'competitive' salaries in academia

In both the Netherlands and Australia the salaries of the top university leaders lead to controversy. The Australian reports that all but one of the leaders of Australia’s Group of 8 Universities earn more than 600,000 Australian Dollars (378,000 Euros). Top earner was John Hay of the University of Queensland with 655,000 Euros. But the Australian found even higher figures for La Trobe University where someone (probably the former VC) received over 930,000 Euros!

In the Netherlands, the salaries and bonuses in the public sector are a hot issue as well. Many claim that the Prime Minister’s salary should be the norm for others in the public sector. In the Netherlands that is a mere 171,000 Euros (John Howard’s salary was recently increased to 208,000 Euros). But most university leaders in the Netherlands make significantly more than that.

The new Dutch Minister for Education this week showed his discontent about the managerialism in education and the accompanying rise in salaries. He observes that most of them enjoyed enormous salary increases when they came into their current positions. And I am sure he is right about that (although that is not the case for all of them). One of the most visible cases has been the one in my own Alma Mater. Their top level managers were given a 31% salary increase, which sparked a reaction of the Minister claiming that this was ‘unbelievable’. This increase brought the salary of the Chairman of the Executive Board (more or less the CEO of the University) to 171,000 Euros. In comparison, the lowest earning VC in Australia, David Battersby of the University of Balarat (poor guy), earned over 200,000 Euros!

So how do the Dutch university CEOs compare with the Australian Vice-Chancellors? Basically, compared to Australia, the Dutch salaries are still very modest. Here is the list of the top 6 for both countries:

Netherlands (Source: Intermediair (pdf); in Euros)
1. Aalt Dijkhuizen	University of Wageningen	307,520
2. Sijbolt Noorda	University of Amsterdam	284,400
3. Rene Smit	Vrije Universiteit	245,900
4. Hands van Luijk	Delft Univ. of Technology	240,000
5. Yvonne van Rooy	University of Utrecht	233,000
6. Jos Elbers	Hogeschool Inholland	228,928
Australia (Source: The Australian; converted to Euros)
1. John Hay	University of Queensland	655,000
2. Gavin Brown	University of Sydney	454,000
3. Fred Hilmer	University of NSW	378,000 (+95,000)
4. Steven Schwartz	Macquarie University	378,000 (+63,000)
5. John Rickard	Central Queensland Univ.	425,000 - 434,500
6. Glyn Davis	Melbourne University	384,000

Don’t get me wrong! This is no justification for the Dutch salary hikes. More like a condemnation of the Australian salaries. The argument is usually that salaries have to be competitive. This argument is put forward just a bit more often when people talk about managers than when they talk about academics and professors. Australian professorial salaries average A$120,000 (75,600 Euros). I am not sure how much it is in the Netherlands but I think it will be slightly higher, or at least similar. Let’s just say that the huge gap between managerial and academic salaries in Australia better not be taken as an example for the Netherlands.

Thou Shalt Compete

The Economist gives a short review of the Bologna process and explains how it will inevitably increase competition in Europe. But for 'Old Europe' (as the Economist likes to call it) this requires more than just some structural changes:

"The more hidebound European universities must be wondering what on earth they have started. Self-interest has prodded them to think about students as customers: both wealthy foreign ones, and bright locals tempted to finish their studies overseas. Governments have realised they could save money if their universities made students study a bit more briskly, gaining degrees and entering the workforce earlier. Universities are beginning to compete for the brightest and best European exchange students too. But that's the problem with trying to become competitive. Before you know it, you may find yourself having to compete."

Read the full article here

India Rising (or part of it)

Last year October I made my first visit to India. I had heard a lot of stories and read numerous articles about the 'Rise of India' (Thomas Friedman probably topping the list in terms of optimism). So...I arrived with high expectations. After arriving in Delhi Airport, staying three days in Delhi and travelling two weeks through Rajasthan, I was becoming more and more fascinated and disappointed at the same time.

Of course I hadn't expected India to have turned in to one big IT science park in just one or two decades (although some publications seem to give that picture). But I had expected India's optimism, ambition and rupees to have trickled down to other sections of society...at least a little bit. I have not been in the booming cities of Bombay, Bangalore or Chennai, but judging from my experiences from Delhi and Rajasthan, there's a lot of work to be done, in terms of public facilities, but especially in terms of equality.

Delhi's airport was in many ways worse of than the smaller regional airports I had just seen while visiting Indonesia and Malaysia the two months before. The roads and other public works were definitely a lot worse. Steve Hamm of Businessweek fears that the lack of investment in public space might hurt India's progress:

The infrastructure deficit is so critical that it could prevent India from achieving the prosperity that finally seems to be within its grasp. Without reliable power and water and a modern transportation network, the chasm between India's moneyed elite and its 800 million poor will continue to widen, potentially destabilizing the country. Jagdish Bhagwati figures gross domestic product growth would run two percentage points higher if the country had decent roads, railways, and power. "We're bursting at the seams," says Kamal Nath, India's Commerce & Industry Minister. Without better infrastructure, "we can't continue with the growth rates we have had."

