Malaysia as an Education Hub

The UNSW debacle in Singapore and the exit of Johns Hopkins last year, have dealt a serious blow to the Global Schoolhouse strategy of the Singapore government. Singapore’s neighbor Malaysia announced a similar strategy last year. With this strategy, Malaysia becomes one of the most interesting examples of the way that higher education is globalizing nowadays. A major exporter as well as importer of higher education, with foreign universities within its borders and Malay universities establishing branches outside Malaysia.

First of all, Malaysia has long been sending many of their students and university staff abroad, especially for postgraduate studies, because their own system could not absorb the increase of students in the last decades. In addition, the racial quota for public universities to enroll Malay forced a lot of students from Chinese and Indian backgrounds to pursue their higher education abroad. The last decade has seen a sharp rise in private universities and colleges that have been able to absorb many of these students and the Malay that were not accepted in the public sector. Despite this, the flow of Malaysian students abroad – especially to the English speaking countries – has remained substantial (see table).

Malaysian students abroad 1999-2004

In addition to sending students abroad to pursue their education, the Malaysian government has also admitted higher education institutions into Malaysia in order to meet the increasing demand of higher education in the country. The establishment of such branch campuses has to fulfill a wide range of legal requirement (on ownership issues, but also on the content of education), but this has not kept universities from establishing these branches. The best known examples are Monash University, Curtin and Swinburne from Australia and Nottingham University from the UK. Although these partnerships were usually based on so-called sandwich programmes (where part was done in the home country of the university), they now also offer full degrees in Malaysia.

But in recent years, both the flows of students as well as the flows of institutions are no longer one way but now go both ways. Although public universities in Malaysia do not undertake activities abroad – and probably they are not allowed to – the private ones seem to become more and more active. You can now actually obtain a Malaysian degree in London, offered by the Lim Kok Wing University, well known in Malaysia for its IT and Design programmes. And this university is not just a little office somewhere in London but is established in a beautiful old English building. But Lim Kok Wing did not stop in London. It’s also the first Asian university to establish a branch campus in Africa, in Botswana to be precise. Recently, other education institutions are following and are also expanding abroad.

And now the Malaysian government wants to make Malaysia a true education hub for the region, more or less like its southern neighbor. The Ministry of Higher Education has set a target of 100,000 students for 2010. Growth will probably mainly be sought in the region and in the Middle East. Together with Singapore, Malaysia probably offers the best quality higher education in Southeast Asia, although Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia are catching up. Due to language (and cultural/religious) issues, Malaysia is popular for Indonesian students, especially for those that cannot get into the local public universities in Indonesia and cannot afford the top private ones or higher education abroad. For Chinese students Malaysia might be popular because of the widespread Chinese influences in Malay society, more apparent though in the private institutions than in the public ones. More recently, especially after 9-11, Malaysia has also become a popular destination for Middle Eastern students. Yesterday, the Star reported on an agreement between Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed and his Saudi counterpart Dr Khaled Mohamed Al-Anqari on sending the Saudi students to Malaysian universities(*). In addition to the Middle East, students coming from Africa (especially Libya, Sudan and Kenya) are also on the rise (see table; click to enlarge).

Foreign Students in Malaysia 1999-2003

To reach the goal of 100,000 international students, the government will need to double the intake of foreign students. There are obviously pros and cons to a strategy like this. For many, a first reaction would be to ask why a government wants to increase the number of international students if it barely has the capacity to meet the demand of its own people? On the other hand, it can generate extra financial resources (if the fees for foreign students are profitable) by which the education of the Malaysian population can be supported. Obviously creating more multicultural campus will also have more intangible positive effects. And the quality of education can increase if these foreign students will be of such quality that they will positively influence the academic atmosphere and quality in the universities. And of course there are the economic effects through spending and consumption from the students and through the new jobs that are created for such an expanding higher education sector.

So...should the Singapore case make the Malaysian government nervous? Maybe not yet, but they better keep an eye on the developments in their neighboring city state. Malaysia’s plans are not as ambitious as Singapore’s ‘grand’ strategies and they are less dependent on foreign providers than is the case in Singapore. But I hope they will not become obsessed with the projected number of 100,000, and instead just focus on the overall quality of their higher education. Then the foreign students will follow automatically...

_________________________________________________________
(*) A small footnote...not directly related but important enough to mention.

Saudi government officials have been traveling the world for the past months in order to find ‘a conducive environment’ for their students to study. Especially because it was getting harder for them to get visas in the UK and the US. I remember that one of their officials visited Australian campuses as well, in order to ‘ínspect’ the universities here. I have not heard anything about this issue since...maybe the Australian culture was not considered very conducive by these government leaders, that always know best what is good for ‘their’ citizens...

But even Malaysia was not perfect. Saudi female students had specific requirements: “They have to travel with their chaperone who are either their male family members or husbands, so visas can be a problem. Another issue is dressing – some female students want to keep their faces covered.” The Minister said he would look into these issues... Covering the faces is not allowed in Malaysian public universities. And I think universities shouldn’t change their values just to benefit more from the international higher education market. Believe me, I work in Australia, so I should know!

