (individual) choice-making. This, of course, is strongly structured by the choices of others, in the same way that one’s own choices affect the circumstances that others face (for example, in accepting the influence of league tables and acting so that they continue to be reproduced as structures of constraint). Or, alternatively, consent may be more expressly provided through a general consent to decisions undertaken collectively and properly by representatives effectively mandated to take them (by such representatives winning elections, for example, which provides some form of initial social contract by the people for them to undertake such decisions). While the former is consent through sociability, the latter is a found within sovereignty or governmentalism. University rankings take the first route: they elicit consent from higher education participants as social structures formed by decentralized sociability and its consent, not by acts of collective governmentalism. The consent flows from free but increasingly constrained choice-making.
Here we need a theory of structuration that ties together social structure and individual agency. Our social structures are both the product of our individual actions but also their grounding; that is, structures pattern or recursively organize our action as well as being reproduced across time and space by such actions. Thus, with university rankings, for example, we must be able to articulate why actors choose within a context that is itself highly constrained by the prior and simultaneous choices of others.
Rankings and network power

The data in rankings are subject to a variety of treatments by the compilers – they are not simply neutral. Outcomes are heavily influenced by the importance that the publishers attach to particular factors. The rankings do more than provide listings but are premised on a view of what higher education should be like as these are expressed in the criteria that the compilers operate. That is, the tables constitute standards and benchmarks for assessing the modern university. The major rankings (especially the two primary global ones, the SJTUAWRU and the THE) and the standards they promulgate display forms of network power which increase the more that their findings are taken up and utilized to constitute networks – which both include and exclude. That is, whatever the intrinsic merits of such tables, the models they promote have the power to coordinate various worldwide university strategies through the sheer weight and accumulation of stakeholders using them. Thus, they achieve a form of global ordering by elevating one approach or set of standards over others and threaten the elimination of alternative standards. University and other decision-makers are not forced to follow university rankings – their choices are as free agents – but increasingly such choices are involuntary as the global league tables especially generate universalizing and dominating templates and structures that inevitably act back on organizational strategies. These are processes of structuration.
Sauder and Espeland (2009) puzzle as to why relatively loose-coupled organizations such as universities that are well-versed in fending off external intrusions (such as by governmental quality assurance agencies) by engaging in forms of regulatory ritualism and symbolic compliance to secure legitimacy and to meet public expectations without disrupting basic activities, thus ‘buffering’ themselves from these outside influences, seem unable to do so in the case of university rankings. Taking law schools, they point to the influence of rankings at the heart of the organization as possessing high strategic force. ‘Rankings have changed the fundamental activities of law schools, transforming, for instance, how actors make decisions, do their jobs, and think about their schools.’ They apply Foucault’s notion of ‘discipline’ and the associated processes of surveillance and normalization to show how rankings alter perceptions of legal education in ways that are both coercive and seductive (Foucault 1980). Such processes reinforce tendencies to internalize the pressure of rankings and become ‘self-disciplining’. And why do university staffs internalize rankings? Rankings generate a form of psychic anxiety and an allure to do well in them, or to manipulate them. Even resistance promotes their increasing internalization as a guide to organizational and personal standing by generating an entanglement, a relationship that becomes invested in as a point of reference.
Sauder and Espeland, following Foucault, thus categorize rankings as a form of disciplinary power that act through processes of surveillance and normalization to change how both internal and external stakeholders view the field of legal education. Law schools become turned inside out and, unremittingly, are made ‘visible’ by rankings ( such tables are simple, transparent, and widely-known media products that are broad in scope, easily de-contextualized, and circulate readily): they become legible to external ‘outsiders’, and thus more ‘controllable’ by them. Yet this has the effect of generating forms of self-management as a result of changing university perceptions, expectations, and behaviour. Even ‘gaming the system’ or selectively using ‘the good parts’ of rankings in media promotions reinforces the acceptance of the field-constituting properties of rankings and indeed extends them through a process of seduction. Universities absorb, modify, but essentially incorporate rankings within the culture of the organization – rankings become ‘naturalized’ as structural and cultural phenomena. No one can feel safe and untouched while the fear persists that everyone else is trying to improve their rank (Hazelkorn 2011; Wedlin 2006).
University rankings are therefore constitutive of power relations that are everywhere. They provide norms of practice (models and standards) as a form of structural power, a classificatory system that both constitute agents as forming a particular ‘field’ (as equivalent items) but also by providing the means to differentiate them through processes of comparison and monitoring in a highly legible way. The notion of connectivity – and the threat of exclusion or marginalization – is useful here to account for universities conforming to normative standards that many disavow publicly. Not to be included in a ranking is worse than appearing at the very bottom: at least at the bottom of the table, the organization has been constituted as legitimate. It may not be perceived as possessing high status; rather it is confirmed in its low reputation. But at least it has been confirmed as existing in its defined field as a legitimate actor and is thus is better located than the zombie land inhabited by those entities that do not even merit inclusion (global rankings by definition are quite exclusive, but also some national rankings do not provide full coverage within their territory, using as exclusionary criteria factors such as organizational size, subject coverage or, in the case of business or professional schools, the lack of accreditation).
Conclusion: Rankings as globalization