In Businessweeks 'Covercast' Hamm explains why the private sector not investing in India's public facilities, even though it is dependent on good roads and airports for its own progress. One of the reasons is the bureaucracy in India. Compared for instance to authoritarian China, it's a lot harder to get things done in democratic India. As a chief executive of Novartis explains:

"If you have to build a road in China, just a handful of people need to make a decision. If you want to build a road in India, it'll take 10 years of discussion before you get a decision."

And obviously, corruption is still a big problem:

Nearly all sectors of officialdom are riddled with graft, from neighbourhood cops to district bureaucrats to state ministers. Indian truckers pay about $5 billion a year in bribes, according to the watchdog group Transparency International. Corruption delays infrastructure projects and raises costs for those that move ahead.

But what I'm more troubled with is the trickling down (or better, the lack thereof) of India's new economic prosperity to other segments of society. The division between India's new knowledge professionals and India's poor seems to have created different Indias. In a recent article in Theory and Society(*), Simitha Radakrishnan, a UCLA sociologist, illustrates this:

Rather than having successfully produced a “new middle class,” as touted in media representations of India’s success, emphasis on knowledge for development and a knowledge economy in India has had the effect of producing an elite with formidable economic strength, as well as the cultural dominance to re-imagine and negotiate meanings of Indianness.

(...) So long as those engaged in the knowledge economy are blinded by the belief that their success reflects the progress of the nation as a whole, and that their class positions are not privileged, the possibility for sparking true social and economic change greatly diminishes.

This dilemma is outstandingly portrayed in a 4 part radio documentary of the BBC's "The Changing World". India’s economy is booming. Salaries in the big cities are rising, and consumer spending is exploding. Economic opportunities abound in India – but not for everyone. This documentary series explores the effects globalisation and a decade of economic reforms are having on India. In each of the 4 parts it highlights another aspect of the rise of India:

Part 1 (25:00 ; MP3 10MB)
A new materialism and consumerism is an obvious sign of India ’s growing middle class. The BBC’s George Arney has been visiting India for nearly three decades. He says that India used to spiritually rich, but materially very poor. Now, Arney reports, it's a very different story.

Part 2 (25:00 ; MP3 10MB)
This part focuses on the Indian state of Bihar. The squalor there is obvious. Bihar is glaringly left out of India ’s economic revolution. The BBC reports from a region known as India ’s Heart of Darkness.

Part 3 (25:00 ; MP3 10MB)
As India's economy rises, its entertainment industry is also taking off and an urban culture emerges. In this part Arney takes a close-up look at the nation that lies behind the shiny façade of modern India.

Part 4 (25:00 ; MP3 10MB)
The environmental and social costs of India's rapid expansion.

It's definitely a revealing documentary, with all 4 parts picturing contemporary India in a lively manner and with all its paradoxes. It contains several observations and interviews that clearly confirm Radakrishnan's point.

________
(*) Smitha Radakrishnan (2007) Rethinking knowledge for development: Transnational knowledge professionals and the “new” India. In: Theory and Society

The Ivy League Liga: Round 2

2006 has been somewhat of a revolutionary year for German higher education. The system where all universities were considered of equal quality and therefore were subjected to equal treatment by the government, experienced quite a stir.

German Minister of Research and Education Annette Schavan announced in October last year that the Ludwig-Maximilian University (Munchen) and the Technical University of Munchen and the University of Karlsruhe became Germany's first 'elite universities'. The three institutions are the biggest winners in Germany's 'excellence initiative'. This was established to improve the country's chronically under-funded universities (and its decreasing reputation abroad), by encouraging high level research and competition. The three universities will receive around 120 million euros each in federal and state funds over the next five years.

This week, the finalists for the second round were announced. Being one of the winners is crucial considering that getting designated 'elite' will mean enjoying a piece of the 1.9 billion euros pie, made available from 2007 to 2011. This time the result seems less skewed towards technology, and less towards the southern part of Germany than the first round. The finalists include two institutes of higher education in Berlin, the Free University and the Humboldt University. The others are the RWTH Aachen and the universities of Bochum, Freiburg, Gottingen, Heidelberg and Constance.

The final decision on which of these eight will be designated 'elite' will be made in October.

Some interesting views from the German academic community on the excellence initiative can be heard in this radio interview (from NPR; 4:26 in english):

Listen to the interview in Realplayer

Listen to the interview in Windows Media Player

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Scarcity in China

A few interesting articles appeared recently on the availability of talent to support China's economic growth. Even though China has a vast pool of human resources, the Asia Times warns about China's impending talent shortage. Firms in the south now complain that they cannot recruit enough cheap factory and manual workers. The market is even tighter for skilled workers. As the economy grows and moves into higher-value-added work, the challenge of attracting and retaining staff is rising with the skill level, as demand outstrips supply.

Only a few of China's vast number of university graduates are capable of working for a multinational company, and the fast-growing domestic economy absorbs most of those who could. Indeed, China is facing a looming shortage of home-grown talent, with serious implications not only for multinationals now in China, but also for the growing number of Chinese companies with global ambitions.