Questions on the UNSW ASIA debacle

After three months in operation, the Singapore adventure of the University of New South Wales has come to an end. Another 22 million Singapore dollars down the drain. The decision to establish a branch campus in Singapore was taken in 2005 and already led to some commotion at that time (see this post). In 2005, UNSW from Australia and the University of Warwick from the UK were the only two foreign universities granted special status by the Singaporean Government (through its Economic Development Board, EDB) to set up a fully fledged independent teaching and research institution offering undergraduate degrees (the UNSW ASIA website has been taken down but click here for some info from the old website and here for some facts).

At that time, the senate of Warwick declined the offer of the Singapore government. The official reason for the Warwick senate to vote against the venture was the big financial risk. An additional reason however was the concern about the lack of academic freedom. UNSW had a different opinion, after all there was "no such thing as absolute freedom of speech in any country".

UNSW opened the doors of its Asia Campus at the beginning of the 2007 academic year, planning to reach a population of up to 15,000 students on the long term. But the campus will be closed down after only one semester:

Before making this decision, the University has explored an extensive range of options. However the enrollment numbers for 2007 did not meet our expectations, and this has caused us to revise our projections. The decision to close down is a difficult one but it is the prudent course of action to take.

UNSW Vice Chancellor, Professor Fred Hilmer inherited the situation when he became VC in 2006. In a press conference in the Straits Times video news he explains the UNSW decision to pull out (see the whole video here):

The economics of the campus, without significant support made it impossible to continue. While we had support for the initial concept from the EDB, as the enrollment played out and as the concept had to be changed, the risk of the venture increased.

The Economic Development Board stated that it regrets the decision of UNSW. Mr Ko Kheng Hwa, Managing Director, EDB said:

We regret that UNSW has decided to close the Singapore campus. EDB has been fully committed and has worked closely with UNSW from day one towards the establishment of its Singapore campus. EDB will push ahead with our efforts to realise Singapore’s Global Schoolhouse vision. We are fully committed to developing Singapore into a premier education hub comprising a rich diversity of high quality education institutions and programmes from all over the world.

UNSW Asia had only 140 students enrolled in its first semester, 100 of them being Singapore residents. The University had a target of 300 students for the first year. This all leaves me with two big questions:

1. What is the real reason? If the target was 300 and the enrollment was 140, would you stop an operation - that has been planned for two years and in which 17.5 million Australian dollars is invested - just after a few months? Of course not! This is just too abrupt. After investing this amount, you would at least try for a few years. Somehow I have the idea that there is more going on, but I can't figure out what it is.

2. Public universities and their private ventures. I am sure that UNSW and UNSW Asia keep separate books. But somehow UNSW, an Australian public university, will be affected by the costs of the Singaporese adventure. This discussion has come up in relation to the South African branch campus of Monash university as well. It clearly shows the risk of letting public organizations operate privately overseas. Of course, UNSW will argue that their Australian activities will not suffer from the UNSW Asia debacle. But the money has to come from somewhere. The costs are even likely to rise because UNSW has been so decent to offer their UNSW Asia students a place at UNSW in Sydney and will make scholarships available.

Two pressing questions. Whether we will ever know the answer to the first one? I don't know. But I hope the second one will be discussed because it addresses a fundamental issue.

UPDATE: look at my recent post on this issue for some explanations

World Class Universities

Robert Birnbaum, professor of higher education at the University of Maryland and author of some very interesting books on higher education (How Colleges Work; Management Fads in Higher Education) has written an interesting (and amusing) article in International Higher Education (the Quarterly of the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) in Boston College).

Birnbaum is worried about the World Class University ranking crisis. Universities around the world are either proclaiming that they have attained or try to achieve this mythical status. But actually, we have no clue what it means. Philip Altbach, leader of CIHE, has written before on the cost and benefits of the race towards world class:

Everyone wants a world-class university. No country feels it can do without one. The problem is that no one knows what a world-class university is, and no one has figured out how to get one. Everyone, however, refers to the concept. We are in an age of academic hype in which universities of different kinds in diverse countries claim this exalted status-often with little justification.

Birnbaum gives some suggestion on some alternative ways to identify world class universities:

1. The Bentham System - this scheme, based on the 19th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's principle of Utilitarianism, proposes that the best universities are those that bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number.
2. Olympic System - In the Olympic System, teams of university faculty would compete every four years in head to head competitions combining athletic and intellectual prowess to determine their world rankings
3. Borges System - our scholarly task is merely to identify the book of true ratings from among the infinite number of books that contain very similar, but false, ratings which also exist
4. Sausage System - Throw U.S. News, the Gourman Report, the Times Hiigher Education Supplement, and other rankings created by systems of all kinds into the same bowl, add and average out the results and voila! Just as we do not know how a sausage is made (or, more to the point, we don't want to know) the Sausage System makes it difficult to understand just what has gone into any particular set of ratings.
5. Lake Wobegon System - in Lake Wobegon, you will remember, all the children are above average. This suggests the possibility of significantly expanding the number of institutions that can be ranked as world class merely by increasing the number of institutions in each category.

