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The Department

Posted by Eric on December 21st, 2007

Earlier this year Daniel Drezner discussed why there will never be a reality show about academia. Well… this is not reality, but pretty funny nevertheless. The Office Department: a merger between the Kennedy School of Government and the Government Department at Harvard.

The difference?

They (Kennedy School of Government) want to go and save the world. What we (Government Department) want to do is save the political science profession. I don’t know which job is tougher. Probably the latter.

[ht: CoreEcon / Dani Rodrik]

CategoriesFiled in: Higher Education, Humor, USA | CommentsComment »

Eronomics 101

Posted by Eric on November 8th, 2007

Isn’t economics wonderful? It gives answers to all important questions in life. It even provides the tools for ‘understanding the preferences underlying the search for a mate’. Or in other words, an economist goes to a bar and solves the mysteries of dating.

At a local bar just off the Columbia campus, Raymond Fisman ran a speed-dating experiment with two psychologists, Sheena Iyengar and Itamar Simonson, and fellow economist Emir Kamenica. Some of their findings confirm the well known clichés, stereotypes and prejudices, other findings are more surprising:

(more…)

CategoriesFiled in: Economics, Social Science, USA | Comments1 Comment »

Equity or Excellence in Education (or both?)?

Posted by Eric on October 14th, 2007

One of the major current issues in (higher) education policy – in my opinion – is the issue of excellence versus equity. Is it most important to focus on the masses and see to it that everyone gets the same high quality education? Or should the country’s prime talents be nurtured and given the opportunity to fully exploit their opportunities. Or, better yet, can you do both?

The BBC Radio Documentary series ‘The Changing World’ investigates the dilemma, and what better places to visit than Finland on the one hand and the UK and US on the other. Finland is generally seen as the success story in creating a high quality egalitarian knowledge society. Finland shows very good results on the global tests like PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) and IALS (International Adult Literacy Survey).

In addition, they manage to do so without having schools that really fail. The range between the outcomes in the best and the worst schools is very small. An interesting observation in the interviews is that the consistent high performance of Finish schools is not only a consequence of their egalitarian education system, but also of the stability and equality in Finnish society as a whole. Major differences between suburbs or districts don’t exist and therefore major quality differences between schools don’t exist either. This of course sets limits to the transferability of the Finnish system.

(more…)

CategoriesFiled in: Competition, Finland, Higher Education, UK, USA | CommentsComment »

Athletics on Campus or Classes in the Arena?

Posted by Eric on October 5th, 2007

As a European, my view on the relation between the university and sports is very straightforward. There’s a health related function and a social function: the university provides facilities for students and staff to stay in shape and stay in touch. Simple as that!

As a European in Australia, the prominence of athletics on campus surprised me in the early days when I got here (I’m pretty much surrounded by ovals and tennis courts). But then again, sports are pretty much part of everyday life here (especially the past few weeks) and obviously, that’s reflected in campus life.

In the United States, this relation is taken a step further. And not without controversy. Escalating coaches’ salaries and the long-term bonded debt required to finance new arenas, stadiums, and other capital projects have a growing number of university leaders worried that college sports might not be as financially sound as it appears. Many academics are getting increasingly frustrated as well by the fact that universities overspend on sports at a time when its academic programs are deteriorating from financial starvation.

I was well aware of the importance of athletics at US campuses and the controversy surrounding it. But still, I was amazed by the excessive spending reported in this article about the University of Texas in the Statesman (thanks to the CCAP Blog).

Here are some figures:

(more…)

CategoriesFiled in: Culture, Higher Education, USA | Comments2 Comments »

HOW to reform Europe’s universities?

Posted by Eric on September 27th, 2007

Going through my daily news intake, my eyes fell on this alarming headline in Businessweek: Europe Falls Short in Higher Education. Going through the article, it seemed like the same old story (more of this and this). Nonetheless,  I decided to have a look at the source of the article. It was based on a policy brief (Why reform  Europe’s universities?) issued by Breugel, a European think tank devoted to international economics.

The report presented some interesting data and analysis of the determinants of research performance (interesting despite the fact that much of the data is based on the – ‘slightly’ controversial – Shanghai University Rankings). First of all they calculate the relative country performance based on the Shanghai rankings (indexed for US=100 and relative to country population).