Despite the apparently vast supply, multinational companies are finding that few graduates have the necessary skills for service occupations. According to the Asia Times this can be related to China's history, which has left it with some peculiar deficits.

They point to China's Confucian heritage as one explanation. This heritage which emphasizes rote learning and hierarchy, may partly explain why many graduates, despite good paper qualifications and English-language skills, are often cautious about taking the initiative. Another interesting explanation was given by China's one-child policy: "Some firms complain that China's one-child policy has made it harder for them to find natural team players"


The Far Eastern Economic Review has an item on the same topic (subscription required) but this focuses mainly on the role of returning overseas graduates in tackling this problem. The author of the article, David Zweig (a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), claims that if China hopes to make up for its brain deficit by wooing overseas-educated Chinese, then it is in for an unpleasant surprise.

He provides the data that show that the return of overseas workers and students is growing. This is partly because of various (national and local) government programmes which financially stimulate the return of Chinese professionals. But it is also partly due to the improved political and economic environment in the country.

Zweig then asks: "but what about the quality of the returnees? Has China been successful in attracting the return of its best and brightest?" He states that data do not support this. Rather, the theory is that those returning to China tend to have first been unsuccessful overseas:

"The Director of a CAS research institute in Northeast China has said that while the people he attracts usually fall into the top 50% to 80% of overseas scholars, the top 20% still remain abroad. Rao Yi, a neurologist at Northwestern University in Illinois claims that, in terms of international reputation and prestige, few returning scholars are of comparable quality to those who stay abroad. He believes that there are between 800 to 1,000 scientists of Chinese origin running independent labs in the U.S., and that these people are unlikely to return."

Zweig's own research confirms this:

"In fact, surveys have shown that only a few scholars returning to China had to sacrifice high salaries or stable, tenured positions, and even fewer were returning with patents for innovative research. What's more, getting the very talented to return is just the first step; getting them to stay is another matter altogether."

The Asia Times article is based on a recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly (free registration required) on the looming talent shortage in China. This article again was based on the report 'The Emerging Global Labor Market' of the McKinsey Global Institute. Last Year, the McKinsey Quarterly also wrote about India's looming talent shortage.

The Globally Integrated Enterprise

IBM's CEO Samuel J. Palmisano claims that the Multinational Corporation (MNC), one of the primary agents of globalisation, is taking on a new form: The Globally Integrated Enterprise. A post of the Dutch blog Sargasso pointed me to this article in this month's edition of Foreign Affairs (the article can also be downloaded from the IBM website).

Although international trading enterprises were already in existence in the 17th and 18th century (e.g. the British or the Dutch East India Company), the first international corporations emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. These corporations were mainly based on colonial exploitation and were in the business of importing raw materials and exporting finished products.

According to Palmisano, the phase of the Multinational Corporation began during the First World War. The War and the resulting collapse of the European and US economies caused barriers for the international corporations. Furthermore, protectionist measures and trade barriers spread throughout the Western world during the 20s and 30s. The result? The emergence of MNCs that could, on the one hand, adapt to trade barriers through local production and, on the other, could globalise specific tasks such as R&D and design. These MNCs however, continued to organize production market by market, within the traditional boundaries of the nation-state.

The subsequent emergence of the Globally Integrated Enterprise was caused by a few important changes at the end of the 20th century: the decrease of economic nationalism and the ICT revolution. The latter facilitated global communication and the standardisation of business operations. State borders thus defined less and less the boundaries of corporate thinking or practice and the Globally Integrated Enterprise could integrate production and value delivery worldwide.

Palmisano points to four major challenges that this new form of organisation will pose:

1. This type of enterprise demands high-value skills. Nations and companies alike must invest in better basic educational and training programs.
2. This form of organisation also needs the safeguarding of intellectual property. Because of global integration, intellectual property will become one of the key geopolitical issues of the twenty-first century. On the other hand, regulation should not be so rigid that it poses barriers to interorganisational collaboration, since this is a key feature of contemporary innovation.
3. Enterprises need ways to maintain trust in these increasingly distributed business models. A company’s standards of governance, transparency, privacy, security, and quality need to be maintained even when its products and operations are handled by a dozen organizations in as many countries. This will require new ways of establishing trust, based on shared values that cross borders and formal organizations.
4. Global corporate integration will involve significant changes in organizational culture and many new standards for managing a much more complex marketplace.

...and the new Globally Integrated Enterprise seems to deliver plenty of new research questions for scholars in organisation and managements studies as well...

Outsourcing Homework

The Washington Post reports on another industry that is feeling the effects of outsourcing: education, and tutoring in particular. In the US, there are millions of dollars available under the No Child Left Behind Act to firms that provide remedial tutoring. And where there's money, there's people that want to make more money. And where people want to make more money, they need to lower the costs (click picture for enlargement):

When Studyloft.com, a Chicago-based tutoring company with more than 6,000 clients, advertised in Bangalore for tutors with master's degrees, more than 500 people applied for 38 spots, according to Bikram Roy, the firm's founder and chief executive. "There is just a huge hotbed of talent there in math and science," he said. "India has the best tutors -- the best teachers -- in the world."