But he continues on a more serious note. Building on a metaphor by Daniel Dennett, he argues that such World Class Universities can only be built if they are firmly grounded in strong and indigenous educational and social foundations Trying to develop them by using imported rhetoric, imported models and large sums of money is destined to fail:

"Attempting to build World-Class Universities without attending first to the educational and social ground on which such institutions might stand is, as Ivan Illich once said, is "like trying to do urban renewal in New York City from the twelfth story up." Rather than more World Class Universities, what we really need in countries everywhere are more world-class technical institutes, world-class community colleges, world class colleges of agriculture, world class teachers colleges, and world class regional state universities."

A similar conclusion was drawn by Altbach. He concluded that as universities around the world seem to be orienting themselves to this single academic ideal, institutions and nations need to assess carefully their needs, resources, and long-term interests before launching into a campaign to build world-class institutions:

"Universities operate in both national and global contexts. The world-class idea falls into the global sphere. It assumes that the university is competing with the best academic institutions in the world and is aspiring to the pinnacle of excellence and recognition. National and even regional realities may differ. They relate to the need of the immediate society and economy and imply responsiveness to local communities. In these contexts, the nature of academic performance and roles may differ from what is expected at institutions competing in the global realm. To label one sphere world class while relegating the others to the nether regions of the academic hierarchy is perhaps inevitable, but nonetheless unfortunate."

I wholeheartedly agree with both conclusions. Universities are one of the oldest institutions and are clearly embedded in a nations' cultural, political and social context. This is not just the case for the Oxbridge-like universities, but also for the more recently established universities. However, this should not be a reason to avoid learning from each others experiences or models. Even copying models from other parts of the world does not necessarily lead to failure. It's just a matter of adaptation. And it is this process of local adaptation that is made difficult by the pressures on universities to adhere to so-called global world class standards.

Debunking EU Myths?

Andrew Moravcsik, Professor of Politics at Princeton University comes to the defence of Europe. Moravcsik is probably one of the most influential contemporary writers on European Politics and introduced a liberal inter-governmentalist approach to the study of European Integration (see for instance this book). On the occasion of the EU's 50th birthday he writes an article in Newsweek - The Golden Moment - debunking the myths of Europe's allegedly sclerotic economies, labour markets and politics. Europe is not a continental-size museum dropping into the dustbin of history...on the contrary.

Economically, Europe is doing a lot better than is often claimed by 'the pundits'. Even though Italy and France may be lagging a bit, Britain is booming and so are the Nordic countries. Central and Eastern European countries are showing even higher growth rates than the US. Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia are even growing at 10 percent or more annually. And this can even be done with a stable welfare state:

Despite nearly 50 percent tax rates and cradle-to-grave welfare benefits, Northern European social democracies like Denmark, Sweden and Finland grab half of the top slots in the World Economic Forum's ranking of the world's most competitive economies. "Nordic social democracy remains robust," says Anthony Giddens, former head of the London School of Economics—"not because it has resisted reform, but because it embraced it." (...) Remember those six to eight weeks of vacation every European is assured? Most Americans say they would make the same trade-off—if only their employers would permit it.

He also addresses Europe's demographic challenges and explains why immigration can be a feasible solution for this, despite the recent problems with Muslim integration/assimilation in some countries. He argues that the greater diversity of future immigrant groups (because of the current selective policies) will solve those problems:

In the end, the specter of restive immigrant populations unsettling Europe, let alone undermining its culture, is overblown to the point of unreality.

Final point is Europe's role in global politics. He is very clear here: the world is bipolar, and the other pole is Europe.

Consider how the EU began, 50 years ago, as a parochial Franco-German entente. Today, it's the model for a continent. The EU expansion, subsuming a dozen former communist states, has been the surest exercise in democracy promotion since the end of the cold war.(...) It has extended the reach of democracy and free markets within and beyond its borders—in a way that American neocons can only dream about—and is becoming a model to the developing world. It is the "quiet superpower."

Europe's tools go well beyond EU enlargement. The EU is the largest trading and investment partner of every nation in the Middle East. The EU provides 70 percent of the foreign aid and humanitarian assistance in the world today. Almost all the world's peacekeeping and policing forces, outside of Iraq, are staffed or funded primarily by Europeans—Lebanon, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Afghanistan.

True or not, it's significant that 50 years after the EU's march to unity began, it is now Europe, not the United States, that's held up as a new lamp unto nations.

I too think that the European Union has achieved a lot in its 50 years, possibly more than optimists held possible at the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957. I also think that a 50 year old sometimes needs some innovative ideas and a good overhaul in order to face the future. Yes...many arguments can be brought forward against the optimism of Moravcsik. But why would you do that to someone that just turned 50 years old?

Update: I guess I was right about the arguments against Moravcsik's optimism. Here are a few, with a rejoinder of Moravcsik. And here on bloggingheads.tv is an interesting discussion about the article (and the EU in general) between Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner.

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

Legrain on immigrants

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!