This clearly shows that the US outperforms nearly all European countries in terms of ‘top-class’ universities, with only Switzerland and the UK coming close and Canada, the Netherlands, Japan and Sweden playing a small role in this league. France and Germany are not even in the top ten, but that is also related to the fact that much of the researchers in these countries are not in universities but in centres such as the Max Planck Institutes in Germany and CNRS in France. Taking the whole top 500 into account however, the US is outperformed by Europe, especially by the north west European countries. This shows that the diversity in quality is much higher in the US than in Europe.

(more…)

CategoriesFiled in: Competition, Europe, Higher Education, USA | Comments1 Comment »

Crack addict: University Inc.

Posted by Eric on July 18th, 2007

More than 25 years after the Bayh-Dole Act came into force, Members of the Subcommittee on Technology & Innovation met to discuss the future of the law. The law allows universities to patent inventions that result from government funded R&D. Inside HigherEd reports that most members agreed that circumstances have changed the last 25 years. Competition is coming from China and India, instead of Germany and Japan. Technology is now more complex, with technological innovations being based on a bundle of patents instead of a few. And…universities have become competitors not just collaborators. This last point was observed by Susan Butts, the senior director of external science and technology programs at Dow Chemical.

She agreed with other members that there was a potential for more collaboration between universities and industry, especially since private funding for research and development has increased over the years. But, she said, a primary obstacle to more partnerships is the potential for disputes over intellectual property.

(more…)

CategoriesFiled in: Higher Education, Innovation, Science, USA | CommentsComment »

Open access to research

Posted by Eric on July 9th, 2007

A nice little snippet from last week’s issue of Nature about a good initiative in open access to research:

“The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a leading private sponsor of biomedical research in the United States, will require its 300-plus investigators to make their research publicly accessible within six months of publication.

Articles that do not meet this requirement will not be considered when the investigators apply for contract renewals. The policy, announced on 26 June, will come into effect at the start of 2008 and will apply only to papers on which an HHMI investigator is the first, last or corresponding author.”

The researchers are still able to publish in many journals (including Nature) because the Institute will cover the costs that some publishers charge for making papers publicly available after a certain period of time.

CategoriesFiled in: Innovation, Science, USA | CommentsComment »

America and the Bologna Process

Posted by Eric on June 4th, 2007

The European process of harmonisation of degree structures is also causing discussions on the other side of the Atlantic. The participating countries have implemented (or are implementing) a three tier degree structure (Bachelor, Master, PhD). In most countries, the undergraduate phase will take three years. In my opinion, one reason for this rather short duration, is the fact that many countries – like the Netherlands – saw their previous 4 year degrees (doctorandus, licentiaat, magister and what have you) as equivalent to a Master’s degree. And because governments did not want Bologna to lead to extra funding, they needed to stuff the Bachelor and Master into 4 years.

But what if you plan to do a Master’s degree in the US, after your European three-year bachelor? According to Daniel Denecke of the US Council of Graduate Studies, resistance to recognizing three-year degrees at American graduate schools is rampant, although there were some trends toward acceptance of the new European model: (more…)

CategoriesFiled in: Europe, Higher Education, USA | Comments1 Comment »

The Next (World) Bank President

Posted by Eric on May 20th, 2007

While Wolfowitz has barely resigned as president of the World Bank, the Financial Times is already speculating about his successor. A quick look at the possible nominations makes clear that World Bank is first and foremost a Bank.

The first name the FT mentions is Robert M. Kimmitt, the US deputy Treasury secretary. Kimmitts bio reveals that his experience in the developing world is limited to his military service in Vietnam in 1970-1971. He served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, earning three Bronze Star Medals, the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. More recently, he has served as the US Ambassador to Germany in the early 1990s, the country where he also attended high school in the 1960s.
Other possible candidates mentioned by the FT are (1) Paul Volcker, former US Federal Reserve Chairman; (2) Robert Zoellick, former US Deputy Secretary of State and current Vice President International for Goldman Sachs and involved in the neocon Project for the New American Century and (3) Hank Paulson, current US Secretary of the Treasury, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and a 2004 Bush Pioneer.

We’ll probably hear more about this before Wolfowitz steps down on June 30th… And then they can finally get back to work.

CategoriesFiled in: Politics, USA, World | CommentsComment »

Science 2.0

Posted by Eric on April 17th, 2007

One of my first posts in this blog was on the iBridge Network, a platform for searching and sharing innovations in universities. Universities can use the platform to license and distribute a variety of items, including software, research tools, databases, teaching materials, surveys, and reference materials.

Obviously I was surprised to read on the URENIO website that the iBridge Network was launched at DEMO 07 in January of this year. Well, it appears that the event I posted about 18 months ago was the announcement of the network, while this was the launch of the actual website and platform.