In earlier sections we noted that prominent elements of globalization can be understood as the rise to dominance of shared standards for mediating social coordination. Global rankings and their standards especially are emerging to enable universities to coordinate their actions on a worldwide scale. They are examples of network power, which emerges in processes of structuration when a particular solution to a coordination game becomes a dominant point of reference – a universalizing standard – and attains a capacity to ‘pull in’ those who might otherwise rely on alternative models and standards. The standards gaining global prominence are not the products of common public deliberation but seem to emanate from and privilege certain higher education systems, such as those of the USA and others in the West.
Bibliography

Boli, J. and Lechner, F. (2009) ‘Globalization Theory’, in Turner, B. (ed.), Social Theory: A New Blackwell Companion.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Networked Society, 2nd Edition, Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2009) Communication Power, New York: Oxford University Press.
Finnemore, M. and Sikkink, K. (1999) ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, in Katzenstein, P., Keohane, R., and Krasner, S. (eds), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge, New York: Pantheon.
Frank, D. and Gabler, J. (2006) Reconstructing the University: Worldwide Changes in Academic Emphases Over the 20th Century, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Grewal, D. (2008) Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Hazelkorn, E. (2011) ‘Measuring World-class Excellence and the Global Obsession With Rankings’, in King, R., Marginson, S. and Naidoo, R. (eds) Handbook of Globalization and Higher Education, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar (in press).
Jakobi, A. (2009) International Organizations and Lifelong Learning: From global Agents to Policy Diffusion, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
King, R. (2009) Governing Universities Globally: Organizations, Regulation and Rankings, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Marginson, S. (2010a) ‘Space, Mobility, and Synchrony in the Knowledge Economy’; ‘Making Space in higher Education’; and ‘Higher Education as a Global Field’, in Marginson, S., Murphy, P. and Peters, M.A., Global Creation: Space, Mobility and Synchrony in the Age of the Knowledge Economy, New York: Peter Lang, 117-228.
Marginson, S. (2010b) ‘World’; University’; and ‘Nation’, in Murphy, P., Peters, M.A. and Marginson, S., Imagination: Three Models of Imagination in the Age of the Knowledge Economy, New York: Peter Lang, 139-328.
Mayer, J. (1994) ‘Rationalized Environments’, in Scott, W. and Meyer, J. (eds), Institutional Environments and Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 28-54.
Meyer, J. (2006) ‘Foreword’, in Frank, D. and Gabler, J., Reconstructing the University: Worldwide Shifts in Academia in the Twentieth Century, Stanford, CA; Stanford University Press.
Sauder, M. and Espeland, W. (2009) ‘The Discipline of Rankings: Tight Coupling and Organizational Change’, American Sociological Review, 74, 1, February, 63-82.
Wedlin, L. (2006) Ranking Business Schools: Forming Fields, Identities and Boundaries in International Management Education, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Wildavsky, B. (2010) The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
CHERI’s ‘last report’ has now been published. It is entitled Higher Education and Society in Changing Times: Looking back and looking forward.