More Europeanisation

On the 24th of January, a so-called 'letter of formal notice' has been sent by the European Commission to the governments of Austria and Belgium. The letter concerns the 'Europeanisation by stealth' that I have addressed before here for the case of Austria and here for the case of Belgium. These governments thought they found a solution for the high influx of foreign students (respectively German and French) in some of their universities.

European law - Article 12 of the EC Treaty - prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality. In Austria, they thought they found a way to circumvent European law by discriminating not on the basis of nationality (which was addressed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in July 2005) but on the basis of the location where students obtained their secondary education. Now it seems that the Commission considers that Austria has still not complied with the ECJ's ruling:

"In the case of Austria, this is a follow-up to the judgement of the European Court of Justice in July 2005. The Austrian legislation had required that the holders of secondary education diplomas from other Member States had to prove that they have met conditions governing access to the higher education in their home country (e.g. passing the entrance exams). The Court held that Austria's legislation discriminated against holders of secondary education diplomas awarded in another Member State, since they could not gain access to Austrian higher education under the same conditions as holders of the equivalent Austrian diploma (Article 12, 149, 150 of the EC Treaty). As regards a possible justification of such discrimination, the ECJ stated in particular that Austria "failed to demonstrate that ... the existence of the Austrian education system in general and the safeguarding of the homogeneity of higher education in particular would be jeopardized”, in the absence of restrictive measures, by the number of students coming from other countries, mainly Germany.

Following the Court's decision, Austria provisionally amended the relevant Universities Act twice, firstly in July 2005 to abide the Court's decision then, in June 2006, to re-establish restrictions to the access. The latter amendment specified that, for some studies, 75 % of the study places could be reserved to applicants with a secondary education diploma acquired in Austria (and 20 % to other EU students, the remaining 5% to third-countries students). A subsequent decree stipulated that these quotas were to be introduced for medicine and dental studies till the end of 2007.

Today's letter of formal notice – based on Article 228 of the Treaties (i.e. non-application of an ECJ ruling)- indicates that the Commission, having analysed the justifications put forward so far by the Austrian authorities, considers at this stage that Austria has still not complied with the ECJ's ruling and invites accordingly Austria to submit its observations."

Reforms in Belgium (the Wallonian part) last year restricted the number of foreign students in particular degrees like veterinary science and physiotherapy. Many French students studied in Belgium because they are required to go through entrance exams in France. While writing about that case in March last year, I already predicted that this might constitute a breach of Article 12. In their letter, the Commission seems to agree:

"With today's letter of formal notice, the European Commission indicates – for similar reasons as in the Austrian case – that this system has discriminatory effect on the EU nationals not residing in Belgium and that Belgium failed to justify the introduction of this system."

Both Member States have now 2 months to respond to the letter of formal notice of the Commission. A letter of formal notice has no direct legal consequences but it is considered the first step of infringement proceedings which could lead to cases before the ECJ.

Most likely there will be more similar cases like this in the near future. The EU Observer for instance addresses the Denmark case:

"Meanwhile Denmark - which has many Swedish students in its universities - is looking at what Copenhagen may do to stop the influx from across the Oresund strait."We have to find a solution at the EU [level]," Danish science minister Helge Sander said in July 2006, after it emerged that one third of students accepted in Danish medical faculties that year were Swedish."

So why do I keep coming back to this issue? The cases in themselves of course do have a significant local impact. But it is more about the bigger picture: the loss of national sovereignty over an issue that has always been firmly within the authority of national governments. To what extent can a 'non discrimination' principle function in a service that is still seen as very important for the advancement of national society, national culture and the national economy.

Here, it could be interesting to make a comparison with the United States. In the US, discrimination on the basis of the 'state of origin' is a normal practice. Some public universities (the State Universities) have a clear mandate to recruit a certain part of their student population from their own region (some states or university systems set caps on the proportion of students that can be enrolled from other states) and are allowed to charge higher tuition to out-of-state students. One could conclude that higher education in the United states of Europe is more integrated than in the United States of America...

The pressure from the Commission and the rulings of the ECJ can especially have an important impact upon policies regulating student fees. If selection on the basis of nationality is no longer possible, it will become unsustainable to provide free education in some countries. After all, this is likely to create an influx of foreign students from other EU member countries (for which the tax payers in the host country are probably unwilling to pay). As we have seen in the cases above, not only tuition fees, but also other barriers to access might cause such an outflux.

In the ScienceGuide I read the reaction of the chairman of the National Unions of Students in Europe (ESIB), Koen Geven. He says that the letter of the Commission came too late and is too soft. Nevertheless, they are happy the Commission is finally taking action, because these two countries (Belgium and Austria) have been neglecting one of the most fundamental principles in the European Union - non discrimination - for too long.

I would think that the ultimate consequences of this increased Europeanisation of higher education might turn out to be very much contradictory to the guiding principles of some national student unions (for instance with regards to tuition fees and other financial issues, like providing financial student support to - national - students). I wonder what the Austrian and Belgium members of the ESIB think of the Commissions letter! Geven also says that the countries where the students come from should reconsider their regulations with respect to access to higher education. Indirectly that would mean - in this case - that Germany and France should harmonise their policies towards 'a European standard', leading to further convergence in the field and threatening the - so much treasured - diversity in European higher education.