Amita (15) for instance is being tutored by Lekha,

a $20-an-hour tutor who helps Amita with her geometry homework during twice-a-week, one-hour sessions. Using an electronic white board and a copy of Amita's textbook, Kamalasan guides her through the nuances of cross-multiplication, triangle similarity and assorted geometry proofs. Amita is one of 400 students enrolled with Growing Stars, a California-based company whose 50 tutors, most of them with master's degrees, work in an office in Cochin, India.

The demand for overseas tutors in the United States is creating a thriving industry in India. According to Educomp Solutions, a tutoring company in New Delhi, 80 percent of India's $5 million online tutoring industry is focused on students in the United States. But it doesn't stop with tutoring:

Some companies are thinking of educational outsourcing on a much broader scale than just tutoring. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System is outsourcing the grading of some papers to Smarthinking, a District-based online tutoring company that works with 70,000 students at 300 schools across the country and has both tutors in the United States and abroad. "Essentially we are acting as the teaching assistant," said Burck Smith, the firm's chief executive and co-founder. Right now, about 20 percent of Smarthinking's 500 tutors are in countries such as India, the Philippines, Chile, South Africa and Israel.

As is the case with the outsourcing of the automobile industry, of tax returns and of drug trials, this form of outsourcing also has its critics. Rob Weil of the American Federation of Teachers, for instance:

"We don't believe that education should become a business of outsourcing. When you start talking about overseas people teaching children, it just doesn't seem right to me."

A rather surprising statement for someone from the largest education exporting nation in the world...

Academic Champions League?

In the latest Higher Education section of The Australian it is all about research assessment. The Australian Government has planned to introduce a Research Quality Framework (RQF) which is largely based on the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The RAE is a peer review exercise to evaluate the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. The introduction of the RAE has improved universities' research performance (in terms of impact of publications) and created greater research concentration.

It' s a rather strange moment to introduce the RQF because the UK has plans to abolish the RAE and return to a system that looks more like the current Australian model. In the words of Snitch:

"So Britain is scrapping its research assessment exercise just as Australia prepares to introduce one. What's more, Britain is returning to a metric system of measuring quality, just like the one Australia uses now."

One very visible result of the RAE is the concentration of research. Obviously this gives less concerns to Australia's leading universities (joined in the Group of 8) than to the other players. It's expected that most of the research funding will be concentrated in these 8 research intensive universities.

Although the framework has not been implemented yet, some of the consequences are already visible in anticipation of the RQF:

"In a significant loss for RMIT University, a leading expert in biomedical sciences has left the campus, taking his entire staff of 15, his laboratory and research grants worth nearly $1 million a year to a research quality framework-free medical institute. As universities prepare for greater competition under the framework, global diabetes specialist Mark Febbraio has announced he will leave RMIT for the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, blaming the impending introduction of the RQF and its effect on universities outside the Group of Eight."

Many of the universities outside the group of 8 complain that criteria for societal and economic relevance are missing in the framework, and this will even increase the diversion of funds away from the technological universities to the Group of 8. The concentration of research will likely lead to a 'bidding war on stars'. An Australian equivalent of a European Champions League, where the Barcelonas, the Milans, the Arsenals and the Inters will always be in the semi-finals because they can afford to buy the best players?

On the other hand, maybe not:

"The plan to introduce a national assessment system for research quality has stalled after federal Education Minister Julie Bishop announced yesterday she was setting up another advisory group to consider it."

The Economics of Selective Knowledge

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The Lisbon Council:

In a landmark study, OECD education expert details poor performance of European education. Europe risks falling further behind in 21st century economic race unless it manages to make skills and knowledge a top priority.

The OECD:

The economics of knowledge: Why education is key to Europe's success. In a study released by the Lisbon Council, OECD education expert Andreas Schleicher shows that educational progress in Europe is lagging behind, in terms of the quality and quantity of its graduates, in openness of its education systems to students from all social backgrounds and in the availability of continuing education and training to those who need it most.

The BBC:

Europe's skills fall behind Asia.

The Telegraph:

Old Europe 'being outpaced by Asian higher education'

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This 'landmark' study offers no more than a collection of graphs and some comments that, in many cases, are not at all based on the graphs. The reason why the Lisbon Council calls it a landmark study is probably because the outcomes are directly in line with their goals (many of which I agree with) and because they commissioned the study. It is not that I don't agree with the recommendations, it is not that I ignore the problems.

It is the way in which the recommendations and conclusions lack support, the way in which statistics are used selectively, the way in which glossy policy briefs are presented as landmark studies and the way in which they are reported in the media. And then there's something that I noted before here and here: the way in which Europe can always be used to support your arguments by just cherry-picking the country that fits that argument.

Let's go through the report step by step and do some selective nitpicking.

The report starts of with its main conclusion and some key recommendations. In the end I'll come back to the recommendations, but the main conclusion is: education pays off, always! Not true. Education also has a point where the benefits are optimal and there after its marginal benefit will decrease (for more myths on education and economic growth see: Does Education Matter, Alison Wolf, 2002).