8 mai 2011

International Congress «Globalistics-2011»

http://www.socionauki.ru/news/files/globus_11.gifInternational Symposium «Globalization Studies: Trends, Problems, Perspectives», (Moscow, May 19-22, 2011). On May 19-22, 2011 the Lomonosov Moscow State University will hold International Congress «Globalistics-2011».
Congress is dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the founder of Moscow University Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov; 50th anniversary of the First Manned Space Flight Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Impressive efficiency gains in economic integration and in development of global transportation network and world trade, rapid advances in information and communication technology have facilitated an unprecedented level of global interwovenness and interdependence. Emerging global trends that reflect the most profound and unexplored processes are coming to the fore. Main goals of the Congress: analysis, generalization and the comparative measurement of the global processes based on the juxtaposition of the points of view of the leading scientists, who are forming the international experts network devoted to the analysis of global socio-natural trends. Interdisciplinarity of Global Studies specifies the respective scale and form of the Congress organization. This enables the participants to concentrate on the study of recent groundbreaking trends in the field of the global processes and problems. Conference Programme (En/Rus). Registration formGetting visa.
9 avril 2011

Higher Education, Globalization and Social Justice

http://ocs.sfu.ca/leadingchange/public/conferences/4/homeHeaderLogoImage_en_US.jpgCSSHE Fall 2011 Conference: Higher Education, Globalization, and Social Justice, November 3, 2011 – November 4, 2011, organized by the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE) and is being hosted at Simon Fraser University's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue located in downtown Vancouver. [View Google map]
Globalization has been a striking characteristic of the past few decades. The developments in the economy, energy, and education have all become ever more dependent on globalized networks. At the same time, problems such as climate change, which can only be addressed on a global scale, feature ever more prominently in our globalized media.
Higher education has also become more international, even globalized. Concomitantly, countries such as Canada have developed mass systems for higher education; these systems now serve the majority of the population through a highly diversified system of institutions. Many of these institutions are "going global" in various ways, including massive expansion of online delivery of programs, worldwide recruiting of students, partnerships with institutions in other countries, and establishment of off shore campuses. While the globalization of higher education presents exciting opportunities, there are concerns. Chief among these concerns is that globalization can result in neglect of the traditional social justice function of many public and private institutions, particularly if the reason for "going global" is primarily financial.
This conference will focus on both the opportunities and dangers of globalization of higher education. It will bring together researchers, administrators, policy analysts, and students from Canada and elsewhere. Within the overall theme of the conference, proposals for concurrent sessions and panels are invited on the following subthemes, or other relevant issues:
1.     How globalization of higher education can serve - or subvert - the social justice objectives of our institutions.
2.     Who is marginalized or exploited in the globalization of higher education? For example, what are the benefits and unintended consequences of a globalized student body and faculty?
3.     What are the experiences of those who learn and teach in a globalized institution, and what do they lead us to understand about a globalizing university?
4.     How can online and distance modes of education delivery address social justice issues locally and/or globally?
5.     What are the pros and cons of International or joint degree programs, off shore branch campuses, and virtual campuses for international students, their host institutions, communities, and countries?