I think the Commission is well aware of the senstivity of the issue on the longer term. It clearly shows that in the press release:

"The Commission recognises the sensitivity of the issue of access to universities in various Member States. While pursuing its role as guardian of the Treaties, it remains open to continue the dialogue with both the Austrian and Belgian authorities."

I'll keep a close eye on further developments in this case.

Whose European Higher Education?

Last Month, the Dutch Central Planning Agency (CPB; international name: Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) published a report on the role of Europe in higher education: "Higher education: Time for coordination on a European level?" (in English). More specifically, they asked the question whether there are valid reasons for more European (as opposed to national) coordination of higher education. Their final conclusion is NO: there is little empirical data that supports a shift towards European coordination of higher education. The authors claim that neither economies of scale, nor the existence of external spill-overs substantially justify an increased European role.

However, looking at European developments in the last few decades, I do see that there is a shift from national coordination towards European coordination. Question then is of course: why does this happen? And who pushes for increased Europeanisation if there are no justified reasons for nation states to do so? Clearly, many other parties do have a steak in further Europeanisation of HE:

1. Students, Employers and Professions. Student mobility in Europe will have (indirect) consequences for national policies. Increased mobility will demand increased coordination and standardisation at the European level. One of the consequences here has been the European Credit Transfer System, standardising the credit systems in European systems. In the future, the principle of non-discrimination might well pose severe obstacles for the discretionary capacity of states to offer free higher education for their nationals. The CPB report shows that most students aren't very mobile and are not willing to go abroad to find quality education, but usually start their higher education close at home. I think however that - in due time - the European BaMa structure will lead to a substantial increase in mobility in the Masters stage, especially if the (financial) benefits of a prestigious 'foreign' Masters degree becomes more visible. With the increase in mobility of professionals there will also be more demand for standardisation and transparency in degrees and qualifications from the side of employers and of professional organisations (lawyers, medicine, accountants, etc). Simply said: increased movement and mobility leads to the necessity of coordination and facilitation of these flows. Be it flows of telephone calls or gigabytes or of students, academics, credits, services.

2. European Institutions. Many European rules have been created to coordinate and facilitate these flows. These rules were not at all related to higher education. Rulings of the European Court of Justice however, have had a substantial effect on the authority of national governments over their 'own' national higher education systems. In many instances, European law - that was not created to regulate higher education - indirectly affected higher education. Several ECJ cases in the 70s and 80s were related to education, revolving around issues like access to education for non-nationals in member states and eligibility for particular provisions and the relation with the principles of non-discrimination (for an excellent analysis, see Verbruggen, 2002, in Dutch). One of the best known examples of this was the Gravier Case.

Two points in the Court's ruling of the Gravier Case were relevant to the European Community's competencies in higher education. First, the ruling stated that a non-national student cannot be charged an additional fee as a condition of access if nationals of the host state do not pay the same fee. Secondly, by stating that higher education could be seen as vocational, the Court defacto extended the competencies of the Community, since vocational training was already part of the Treaty and related provisions now could also apply to (parts of) higher education.

The principle of non-discrimination together with the rules on the free mobility of persons, workers and services increasingly impact higher education even though they were not created to do so. The growing role of the ECJ in this 'Europeanisation by stealth' is illustrated by a recent example: the German medicine students in Austria. In this case, substantial national reforms can be traced back to ECJ rulings. Other national regulations on access to programmes might be proven to be counter to European law, like the case of French students applying for Belgian programmes in veterinary science and physiotherapy.

3. Universities. Universities will strategically try to lift coordination to the European level whenever they see benefits for themselves; in other cases they will ally with their national governments. The 'European level' creates an extra avenue for universities in which to operate. As a response they have created a dense network of relations with other universities in order to exploit - politically or financially - their European opportunities. With more financial resources spent on European initiatives, especially fuelled by the European Lisbon Agenda promoting innovation, universities will operate and cooperate more on a European scale in order to gain access to the financial and political resources. This lifts coordination up to a European scale directly as well as indirectly. Directly through the inter-organisational coordination of activities among universities. Indirectly through the emergence of an ever denser European policy community, existing of universities, university networks, intermediary bodies, resource providers and official EU institutions.

4. The European policy community in HE. The emergence of this European policy community in higher education has become a self-reinforcing process. The informal and formal networks and the numerous European organisations active in the field of higher education have all gained a vested interest in ongoing European integration. This is clear for official European institutions like the Commission, Parliament and ECJ, but it also goes for networks and organisations like the European University Association (EUA), National Unions of Students in Europe (ESIB), European Association for International Education (EAIE), Academic Cooperation Association (ACA), European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE), the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), etc. or inter-university networks like Coimbra Group, ECIU, LERU, the Santander Group, UNICA, etc., etc., etc.