Then the report tries to make a point for higher education as a private investment. In Fig. 1, it is claimed that investment in education gives higher return rates than real interest rates. Basically this translates to: it's better to go to school than to put your money in the bank. Fine.., but nor very useful. However, the graph also shows that the private rate of return is a lot higher in the US (I guess because of bigger income inequalities) and therefore the graph makes a good case for private investment (meaning tuition fees) for the US and the UK, but less so for other countries.

Fig. 2 shows that if you are better educated, you will earn more. That obviously is the case everywhere. However, it is highest in Hungary, the UK, the US and Korea and the pattern tells more about the differences in income inequalities than about differences in education. More education pays of, especially for Hungarian males! The most interesting observations in the table is probably the fact that female Korean university graduates earn around 2.5 times more than their male colleagues. And in the UK they earn about a quarter more than their male colleagues.

Somehow, Fig. 3 & 4 show that "Countries that give individuals one additional year of education can boost productivity and raise economic output by 3% to 6% over time" (p.4) (although I can't really see how the graphs support that). Table 3 basically says that a decrease in unemployment and an increase in productivity will lead to a higher GDP per capita. Not really rocket science. Table 4 however is supposed to show us that education drives labour productivity. If that were the case, the red parts in the graph would gradually increase together with labour productivity. As we can see, the growth in the level of education seems to show no relation at all with labour productivity!! And I wonder how the annual percentage change in the level of education is measured anyway. In addition, the data for both graphs are from 1990-2000, the pre-Lisbon era.

Then we move to the issue of access and participation. This has increased everywhere, but not in the same way. The first point that is made is about the remarkable progress of Korea and how it climbed from rank 21 to 3, in terms of the proportion of the population with tertiary education. This remarkable growth, as is shown in this graph, can be mainly attributed to the policies in the 1980s. Countries like Spain, Portugal and Ireland also made significant progress, the report says. Obviously these countries were clearly lagging behind many other OECD countries in the 60s and needed to catch up.

Then the report continues: "most of Europe's major economies, including France Italy and the UK, only held their ground or, in the case of Germany, significantly fell." This is true for the whole post-war era. On the other hand, and the report does not mention that, this graph shows that there was a considerable growth in people with tertiary degrees in the 1990s in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland, Poland, France, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Turkey and Portugal.

Then there's quality. On the basis of the Shanghai Jiao Tong Ranking of universities (that only featured 2 European universities in the top 20), the report concludes that Europe "is running behind in the quality of the graduates it produces". A slightly bold conclusion from a ranking in which quality of education (measured in the amount of Nobel Prize and Field Medal winners among their alumni!) counts for only 10% of the total score. If we look only at the quality of the graduates, there would be 5 European universities in the top 20, instead of 2. And besides, the report does not mention that the 'Korean miracle' is not present at all in the top 100 of the ranking.

After praising American higher education the report switches to secondary education: "the results are not much more encouraging". On the basis of the OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) data, it concludes that "students in very few of Europe's most important countries performed much above the OECD average and many performed below it." Pretty vague statement. Since we were comparing with the US anyway, let me rephrase that somewhat differently (as shown here for the case of math skills): "students in 18 European countries performed above the US average and four performed below". And that while it spends so much more on education. It's not my intention here to criticize American education, I just try to make clear how statistics are used selectively.

And then it's time for the public-private debate. I already pointed to the fact that the private rates of return of tertiary education are higher in the US than in many other countries and that that could justify the fact that there is more private spending in the US, as this graph shows. A better reflection of public-private benefits in the funding of European higher education can be justified in my opinion. There are several studies, like this dissertation, that support that, but there is no way that you can support that on the basis of this data!

After a story on 'what is so great about Finland' the report continues with access and participation in relation to social backgrounds. The point here is that the US, Australia, Japan and Korea have improved access in higher education by letting students pay for their education. "Most (?) continental European countries are holding back their universities by neither making the public investment nor charging tuition fees". However, other OECD data shows that such an increase in participation has also taken place in predominantly publicly funded education in countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.

With regard to the issue of equity versus school autonomy, the report shows this table. Finland supposedly steers on outcomes: teachers and schools have a lot of freedom in what they teach and how they teach, as long as the results are ok. Other countries, on the left side of the graph, want to guarantee that everyone gets an equal education. However, the result of the latter strategy is that kids from 'better' social backgrounds are more likely to enter universities and therefore it increases inequality. There is a logic in this kind of reasoning. However, considering that all Nordic countries are concentrated at the right side of the graph, it might also (or additionally) be that equity is enhanced by a high degree of public funding of the education system. After all, this way there is no reason for richer students to get better quality education than poor background students. I think that here the report again fails to present a complete picture.

Another interesting passage is the following about social mobility: "Here lies perhaps the biggest disappointment in Europe's education systems. Many of them make ambitious claims when it comes to securing equity in learning opportunities. But the OECD's PISA study reveals that social background plays a larger role in determining a student's performance in countries such as Germany, France and Italy than in the U.S. (..) In many countries, the data suggest that European schools reinforce existing socio-economic inequities." In a report full of tables and graphs, I would have loved to see one on this data! If we look for instance to a study by the Education Policy Institute (p.40) that also looked at the relation of social background and participation in higher education, we can see in this table that it is at least not correct to talk about 'Europe' in this sense.