9 avril 2011

Globalising Higher Education in Middle East and Africa

http://www.qsmaple.org/images/logo.gif1st QS-MAPLE conference programme and network with international higher education leaders, 1-2 May 2011 • Sunday-Monday, Dubai Knowledge Village, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The conference theme is “Globalising Higher Education in the Middle East and Africa”.
In line with our mission to promote international partnership, QS Asia is convening the 1st QS-MAPLE with the Dubai International Academic City as our organising partner.
This annual conference offers delegates an excellent opportunity to learn and exchange best practices, network and explore global partnership and collaboration. It will also provide strategic insights into key issues in Middle East and African higher education, including:
* Creating world-class universities in the Middle East and Africa
* Balancing public needs and market demands
* Forecasting trends in regional student mobility
* Changes in university governance
* Funding of international education
* Campus internationalisation
* Management of quality assurance
* Regional perspectives to teaching and learning
* Cross-border/transnational education and international partnership
* Branding, marketing and recruitment
* Research, development and collaboration
Dedicated Conference Sessions & Activities
The event comprises these key components (click on each for more information):
Parallel sessions - featuring general and specific aspects of international higher education
Plenary sessions - with keynote addresses by leading authorities on higher education
Exhibition - showcase of leading universities and other higher education institutions from around the world
Networking buffet dinner - comprising buffet dinner, lunches and morning/afternoon breaks
The exciting parallel sessions seek to engage participants with these five tracks:
• Track 1: Managing Quality Assurance
• Track 2: Teaching and Learning: Regional Perspectives
• Track 3: Internationalising the Student Experience
• Track 4: Cross-border/Transnational Education & International Partnerships
• Track 5: Branding, Marketing & Recruitment
For more information on 1st QS-MAPLE, please visit our website at www.qsmaple.org. Please click here to download the Registration Form or click here to register online.
11 mars 2011

France's Challenge: Embracing Academic Globalization Without Fear

By Ioanna Kohler. Last August, the Fields Medal—the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics—was awarded to four researchers, including two young French professors, Cédric Villani and Ngo Bao Chau. Those awards bolstered France's scientific pride: Both awardees were trained in one of the country's most prestigious higher-education institutions, the École Normale Supérieure, which is part of the elite grandes-écoles state-financed system.
Mr. Villani and Mr. Ngo received French educations par excellence, but their career trajectories illustrate a challenge for France. Mr. Villani teaches at Université Lyon I, whereas Mr. Ngo was hired at the University of Chicago. To some, Mr. Ngo's decision is yet another example of France's academic "brain drain," illustrating how France is losing its best and brightest to other countries, especially the United States.
The mobility of French scientists and academics is, in fact, limited. According to a 2008 survey by the Centre d'Études Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales, a research center, the number of scientists born in France who immigrated to America between 1990 and 2000 represented only 1.3 percent of French scientists (which puts France below the 2 percent average in the European Union). Less than 2 percent of École Normale Supérieure alumni were said to be living in the United States in 2010. However, the case of Mr. Ngo encapsulates the challenges prompted by increased international academic mobility, in particular for the most talented individuals.
How can one distinguish between national and scientific interests? Should scientific achievement be attributed to an individual, regardless of citizenship? Should it be credited to the country where that individual was educated, or to the one that fostered that individual's research? France is not alone in struggling with those challenges—and the possible ways I suggest to overcome them can be applied to other countries concerned about "brain circulation."
Losses and Gains

France's academic mobility is a two-sided coin. On the one hand, such mobility can be considered a loss for France, depriving it of its most skilled and talented human capital after it provided a free education. In the case of the highly selective grandes écoles, students receive a salary while they attend, which makes the question of "return on investment" particularly acute when they decide to pursue their careers outside France.
On the other hand, talent circulation bolsters the cross-fertilization of ideas throughout the world and provides a favorable environment for competition, and therefore innovation. Major discoveries made by individuals—whatever their citizenship, and wherever they work—eventually benefit the common good.
That mobility paradox will not be solved soon. But one thing is certain: Thinking of the French scholars' outward mobility in terms of "brain drain" misses the point. France's academic circulation is good news. In this era of global competition for talent, ideas, and knowledge, French students and professors, who used to "stay at home," are embracing the intellectual and scientific exchanges that go with a global knowledge economy. The increasing command of English by scholars over the past 10 or 15 years certainly played a most important role in fostering this new generation of academic globe-trotters. In a highly competitive marketplace, they turn out to be fully exportable. For example, in a 2010 report that I wrote for the French think tank Institut Montaigne, entitled "Gone for Good? The French Academic Diaspora in the United States," I reported that French professors working in America are teaching in some of the best institutions.
The real issue is how to best foster academic mobility as a two-way street for French and international scholars. How can we leverage the diaspora of French scholars and their international counterparts trained in France (or recipients of French state-financed fellowships) to build new international scientific and academic collaborations?
It is easier said than done. Who is leaving France? Who is returning to France? Who is gone for good? Any attempt to count or identify the Francophone diaspora is difficult, as it is a moving target. Identifying such a diaspora abroad will require coordination between the Ministry of Higher Education, French embassies and consulates, higher-education institutions in France, and their counterparts in the main destination countries. The grandes écoles will also need to strengthen their network of alumni, which is just starting to develop. The identification and data-collection process, along with the production of annual statistics on the in- and outflow of academics and researchers, will allow policy makers and education experts to conduct regular surveys of expatriate French academics and foreign scholars trained in France. That way, government officials will have an accurate picture of the extent of the brain drain and will be able to devise policy tools accordingly.
It is also important to create online social forums and networks specifically dedicated to academics abroad. The networks could advertise job offers in France, list benefits available to returning French scholars or international academics, promote scholar-in-residency programs, conferences, seminars, fellowships, and grants. The French embassy in the United States, along with American offices of the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, which is devoted to research on human health, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, already disseminate some of this information. Still, a more comprehensive communications strategy needs to be devised to reach out to the French expatriate academic community as a whole, wherever they live. France could draw inspiration from Germany and Italy, which have started interesting projects such as the German Academic International Network or the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation.
Recruitment Across the Globe