The CPB might have found that there are not many reasons for increased European coordination. I think that this will not stop the Europenisation process. All in all, I think an increasing role of 'Europe' in national higher education is inevitable. The big question however is: who is 'Europe'. Will the Commission and the ECJ take on the role previously performed by nation states in the coordination of higher education? Will it be an outcome of the interplay between universities, students, professions and employers? Or will it still be the member states, that are becoming more and more 'Europeanised' themselves. A mixture probably.

So, is it "time for coordination on a European level?" I think the question assumes too much agency, especially at the side of national governments. Whether it is time or not, it is happening. And it is not likely to stop.

Globalisation & Higher Education in *****

I found a recent post in one of my favourite blogs (or is it an online magazine?) on the demands that globalisation makes on higher education systems around the world. After reading it I noticed how global this debate has become and how it is so similar in very different parts of the world. Here are some summarising sections of the article:

The four challenges of globalization - the flight of talent, benchmarking to global standards, the possibility of education as a business opportunity, and the mismatch between supply and demand - have a common thread running through them. Inflexible and overtly regulated education systems are unlikely to respond to these challenges. Rigid academic systems all over world struggle to reposition themselves to respond to the challenges posed by globalization.

The ***** education system is one of the most tightly controlled in the world. The government regulates who you can teach, what you can teach them and what you can charge them. It also has huge regulatory bottlenecks. There are considerable entry barriers: Universities can be set up only through acts of legislation, approval procedures for starting new courses are cumbersome, syllabi revision is slow, and accreditation systems are extremely weak and arbitrary. The regulators permit relatively little autonomy for institutions and variation amongst them.

Globalization requires two contradictory transformations in the state: On the one hand, successful globalization requires that the state invest heavily in increasing access to education. But in higher education, globalization also requires the state to respect the autonomy of institutions so that a diversity of experiments can find expression, so that institutions have the flexibility to do what it takes to retain talent in a globalized world and, above all, respond quickly to growing demand. Globalization demands a paradigm shift in the regulation of higher education. In ***** the debate has only just begun.

You can fill in the *****. I think it could be Germany as well as France. China as well as Pakistan. Australia as well as Thailand. Uganda as well as South Africa. Greece as well as Italy...etc...etc. The solution can be found here.

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...

...and keep your tray table and seat in the full upright position

For my flight to the United States I took some news articles that might be of interest and on which I might post later on. Here's a list of what I thought might be worthwile:

An article on the risks that Australian universities are taking by focusing so (too?) heavily on the international student market. Universities are risking their academic reputation by rushing into dubious offshore ventures and are leaving themselves financially exposed as the boom in overseas students tapers off. A report from NSW Auditor-General Bob Sendt finds universities have become too reliant on overseas students and need to find other sources of revenue:

• Foreign risks for universities (The Australian)

And in Europe, the Commission recently came up with some recommendations on how to improve higher education and make it more responsive. Or in other words, the present some thoughts on:

• why European higher education systems must be modernised? (EC Memo)
  

Although the Commission does not have any substantial authority in the field of higher education, they more and more try to incorporate higher ed. in their Lisbon Strategy. Often, they prefer to do that by using the power of exaggeration. The European Commissioner for Education has a stark warning:

• Get a grip or be 'beautiful museums' (Times HE Supplement / subscription)

But the universities themselves have some toughts about this issue as well. The League of European Research Universities (Leru), said: "We welcome the recent EU acknowledgement that universities play a key role in society, but there must be much more emphasis on the diversity of universities, and funding must be based on the excellence of their particular outputs." Read about it here:

• Europe's top 20 demand action (Times HE Supplement / subscription)

And then on a more general topic.. While global competition intensifies, governments devise strategies to protect jobs, industries and reputation. The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization analyzes contrasting approaches to managing globalization that have emerged in Europe, one from France and the other from Denmark.

• Europe Faces Globalization-Part I
• Europe Faces Globalization-Part II

But of course there's also a fully loaded iPod [lots of songs and some podcasts, among which the podcasts of the ongoing Key Concepts Public Lecture Series of the Research Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Sydney], and a good book. Hopefully that's enough to get me from SYD, over the ocean to SFO and via ORD to RDU.

ASEAN (and the EU)

The foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are meeting in the beautiful mountain resort of Ubud in Bali this week. An editorial in the Jakarta Post calls for renewed action in the association:

"ASEAN risks becoming irrelevant if it does not respond to the huge challenges it faces today, nearly 40 years after it was first formed. The foreign ministers have the task of convincing the international community that the regional grouping continues to be relevant by taking strong action against any members who threaten the existence of the association.

Established with a grand vision, ASEAN is increasingly seen as ineffectual. Apart from becoming a never-ending talking circuit -- it sometimes seems not a day passes without a meeting linked to ASEAN -- it has done very little in the way of practical action."

The editorial links ASEAN's lack of action mainly to the Myanmar issue. Myanmar's inclusion into ASEAN has until now not led to any significant changes. On the other hand, the adjourning of diplomatic relations by other countries have also not led to any results. Besides, it wouldn't be fair to judge ASEAN's actions solely on the basis of the Myanmar issue.