An interesting point however (but again no data) is that participation seems to decrease if student pathways are established early in the educational career. In Germany for instance, kids are divided for the academic or vocational track already at the age of 10. In Dutch education, I had to make those choices at the age of 12.

Finally then, there is continuing education. Europe underperforms here as well, although again, Denmark, Sweden and Finland are doing well, especially for the groups that need it most. In the US, the continuing education market is also large, but there the lower level segment only accounts for a small part.

Having gone through the report, let's have a look at the recommendations:

1) Create and maintain a system of diverse, sustainable and high-quality educational institutions with the freedom to respond to demand and accountable for the outcomes they produce

2) Ensure that the growth and development of tertiary educational systems are managed to improve access, raise quality and enhance equity

3) Implement financing and student-support policies which mobilize public and private funding in ways that better reflect the social and private benefits of tertiary education

4) Encourage universities to evolve so that their leadership and strategic management capacity matches that of modern enterprises, with appropriate strategic, financial and human resource techniques to ensure long-term financial sustainability and accountability requirements, and

5) Ensure that universities are governed by bodies that reflect a much wider range of stakeholder interests than the academic community

Only the second and third recommendation can be directly related to the report, although no data was presented on these issues. The other three might be useful but seem to come out of the blue. I repeat that I don't necessarily disagree with the recommendations and that I don't ignore the problems (like some politicians do). But I don't think that the ends always justify the means..

Outsourcing Drug Trials

Outsourcing has become a well-tried practice in the global economy. Outsourcing manufacturing is a strategy that has become very widespread. Outsourcing services, illustrated by India's call-centers, is more recent but has become common practice for many western multinationals. Even the more knowledge intensive services like accounting are now often being provided overseas. India currently is even becoming increasingly a recipient of outsourced R&D. Even waste management and recycling is outsourced nowadays.

But this article in Wired Magazine gave me another view on outsourcing, and one that increasingly worried me reading through the article. It is about a new outsourcing boom in South Asia: the outsourcing of drug trials. Drug trials in the West are becoming problematic because less people want to participate in the trials, the amount of drugs to be tested increases and because the trials generally take a long time:

Like many in the pharmaceutical industry, Narula (medical director of a contract-research firm that organizes trials for major multinational) believes that the solution to the slow pace of drug trials lies in outsourcing. As many as half of all clinical trials are already conducted in locations far from the pharmaceutical companies' home base, in countries like India, China, and Brazil. And many industry analysts expect the market to skyrocket, particularly as expanding libraries of genetic information increase the number of drugs coming out of the lab. The consulting firm McKinsey calculates that the market in India for outsourcing trials will hit $1.5 billion by 2010.

Ofcourse, the trials bring along benefits. Obviously, the hospitals receive resources that they desperately need. Second, it can be a form of knowledge transfer. However, Kalantri (a local doctor involved in one of such trials) clearly points to problems related to corruption and to the naivety of many of the patients (which come predominantly from the poorer segments of society). Another important point is that the medicines tested are not the ones that are most needed in those countries. And if they are needed, they will be unaffordable for those patients.

When the trial ended, however, Kalantri wondered whether he had served his patients well by enrolling them. At 800 rupees a day, the drug they had taken was too expensive for any of them to afford. Plus, even when it worked, it showed results for just a month. Such a minute and costly improvement might make sense in the US, Kalantri felt, but was it really the kind of medication that poor Indians should be testing? "The biggest problems around here are snakebite and insecticide poisoning," he points out. "We could really use a trial for one of those." He mentioned that the emergency ward contained a number of patients with a mysterious fever, one that epidemiological tests had been unable to identify. "It would be good to study it," Kalantri murmured, sounding a bit regretful. "Maybe we will, one day."

Globalisation: 99 Definitions & Perspectives

While I was looking for a file in my computer I stumbled upon an old document. It's a file with a list of different perspectives and definitions of globalisation that I assembled for my doctoral research some years ago. I thought it might be of useful for students and scholars that are trying to grasp the possible meanings of the term.

It is a list of 99 (give or take a few) views from different disciplines and different sectors. Most are from academics, ranging from anthropologists to economists and from philosophers to business gurus. It includes statements from people as diverse as Bill Gates, Karl Marx and Vandana Shiva and organisations ranging from Greenpeace to the World Bank.

I converted the list into a website that can be found here (pdf also available). If you think any perspectives should be added, let me know..

Cold, costly but cutting edge education

The recruitment of international students has become a lucrative business in countries like the US, the UK and Australia. In the UK they are estimated to bring in about 4 billion pounds a year to British universities and some 10 billion to the economy as a whole. With the aging of the population, the UK is worried about the (financial) future of its universities. Non EU international students can be charged higher fees and are therefore seen as a potential solution to these financial problems.