Laura Dorival Paglione, Director of the Kauffman Innovation Network, which manages the iBridge Network explained in her presentation: (b.t.w. sounds a lot like what the CEO was saying 18 months ago doesn’t it? ;)

“Universities are tremendous wellsprings of knowledge. By encouraging widespread access to information and linking researchers with interested parties, we are hoping to more fully realize the innovation potential that research offers.”

The platform started as a pilot for five universities: Washington University in St. Louis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Cornell University and the University of Kansas. The University of Chicago and the University of Arizona have joined a few months after the announcement.

I was a bit skeptical in my first post on this service. Looking at the website now, I think that it might eventually work. A video presentation is available at the DEMO 07 website. With all the share and collaborate features, tag clouds, categories and of course the ubiquitous ‘beta’ indication it looks a lot like Science 2.0. But like any Web 2.0 application, it will be very much dependent on the ‘user generated content’. Let’s see in another 18 months whether scientists are ready for science 2.0…

CategoriesFiled in: Innovation, Internet, Science, Technology, USA | CommentsComment »

QS and Flawed Rankings

Posted by Eric on March 23rd, 2007

It’s a fact! Rankings are getting more and more important. In a recent article in Inside Higher-ed I found out that they are even explicitly included in the performance criteria for some university presidents. In this case it was the Arizona State University president who would get an extra 60,000 US$ bonus if his university would improve its ranking in the U.S. News & World Report. But in the US, resistance against this ranking is gradually growing.

For the rest of the world it is probably the ranking of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) that has the biggest impact. I am sure that this ranking functions as a performance criterion for many university leaders in the world (although, much more implicitly). All the more reasons to be careful and accurate in composing the rankings. That’s what you would think…

This week’s Economist reports on an MBA ranking published by Fortune magazine. The top exists of the usual suspects like Wharton and Harvard. But one well respected business school was missing in the list: the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The school for instance had recently placed eighth in a national ranking based on recruiter ratings published by the Wall Street Journal. So….what was the case?

It turned out that Fortune had used a European firm, Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS), to collect data from the schools and create the list. When officials from Kenan-Flagler spoke with QS they were told that their school had been confused with North Carolina State’s College of Management. NC State rarely appears in any of the major rankings, but it placed 25th on Fortune’s list. Along with Kenan-Flagler, Boston University School of Management was also a victim of the flawed research.

After reading the first line, I thought: ‘again!?’ Yep… Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS) did it again.

QS is the (UK based) organisation responsible for the THES rankings and they are making a real mess out of it. First time I noticed that was when the University of Malaya (UM) fell in the rankings from position 89 in 2004 to 169 in 2005. This caused quite some political turmoil in Malaysia. The result of the ranking was even discussed in Parliament. Even Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi expressed his concerns. The Vice Chancellor at the time of the ‘rise and fall’ of UM did not continue for a next term as VC…..

What proved to be the case was that QS had counted all the Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians as foreign students (one of the criteria in their rankings) in 2004. In 2005, they corrected their mistake with a steep drop in the rankings as a result. During last years publication of the THES ranking I was in Kuala Lumpur (at UM) and I could experience the impact of the THES rankings myself. I’ve never seen so many articles and letters about higher education in regular newspapers.

But…this was just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a good thing that there are people like Richard Holmes that are keeping a close watch on the methodology used in those rankings. He reports on many, many instances where QS messed up. Here are a few examples:

  • On the flaws of peer review, and especially incorporating peer review as such an important criterion (40%), have a look here (on the geographical bias) , here (comparing the peer review with citations) and here (about the methodology of the peer review: a response rate of 0.8%!!!).
  • On the student/faculty ratio. All indicators are indexed on the best performer on a that indicator. For faculty/student ratio in 2005 this was Duke University. It was clear that this figure was wrong (not Duke’s mistake but QS’s). However, it was not corrected for the 2006 rankings. Here he finds out what mistakes were made. Since the rest was indexed on this score, the other scores are wrong as well!
  • There were also other universities were things went wrong, for instance here and here.
  • And then there are simply a lot of factual mistakes reported here. No…that’s not all. There are many more.

Holmes informed THES in an open letter about all of the QS mistakes, but they are not exactly in a hurry to correct these misstakes.

But also from the research community there’s criticism. For instance this article in The Australian from Simon Marginson, a higher education researcher at the Center for the Study of Higher Education of the University of Melbourne. He also agrees that rankings are here to stay, but he does provide some valuable input for improving these rankings.