Compared with many other regional groupings, ASEAN has performed fairly well. Although it started (in August 1967) mainly as cooperation for security reasons, it has launched an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in the 1990s and it now covers a wide range of other issues, ranging from telecommunications to education.

Last year, an 'Eminent Persons Group', consisting of former political leaders from the 10 countries, was established to think about ASEAN's way forward and the drawing up of a charter.

"Members of the Eminent Persons Group are close to agreeing on means to strengthen the role of the ASEAN secretary-general and effecting a sanction mechanism for recalcitrant members. The 10 members also want more involvement of citizens of ASEAN countries in the decision-making process to ensure the grouping is not seen merely as an exclusive club for government officials and civil servants. They also agreed that the present ASEAN approach to decision-making through consensus has to be revised."

"To make ASEAN more people-oriented, an ASEAN Consultative Assembly, consisting of members of parliaments and representatives of civil society, could provide advice, feedback and oversight. Decision making needs to be redefined and redesigned, when consensus is required and when voting can be used. In the case of voting, what should be seen as adequate: 50 + 1, two-thirds, or three-quarters?"

At the same time, the Jakarta-based ASEAN Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS) proposed the establishment of an ASEAN Court of Justice which should serve as an independent body.

"The Court of Justice would ensure the timely resolution of any regional disputes that arise based on agreed rules and obligations and the norms and principles of international law. The ASEAN Court of Justice, according to the proposal, should be given jurisdiction over economic agreements, interstate disputes and ASEAN agreements."

These new developments - a Charter, a Court of Justice, an Assembly including civil society actors, a shift away from decision-making by unanimity - show a great deal of similarity with European developments. The question therefore comes up: will ASEAN become like the EU? Former Secretary General Severino addressed this question five years ago. His answer?

"Most likely not. At least not exactly. As the EU itself acknowledges, it is unique as a regional organization and will probably remain so. But we can expect domestic and external forces, the logic of globalization, and the imperatives of regionalism to move ASEAN to resemble the EU more closely than it does today, and as ASEAN evolves, more closely than we can foresee today."

(Jakarta Post quotes are from its 18 and 19 April editions. They are not directly linked because the JP does not use stable links.)

The Pot and the Kettle?

Joseph Stiglitz, in Globalization and its Discontents, shows how the principle of conditionality is increasingly used as a political instrument by institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. According to this article in the International Herald Tribune, current World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz now speaks up for including freedom of the press as one of the conditions for loans of the Bank.

Wolfowitz and senior World Bank economists know that strong, independent news media play a key role in promoting transparency and good governance, which in turn lead to economic and political development. Corruption can only flourish when governments operate with impunity outside the bright lights and public exposure that independent media bring. So autocrats and corrupt politicians everywhere seek to suppress their homegrown independent media.

The bank has been reluctant in the past to speak out on this issue for fear that it would be seen as interfering in the domestic politics of sovereign states. But media freedom is a universal right; it is also a precondition for tackling the central issue of corruption. As Wolfowitz has said, "you really can't talk about economic development without talking about freedom of the press."

Although in principle I am positive about such an inclusion, it clearly increases the political role of the World Bank. And what's more, in the perception of many, it will even more than before put World Bank policies in line with the 'spread of democracy'-strategy of the US (and some European countries).

In the IHT article, Wolfowitz claim is mainly illustrated through the case of Kenya. At the same time, rightly or not, it might also create opportunities for developing countries to criticise western democracies and their relations with the press. This includes the administration of which Wolfowitz was part, which has been criticised over press matters more than once.

And what about the EU? Are we still talking about free press when parliaments pay journalists to report on their activities? As is reported in the same issue of the IHT:

The funding for journalists can include payment of a first-class round-trip train ticket or an economy-class plane ticket to Strasbourg from any of the 25 EU countries and a daily stipend of 100 Euros to cover hotel, food and entertainment over two days.

The Parliament also provides television journalists with unlimited use of free state-of-the-art television studios, free sound and camera equipment, and free two-person camera crews that can be borrowed for the day.

Hans Peter Martin, an independent member of Parliament from Austria and a former journalist for the German magazine Der Spiegel, said the Parliament's funding of journalists showed that representatives of EU institutions had not understood the principles of free press and democracy.

So are we talking about a typical case of the pot calling the kettle black? I myself do not think that argument really stands firm. I however do think that this argument will be used by states that try to limit press freedom in their countries. Also, the perceived alignment with US foreign policies might jeopardise the legitimacy and credibility of the World Bank. And for the EU payments to journalists? This of course has to stop immediately if the European Parliament wants to have any credibility left in the future.

Solid Growth, New Challenges

This morning I attended the launch of the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Regional Update. For the first time, the launch came directly from Sydney; previously it was launched in Washington and presented in Australia by videoconferencing. This twice yearly snapshot of economic development in East Asia was presented by Jeff Gutman (WB Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific) and Dr Homi Kharas (WB Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific). The title was 'solid growth, new challenges' and pretty much covered the message: a lot of optimism, but also some challenges (although I wouldn't call them new). Here are a few highlights.