There are now over 300,000 foreign students demand from international students stagnated in 2005, rising just 0.3% compared to the year before. This can be partly attributed to increased global competition but also to the growth of the higher education systems in China and India. Due to these factors the projected amount of international students (850,000 in 2020) has become a difficult target.

To remain competitive in the market, the UK needs to have a competitive advantage over other competitors. In a BBC article, Dr Tim Westlake, director of international development at Manchester University seems to agree:

"At present, the international student market is dominated by English-speaking countries. The global dominance of the English language has given the UK, the USA, and Australia a real competitive edge."

But then the question becomes: how do these countries compete with each other? According to Dr Westlake, the unique selling points will have to be the quality of UK degrees and the quality of the student experience. And the unique selling points of the US and Australia? Apparently not quality but:

"...the sunshine and beaches of Australia and the low cost of living of the USA"

Higher Education, the GATS and the Convention on the High Seas

In recent years there has been a lot of debate on how higher education world-wide will be affected by the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS; a treaty within the WTO framework). The GATS makes a distinction between four different modes of supply of services:

1. Cross-border supply is defined to cover services flows from the territory of one Member into the territory of another Member (e.g. distance education programmes offered abroad);


2. Consumption abroad refers to situations where a service consumer (e.g. students go to another country to complete a programme);


3. Commercial presence implies that a service supplier of one Member establishes a territorial presence, including through ownership or lease of premises, in another Member's territory to provide a service (e.g. a university established a branch campus abroad);


4. Presence of natural persons consists of persons of one Member entering the territory of another Member to supply a service (e.g. academics teaching a course in another country).

It is not entirely clear how the GATS will restrict governments in making policies for their national higher education systems and in giving preferential treatment for their citizens. In the liberalization of services in the EU common market, this has also led to discussions. Among other things, this has led to a uniform tuition rate for students from EU countries The fees may be different in different countries, but within countries they have to be the same for domestic students and other EU students).

The GATS raises a lot of questions. To what extent is national funding of higher education a government subsidy, and should suppliers from other countries (i.c. foreign universities) then receive the same support (a commitment to national treatment implies that the Member concerned does not operate discriminatory measures benefiting domestic services or service suppliers). Under Article II of the GATS, Members are held to extend immediately and unconditionally to services or services suppliers of all other Members treatment no less favourable than that accorded to like services and services suppliers of any other country (the so-called MFN or Most Favored Nation principle).

But have universities found a way around the GATS? Inside Higher-Ed (Sailing Around the Flat World) has a report on a new mode of supply: the Scholar Ship, a collaboration between Royal Caribbean Cruises and six foreign universities.

The program is a corporate subsidiary of Royal Caribbean, and the academic programs will be led by Macquarie University in Australia. The maiden voyage of the ship — which will have libraries and lecture halls where the casinos and ballrooms were — will be in January 2007.
Students, who will be taught primarily in English, will pay $19,500 for the classes and cruise, and will have eight port stops as they circumnavigate the globe, beginning and ending in Athens.

I guess most of the time will be spent in the (non-territorial) high seas. As far as I can see (although I am all but an expert on legal issues) this mode of supply of educational services does not fall under any of the 4 categories. Truly de-nationalised, global education        

Sharon Stone, CEO's and the post-knowledge economy

Yes…It is that time of the year again. Tomorrow, the global elite will gather again in Davos. To get in the mood I’ve assembled some remarkable quotes on the Word Economic Forum.

Peter L. Berger on globalisation:

Arguably the most important elite vehicle is the Davos culture, an international culture of business and political leaders. Its basic engine is international business, the same engine that drives economic and technological globalization. But it would be misleading to think of this culture only in terms of those few likely to be invited to Davos; there are millions who would like to be invited and who engage in what sociologists have nicely called "anticipatory socialization." (in: Many Globalizations, OUP 2002)

Ben Verwaayen, CEO BT Group:

Only at Davos can you talk to people from every walk of life about arts, politics, business and culture on a completely equal footing. And that is the key to the WEF. Everyone who attends is equal, from a world leader to a humble businessman. It gives us access to an environment in which we can discuss global challenges in an informal, open and honest way, and no single opinion is counted as more important than any other, and no subject is off-limits.

Andrew Gowers (Sunday Times Business Section)

What do you get if you take an Alpine resort, populate it for up to a week with more than 2,000 politicians and pundits, business leaders and lobbyists, celebrities and social activists, ply them with mountains of food and oceans of drink, and ask them to come up with recipes for saving the planet?

• A penetrating response to the problems and dilemmas raised by globalisation;


• A world-class, all-expenses-paid skiing opportunity;


• A chance to fill your boots with business deals while easing your social conscience;


• Enough hot air to melt the slopes.

Hollywood stars determined to make poverty history mingle in the snow with obscure clerics from the tamer sects of the Middle East. Sharon Stone discusses African orgasms with the chairman of Microsoft. What is hard to take is the pervading sense of flatulent self-importance. Participants - 66% male, 41% in their fifties and 70% from Europe and North America, according to a survey at last year's meeting - just glow as they are told every five minutes that what they say or do in Davos matters for the future of the world.