Increasing two-way academic mobility also means making university recruitment in France genuinely international. University human-resources departments should, for example, establish international search committees and advertise positions in the international higher-education press. Being visible in the international academic job market counts, too. So far, only one French university, the École d'Économie de Toulouse, has been participating in this type of international job search.
As much as possible, international recruitment should be free of pain and red tape. That translates into extending professional equivalency to foreign-earned doctorates and better recognizing work experience abroad both for purposes of career advancement and pensions. It is well known that French compensation standards are significantly lower than those in America or Switzerland. French institutions should take full advantage of their recent budgetary autonomy, granted in 2007, to offer personalized recruitment packages, outside the fixed salary range, to the most desirable French or international candidates. Some institutions have already started doing so for long- or short-term contracts with outstanding academics. The Université de Paris VII's recent hiring of American George F. Smoot, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006, shows France is indeed capable of attracting some of the best international talent.
With more than 7,000 research papers co-authored by French and American academics every year, trans-Atlantic scientific collaboration is doing well. Still, there is room to enhance France's scholarly exchanges at the international level. Experience shows that academics and scientists are instrumental to leading institutional cooperation. They are key to fostering new cooperation agreements, exchange programs, and joint degrees between institutions throughout the world. That is why France should harness the network of its academic expatriates to build new scientific bridges with other countries. For example, the online forum Aurore Sciences seeks to further cooperation among French and Chinese scientists.
What's more, scientific or academic joint-ventures, like the Casanova and Abel laboratory started by Rockefeller University, in New York, and Faculté de Médecine Necker, in Paris, need to be encouraged. Created in 2010, the innovative partnership fosters collaborative research, with all publications and patents arising from it credited to both institutions.
Such cooperation bodes well for France, and points the way for how nations can move beyond the brain-drain impediment and start to benefit from the brave new world of academic mobility. Ioanna Kohler is the director of policy programs at the French-American Foundation United States.
28 juillet 2010

Internationalisation or Globalisation?

http://ace1.iafor.org/ACEbanner_main.gif
The International Academic Forum in conjunction with its global partners is proud to announce the second annual Asian Conference on Education, to be held from December 2-5 2010, at the Ramada Osaka, Osaka, Japan.
The aim of ACE 2010 is to encourage academics and scholars to meet and exchange ideas and views in a forum encouraging respectful dialogue. This international conference will bring together a number of university scholars working throughout Japan, Asia, and beyond to share ideas. ACE 2010 will afford the opportunity for renewing old acquaintances, making new contacts, and networking across higher education. Academics working in Japan and Asia will be encouraged to forge working relationships with each other, as well as with colleagues from Europe and the US, facilitating partnerships across borders.
The Asian Conference on Education 2010 is pleased to be affiliated with the University of London through Birkbeck's Insititute for Lifelong Learning and Waseda University through the Distance Learning Centre.
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