Globalization and Higher Education

I have just written a short piece for the Navigator, a magazine of the USC Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis, about globalization and higher education.  For convenience, I have pasted it in below (with references replaced by links), but the entire Fall 2006 issue in which it appeared can be accessed in PDF.

Globalization is a much used term in the world today, but its meaning is not particularly precise.  The differences between globalization and internationalization are also not consistently defined, with the two words are sometimes being used interchangeably although they generally refer to rather different concepts.  In the world of higher education, a dizzying variety of definitions of both words are to be found.

Rather then try to define what the words should mean in the abstract,  I find it provides an interesting perspective to use these words in the way that Samuel Palmisano, Chair of the Board and CEO of IBM recently did in describing historical periods in the development of the modern corporation. “Internationalization”, in Palmisano’s view, describes the hub and spoke industrial networks of the last half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  These networks focused on home country manufacture with international distribution, and in many cases international supply of raw materials.  “Globalization”, on the other hand, describes a late 20th century process in which corporations have modularized the production process, and use new modes of information technology and the relative absence of protectionist national barriers to find the most effective and efficient global means of producing and assembling the individual production modules.  In between these two periods was a time of “multinationals”, which sprang up when protectionism in the 1920's and 1930's made the spokes of the international companies ineffective - companies had to move from home country manufacture with international distribution to local production distributed in attractive markets.

Whatever terminology one uses, change is in the air in higher education. The knowledge economy is growing rapidly worldwide, and in most advanced nations, national wealth now depends more on education and creativity than on natural resources.  Consequently, the value of, and demand for, higher education is increasing worldwide.  However, at the same time, there is a major global political and economic change occurring that is described by Bobbitt as a transformation from the nation-state to the market-state.  This change is reflected in a shrinking of government’s role in many aspects of life, and a corresponding increase in the importance of global market forces in the determination of individual, group and state expenditures.  This has led to an almost universal lessening of per capita governmental  support for higher education, with the result that higher education globally increasingly finds itself pushed out of its traditional protected national role into the competitive global marketplace.   

However, there are also powerful “pulls” into the global marketplace for  higher education.  For example, the corporations that hire our graduates have themselves become globalized.  They expect that our graduates will be capable of working in Thomas Friedman’s flattened world, which means that our graduates need new skills and increased exposure to multiple cultures.  In some of our advanced education (e.g. Executive MBA’s) these global corporations now expect us to go wherever in the world the students are. And the competition for talent - both students and faculty - is increasingly global.  Technology is, of course, producing miracles in the areas of communications and information management, and these are enabling higher education to begin to move more aggressively and effectively into a wider geographic arena. 

Most of the traditional multi-country activities of higher education have followed the hub-and-spoke “internationalization” model of Palmisano: for example, focused recruitment efforts to “import” international students and faculty to the home campus, or “exporting” students and faculty to foreign institutions for study or research abroad.   “Twinning” and articulation arrangements in which multiple institutions define joint study programs also fall into this category.  In this era, however, an important modification has been added to many of these programs. One of the most important developments of recent years is that governments increasingly have come to realize the key contribution of higher education in global national positioning, creation of national wealth and welfare, and attracting significant foreign exchange.  Since the shrinking role of government often makes it very difficult to provide adequate financial support to enable higher education to maintain these roles, several governments have produced national policies that are intended in large part to make the hub and spoke international activities of their universities more effective (see.e.g policies of Australia and England).  The goals of such policies are generally to counteract falling government financial support for higher education by increasing income from international students, while at the same time attracting the brightest international students.

Another major change has been the increasing use of English as the language of instruction in higher education. As English increasingly becomes the language of business and science, ability to communicate well in English becomes more imperative for students who want to succeed in this new era.  As a consequence, it is important for higher education in a country to offer course work in English not only to prepare their own citizens for global competition, but also to attract the best international students. Although hard data showing the increased use of English in higher education are hard to find, anecdotal information indicates the increase is major, and seen in countries as diverse as Malaysia, Korea, and France.

The most fundamental re-envisioning of higher education that has been undertaken as a consequence of extra-national considerations is arguably that that has been undertaken by the more than 40 countries that have joined the Bologna process. This process has two major goals.  The first is to use higher education to help develop and strengthen the identity of the European (very broadly defined) area.  The Bologna accord states: “A Europe of Knowledge is now widely recognized as an irreplaceable factor for social and human growth and as an indispensable component to consolidate and enrich the European citizenship, capable of giving its citizens the necessary competencies to face the challenges of the new millennium, together with an awareness of shared values and belonging to a common social and cultural space.”   The second goal, which is global in its focus, is to attract students from around the world to the new European education:”The vitality and efficiency of any civilisation can be measured by the appeal that its culture has for other countries.  We need to ensure that the European higher education system acquires a word-wide degree of attraction equal to our extraordinary cultural and scientific traditions.” The Bologna process calls for the (regionally) typically 5-8 year first degree to be broken into two cycles, bachelor and master, with comparable definitions throughout the Bologna zone. The signatories are committed to create quality assurance systems, a common credit system, and to work to remove obstacles to student mobility.  Target for completion of the process is 2010, with the creation of the European Higher Education Area. 

Within the European Higher Education Area, we are seeing a new kind of collaborative approach to higher education, with, in effect, a near-total removal of national educational protectionism.  It will be very interesting to see the new kinds of educational collaborations that can be created in coming years within this new Area. However, in its relations with the world outside of the Area, the accord seems to suggest that the older hub and spoke “international” model of Palmisano continues to be the objective.

As pressures and opportunities of globalization have increased,  many institutions of higher education have moved beyond Palmisano’s “international” model.  Most countries employ some form of educational protectionism, and getting around these barriers to present educational programs leads into something that looks like Palmisano’s “multinational” phase. Generally, entry into a protected country requires local partners.  Often the required partner is a local educational institution; sometimes it is a supplier of support services; sometimes it is the government itself.  However, in the end, numerous institutions have succeeded in creating “foreign” campuses or degree programs where the home institution essentially controls curriculum, academic staffing, entrance criteria, etc.  This has not been an easy process, however, due to rapidly changing education regulations in many countries, and difficulties in gauging student demand, dealing with the required partners, and getting faculty to participate in or oversee these campuses on a continuing basis.

A potentially much more interesting - and much more controversial - approach involves franchising, in which a course or program from an institution is licensed to and delivered by an overseas institution in the name of the franchising institution.  This approach moves directly into Palmisano’s globalization stage.  Here, the instruction process has been modularized, with development of the curriculum being separated from its delivery.  Development has remained at the home institution, but delivery has been “offshored” to an overseas local provider for reasons such as efficiency and effectiveness. At this time, quality control often has been a major concern with this approach (and to a somewhat lesser degree, with the foreign campus approach).   Such concerns also exist in Palmisano’s world, and part of the process of globalization of industry has been learning how to assure quality control from contractors worldwide.  Thus the problem of quality in franchised higher education is almost certainly addressable with time and effort. 

Higher education is just beginning to respond to the forces that have reshaped much of the world. Much thought and  experimentation will be required to determine what our new missions should be, and how best to carry them out .  These are indeed interesting times!

Comments

[thebizofknowledge]

What a wonderfully written, concise, and beautifully merged summation of sources! As an educator who has taught in America, Japan, and Russia, I was pleased indeed to see this excellent post on education and globalization. Thank you for a most enlightening read!