Bruce Nussbaum of Businessweek (subscription only): Davos Will Be Different; Innovation is the new byword, and India has grabbed top billing from China

Previously, discussion at the World Economic Forum revolved around two main economic themes: outsourcing and China. This year innovation replaces outsourcing and India replaces China in the dialogue. This year there are an unprecedented 22 sessions under the theme of ``Innovation, Creativity, and Design Strategy.'' There is a special series of six workshops just for CEOs. They include ``Building a Culture of Innovation,'' ``What Creativity Can Do For You,'' ``A World Without Intellectual Property,'' and ``Making Innovation Real.'' And there are larger sessions on such topics as ``Prepping for the Creative Economy.'' Tellingly, the main discussion on outsourcing will come in a panel examining the outsourcing of innovation.

And then Nussbaum writes that he will moderate one of the sessions in the WEF Programme. The title of the session? "Prepping for the Post-Knowledge Economy"

The post-WEF2006 era will start the 30th of January…

Knowledge production shifts

I know. A lot can be said against the use of university rankings and even more against their methodologies. That said….the Times Higher education Supplement published their annual ranking of technology universities and institutions last Friday. The ranking is based on peer review assessment and on the number of citations per paper. They created 3 lists: one for technology universities, one for non-university institutions in science and one for non-university institutions in technology. Below are some of the results. In my view there are two important observations:

- The stable high positions of Asian universities. There are 4 Asian universities in the top 10 and 7 in the top 20. Continental Europe on the other hand, only has 2 universities in the top 20 (ETH Zurich and TU Delft). The non-university institutions on the other hand are located mainly in the US and some in the UK, Australia and Europe. But none in Asia.
- Another interesting observation is that the number of citations per paper is considerably higher in non-university institutions, especially for the institutions involved in science. Furthermore, most of the universities in the top 10 are public while many of the non-universities are private organisations. A shift in knowledge production from the public to the private domain?         

Click here to see the rankings

          

No worries! For now....

The Global Competitiveness Index has been released again a couple of days ago. It is compiled by the World Economic Forum and assesses 117 national economies. In this years report the top rankings are occupied by the East Asian tigers, the US and the Nordic countries (could this be because of the ‘aquavit model’?).

What rather surprised me was that China and India are ‘only’ on number 49 and 50. All politicians continuously point out that we need to restructure our economies because the Chinese and Indian economies are going to overtake us (I guess ‘us’ in this case means western countries). The WEF says that a more competitive economy (according to their methodology) is one that is likely to grow faster over the medium to long term. So…no worries for the medium to long term?

Country Rankings 2005-2006
1. Finland
2. USA
3. Sweden
4. Denmark
5. Taiwan
6. Singapore
7. Iceland
8. Switzerland
9. Norway
10. Australia
11. Netherlands
12. Japan
13. United Kingdom
14. Canada
15. Germany

24. Malaysia
49. China
50. India
74. Indonesia
117. Chad

Global Cosmopolis?

The past days, Singapore seems to be under the spell of Global Entrepolis @ Singapore, a gathering of entrepreneurs, technopreneurs and the ‘venture capital community’. Here, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong outlined a strategy to power Singapore's economic growth through innovation. The strategy is to enlarge Singapore's economic space through free trade agreements, education, and research and development.

"Some people believe in the old adage, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Here in Singapore, our belief is 'innovate or vegetate'. We break the old mould when faced with a different situation and innovate to stay ahead," Mr Goh said. Mr Goh said a culture which encourages risk-taking and tolerant of mistakes is critical to innovation. But he admitted this will not happen overnight.

Singapore has done a remarkable job the past decades. It has turned into one of the most prosperous nations in Asia. It is also seen as an embodiment of the ‘knowledge for development’ thinking and a model country for future knowledge economies and societies. The country has been very successful in making the transition from low wage industrial production to a high tech economy.

It has done so under tight controls on public speech and political activity. And maybe thanks to this tight control it has been able to emulate western models and mould them into a Singaporean version of the knowledge society. However, also the Singaporean government recognises that this has its limits. In a 2003 article in TIME Asia it was already stated that:

Singapore's "nanny-state" technocrats recognize that imposing a Silicon Valley-like mind-set on the population through social engineering won't be easy. "We cannot create entrepreneurs," says Lee, Singapore's founding father. "We can only facilitate their emergence."

The article then points to some examples where the government is creating ‘little Bohemias’ and is experimenting with relaxing rules in relation to artistic expressions, alternative lifestyles and homosexuality. Two years further however, artistic and political expression seems to be still under attack. This becomes clear in the case of the investigation of Singaporean film maker Martyn See for a political documentary called ‘Singapore Rebel’. Would Martyn See agree that a culture which encourages risk-taking and tolerance is critical to innovation?

The bigger question here is whether it will also be economically necessary for the Singaporean government to relax its rules vis-à-vis political activity and social criticism. In other words: to what extent is a critical attitude in society – and also in academia – a necessary precondition for what we call a knowledge society? No entrepolis without the cosmopolis?