It’s rather disappointing that reputable publications like THES and Forbes use the services of companies like QS. QS clearly doesn’t have any clue about the global academic market and has no understanding of the impact that their rankings are having throughout the world. There has been a lot of critique about the indicators that they use, but at least we can see these indicators. It are the mistakes and the biases that are behind the indicators that make it unacceptable!

Fortune already took the results of the MBA ranking of their website. I wonder whether THES will do the same thing… Probably not.

For the THES/QS World University Rankings of 2007, look here

CategoriesFiled in: Ranking, USA, World | Comments8 Comments »

Legrain on immigrants

Posted by Eric on February 27th, 2007

Tonight I attended a lecture (in the Sydney Ideas Series) from Philippe Legrain on his latest book: Immigrants: your country needs them. It was also the occasion of his Sydney book launch but luckily – in this open world – I ordered the book a month ago from the UK (and thereby avoided the high Australian book prices).

 

Legrain’s lecture will be available on the University of Sydney podcasts site, but here’s a short impression of both book and lecture. In short, Legrain’s message is: Let them in! Because it’s better for ‘Us’ and it’s better for ‘Them’ and for the countries where ‘They’ come from. Being trained as an economist at LSE in London, it’s not surprising that this message is very much based on economic rationales.

Many countries already have accepted the belief that allowing highly skilled migrants to enter the country is a necessity in order to survive in the current global knowledge economy. Legrain first of all argues that rigid and bureacratic assessment systems – like used in Australia – don’t make any sense since governments simply don’t know what the labour market needs will be in the future. Furthermore, innovation can not be attributed to specific types of people, but requires diversity and creativity.

What is more provacative is Legrain’s compelling case for immigration of low skilled workers. Because ‘we’ not just need managers, but also cleaners and taxi drivers and since ‘We’ don’t want to do these jobs anymore, and ‘They’ do, we should let ‘Them’ in. And of course there are plenty of humanitarian reasons to do so as well.

Obviously, the immigrants themselves will benefit if western countries open their borders to legal immigration. But so do the countries where they come from, both through the skills that the immigrants return if they go back and through the remittances they send home. These remittances make up between 200 and 600 billion US$ and end up right in the pockets of the people that need it most. Compare this with the 80 billion US$ in development assistance, which might end up in the wrong pockets (or Swiss bank accounts).

While reading the book I frequently agreed with Legrain’s economic arguments, but I kept asking myself: what about the friction between the ‘Us’ and the ‘Them’ after ‘They’ immigrate, so apparent especially after 9/11. In the last few chapters Legrain does address the issue, especially for the cases of the Latinos in the US and the Muslims in Europe (he especially addresses the problems in France, Germany and the Netherlands).

I often had the feeling that I was not the one that needed convincing; the people in inner city London, Amsterdam, New York or Sydney are not the ones that needed convincing. And I am afraid that the ones he has to convince are not very receptive to these arguments. I think I agree with Roy Williams’ conclusion in The Australian:

“These are lofty ideals, yet most people in the West remain old-fashioned nationalists. They love their country viscerally and as it is, or as it was when they were younger. Rightly or wrongly, they view immigration with caution, even regret.”

I hope that Legrain’s book will at least make people think twice about all the myths (and political rhetoric?) surrounding the issue of immigration. The book is definitely worth a read!

CategoriesFiled in: Australia, Europe, Globalisation, Mobility, Netherlands, Politics, USA, World | Comments1 Comment »

Female University Presidents

Posted by Eric on February 12th, 2007
Harvard has named Drew Gilpin Faust as its 28th president. Faust has since 2001 been the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Last year, Larry Summers had a turbulent exit as Harvard president. This was caused mainly by a speech he held at NBER, early 2005. In trying to explain why there were more men than women in high-end science and engineering positions, he suggested that it might be related to ability and/or preference.
The new Harvard president seems to be the opposite of her predecessor. Richard Bradley, author of “Harvard Rules: Lawrence Summers and the Battle for the World’s Most Powerful University” illustrates this in Newsweek:

It’s hard not to look at Faust in the context of the Summers presidency. Summers got in trouble for his remarks about women in science and mathematics; Faust is, of course, a woman. Summers was never considered a great booster of the humanities; Faust is a historian. Summer’s governing style was-how can I put it nicely?—aggressive; Faust is said to be much more of a consensus builder. Even though Summers had taught at Harvard, he’d been gone for about a decade and was effectively a Harvard outsider; Faust was an internal candidate. So in almost every instance, if Summers was X, Faust is Y.