Economic growth in East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) remains high. Southeast Asian countries show a rather steady growth of 5 to 6%, while China's growth slowly decreases but remains high at more than 9%. Japan slowly recovers with a growth of 2.8%.

An interesting observation was the increased regionalization in terms of trade. Exports in East Asia were more than before aimed at other EAP countries. Obviously, the expansion of the Chinese market plays a substantial role in this, but also the economic recovery of Japan.

East Asia is also slowly catching up in terms of patents. The amount of patents in EAP is high for countries like Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea, even if corrected for income and population. Malaysia and China's innovation are approximately what could be expected with their level of income. Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand however, are still underperforming.

One of the challenges ahead was also an important topic in the previous update of November 2005: the avian flu. This problem mainly needs a combination of international and local efforts in order to be contained. Although the economic consequences of an avian flu outbreak could be severe, it "did not keep the World Bank's Chief Economist awake at night."

Some extra attention was also given to a more long term threat: global warming. With the rise of China, the CO2 emissions rise accordingly. At the same time, East Asia and the Pacific are very vulnerable to global climate changes, especially since most of their economic activity is in coastal cities.

Interesting quote this morning: "What we worry about most is not having anything to worry about"

The report will soon be available on-line. Audio recordings are available via the University of Sydney Podcasts feed.

Giddens & Co. on Europe

The Guardian published the transcript of an interview with Anthony Giddens about New Labour, the Lisbon Agenda and labour market reforms. The message for Europe, or better, for Germany, Italy and France: a flexicurity model. Reform of the labour market and at the same time taking care of those who lose out. Here are a few of his statements.

About Lisbon and the European Social Model:

You get all these detailed prescriptions about what should be done at the level of the economy. Even this great hit list which countries are supposed to follow. But most of the material on so called social exclusion and so forth tends to be very vague, that goes along with it. So I tend to think there should be more detailed programmes for how you cope with, for example, dislocation of workers who lose their jobs as a result of technological change and changing patterns of social justice.

About the big three (France, Italy, Germany):

The key issue is: is there enough shock in France and Germany and Italy to produce those changes because a great deal of Europe's unemployment is concentrated in those three countries?

On the Lisbon Future:

Hopefully a hardened version of the Lisbon agenda, some policy innovations like the European Institute of Technology and hopefully more concession to the idea that you need to show that we are doing something to help those who lose from these changes. That is what feel to be a fundamental thing missing from the Lisbon agenda.

Giddens was interviewed on the occasion of the presentation of a pamphlet on the European Social Model. This pamphlet is a collection of papers of a group of European academics and the product of several discussions initiated by the Policy Network in July 2005. In October 2005, an 'Open Letter on the Future of Europe', co-written by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, has been published in newspapers across Europe in order to stimulate a debate on the future of the European social model.

The papers will be published later this year but can also be found at 10 Downing Street (see discussion papers).

Technonationalism and Economic Globalism

This month's Far Eastern Economic Review featured an interesting article about Asia's nationalist policies in the globalised field of science and innovation. Here are a few sections, but read the full story here (free access).

P.V. Indiresan, the former director of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras: "The future of both China and India is at risk, because neither owns the technology it operates; the intellectual property continues to remain in the West. The short answer to this problem is that we should develop our own technology; we should acquire so much intellectual property that the West will be as much dependent on us as we are on them."

(...)

There has been a real effort to reach out to Asian diasporas in places such as Silicon Valley and Cambridge University. Successful Chinese, Korean, and Indian scientists are being successfully lured back to their home countries to new labs in new research centers stocked with the most advanced equipment. The Shanghai and Beijing municipal governments offer returning technology entrepreneurs tax breaks, subsidized office space and access to government-investment funds.

(...)

Mr. Wen's (Premier Wen Jiabao of China, Ed) January speech about 'independent innovation' was accompanied by commentaries in Science and Technology Daily that quickly pointed out that self-reliance did not signal the abandonment of the 'open door' policy and that 'independent' did not equate to 'insular' or 'closed'. Domestic firms themselves, moreover, have business strategies that may conflict with nationalist goals.

The very forces of globalization that are encouraging such knowledge transfers, however, are also undermining the abilities of Asian nations to effectively implement technonationalist policies or any top-down development strategy, for that matter. WTO restrictions on import quotas, tariff barriers, and export subsidies have gradually created more open and market-oriented economies. As a result, policy makers have gradually replaced state-led, highly centralized models of technological innovation with a more flexible and open system, increasingly dependent on foreign enterprises. As they have globalized, Asian societies have become less susceptible to top-down direction.

(...)

The twin forces of nationalism and globalization could, however, push in opposite directions. Changes in the security environment are the most likely scenario that would lead policy makers to more forcefully control the free flow of ideas or talent. Already worried about the rise of China's military power, the U.S. defense and commerce departments are currently considering new regulations limiting the ability of foreign students and researchers to work with information and technology that is export-controlled. Job loss in developed countries, especially among knowledge workers believed to be immune from the vagaries of international competition, could generate a backlash against globalization. A failure of Asian firms to actually work their way up the value chain and begin to control proprietary technology may also cause decision-makers to question whether they can truly break free of dep