Faust is the first female president of Harvard and she is the fourth female president of an Ivy League University (Judith Roddin was the first in 1994). If we look at the top 10 universities in the world (according to THES), we can see that after the appointment of Faust, the top of the academic world is now led by women, with Drew Gilpin Faust and Alison Richard of Cambridge occupying poisitions one and two. MIT and Princeton (4 and 10) are led by Susan Hockfield and Shirley Tilghman. The rest is still led by male presidents, and so are the universities ranked 11-20.

1 Harvard University – Derek Bok / Drew Gilpin Faust
2 University of Cambridge – Alison Richard
3 University of Oxford – John Hood
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Susan Hockfield
4 Yale University – Richard C. Levin
6 Stanford University – John Hennessy
7 California Institute of Technology – Jean-Lou Chameau
8 University of California, Berkeley – Robert J. Birgeneau
9 Imperial College London – Sir Richard Sykes
10 Princeton University – Shirley M. Tilghman

In Australia 9 out of the 38 Vice-Chancellors are now women (in 2003 there were 11), which is almost a quarter. In the UK, I think it’s only around 10%, while in the Netherlands the situation is outright embarrassing. None of the Rectors – the academic leaders – of the universities are women and as far as I know only 1 out of the 13 chairmen of the Universities’ executive boards (the executive leaders), is actually a chairwoman…

CategoriesFiled in: Higher Education, USA | CommentsComment »

Ivy League CEOs

Posted by Eric on January 27th, 2007
The blog of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) has a post that plugs into an earlier article from Time: “Where the Fortune 50 CEOs Went to College“. Here it was concluded that an elite career doesn’t always stem from an elite education.
CCAP conducted a deeper study of this topic. They tracked down the CEOs for the top 100 Fortune companies for the years 2006, 1980 and 1955. Together, this represents roughly three different generations of business leaders. From there, they researched where these CEOs completed their undergraduate and graduate work, in addition to levels and types of degrees obtained. They arrive at a similar conclusion:

“Over time, the Ivy League has experienced a decline. By 1980, the number of CEOs attending undergraduate school at Ivy League institutions had fallen to 19, a 50 percent drop from the previous generation. Fewer CEOs attended the prestigious schools as well, with only 32 in 1980. This trend away from the Ivy League as well as America’s “prestigious” universities continued into 2006. Of the top 100 Fortune CEOs of companies last year, only 12 did their undergraduate work at an Ivy institution and 20 at a prestigious school.

However, they also looked at the increasing number of CEOs that attended graduate schools after their undergraduate education. But even in graduate education, the Ivy League’s dominance seems to be in decline:

“Graduate school attendance among the Fortune 100 CEOs has greatly increased over the past half century. For example, in 1955, only 17 CEOs attended graduate school. This number increased to 46 in 1980 and 61 in 2006. The number that attended Ivy graduate schools grew from 4 in 1955 to 16 in 1980 where it remained in 2006. This statistic remaining the same in the period from 1980 to 2006, despite increasing graduate school attendance, seems to further suggest the declining influence of the Ivy League—even among graduate schools.”

Have a look at the complete post here.

CategoriesFiled in: Higher Education, Ranking, USA | CommentsComment »

Still Bowling Alone

Posted by Eric on July 11th, 2006

While staying in the US last month, I heard an interview on the radio with Lynn Smith-Lovin, a sociology professor at Duke. The interview was about a study she co-authored: Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades.

The study of 1,467 adults showed that one-fourth of all Americans report that they have nobody to talk to about personal matters. Another quarter reports they are just one person away from nobody. It seems that, in addition to bowling alone, more and more Americans now also have to cope alone with their personal problems.

My first thought was that this would especially be the case for the higher educated part of society since they in general spend more time on work and also tend to be more mobile. I was therefore surprised to hear that non-whites and people with less education tend to have smaller networks than white Americans and those with higher educational levels.

It also made me wonder about the ‘American-ness’ of this isolation problem. Is it a trend that can mainly be seen in the US, or would other countries and regions show similar outcomes (do welfare states lead to more social cohesion and less isolation or not; is this problem also apparent in developing countries)? Does anyone know about a comparative study on this issue?

The full article, published in the American Sociological Review, can be found here.

CategoriesFiled in: Social Science, Travel, USA | CommentsComment »

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