Changing Higher Education

Two more, very different, meetings

My friend Joe Duffey keeps sending me announcements about meetings in some vain hope that he can keep me more aware of what is happening in the world.  I feel compelled to comment on two of his recent alerts because they do say a lot about what is going on. One depresses me, the other I find very hopeful.
1. The World Summit on University Ranking- this is the depressing one. 
Readers of this blog know how I feel about university rankings: I dislike them greatly.  I could spend a day listing all of the reasons why, but will just run over a few. First, the idea that the overall quality of universities can be reduced to a single number in silly.  Every great university has some really terrible programs, and many otherwise mediocre institutions have some superb programs.  When trying to rank programs (as the NRC does), one finds that the reputational data are squishy (who really knows very much about the programs at more than a hand full of rival institutions?), and the “harder” data are rather arbitrarily chosen (it can be easily measured).  In the end, the statistical uncertainties of the data leave almost everyone in a statistical tie, but that doesn’t stop anyone from dropping the uncertainties and using the numbers as absolute. 

Because research data are easier to obtain than teaching data, rankings focus on the research.   This effective devaluing of teaching and learning in our self analyses is not healthy, and at some point will lead to difficulties in our relations with the societies that support us.

Whatever data are used, some person then must decide how to weight different inputs in order to add it up to a definition of  the best university.  Obviously, however, there is absolutely no unique way to combine the data.  One way is arguably as good as another.  This does not stop anyone either.  In fact,  the rankers like this aspect, since it means that an almost endless number of rankings can be published, each leading to a happy financial or reputational ending for someone.

Rankings are, of course, a celebration of the status quo.  Consequently, they punish institutions that are trying to respond innovatively to the changing world.   This would be of little importance if so many governing boards and presidents were not focused on “improving their rankings”.  Thus badly needed innovation - including cost cutting innovation - becomes even more difficult to carry out.

Finally, when making “world” rankings, most often the criteria are based on venerable Western universities.  Why? Why should looking like Harvard be a good idea in many countries of the world?

So overall, I think we can all be quite concerned that we now have an International Rankings Expert Group.  They are producing a product that by definition is flawed, and serves almost no good purpose.

2.The Global Higher Education Forum 2009-  this is the hopeful one.
This is almost the anti-meeting to the one described above;

The Global Higher Education Forum (GHEF) brings together scholars, policy makers, researchers, academics and administrators to reflect, analyse, discuss and debate on a wide variety of issues pertaining to global higher education in a south-south context. In particular, GHEF2009 will focus on the theme of Global Higher Education, seeking to ponder and reflect on the benefits and challenges and at the same time, envision the way forward for emerging and expanding, rather than for established, higher education systems.

This is a group that actually wants to think about alternative approaches to those which are celebrated above- approaches that may be enormously more valuable for the countries involved. As pointed out in the Background and Rational of the meeting:

In view of the many similar initiatives by different regions and groups to promote the development of higher education through a common platform (which is increasingly biased towards European/American models), the deliberation on the practicality and appropriateness of Asian, Latin American and African countries following the same pathway is timely. The current global economic meltdown presents another interesting backdrop and context to analyse and deliberate on the suitability of European/American models for expanding and emerging higher education systems in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

There is a wonderful article in GlobalHigherEducation written by two members of the organizing committee, Morshidi Sirat and Ooi Poh Ling, describing the goals of this forum. We should all wish them success.

Bologna finally comes to the US

Thanks to the Lumina Foundation, an exciting educational experiment is underway. InsideHigherEd reports that Lumina is leading a US project that applies the  “Tuning” approach of the Bologna process to  several different undergraduate majors.   Numerous higher education institutions of differing size and mission in Utah, Indiana, and Minnesota are participating. 

The Bologna process, overall, tries to bring some consistency to the meaning of degrees around the Bologna region in order to facilitate movement of students around the region, and acceptance of degrees by employers (see The Bologna process - a significant step in the modularization of higher education, Sept 12, 2008). At the same time, the process does not seek to challenge the differences in approach and viewpoint that characterize the various member states. Thus, there is agreement on the intellectual capacities that should describe someone who has attained a degree of a certain level, but no limitations on the approach that got the student to that point.   Clifford Adelman has just published another detailed and very insightful report on the process,  The Bologna Process for U.S. Eyes: Re-learning Higher Education in the Age of Convergence. Highly recommended.

The Tuning approach is the discipline specific part of this process. The approach seeks to create guidelines that faculty can use as they develop statements of expectations for such things as learning outcomes and  levels of learning for individual disciplinary degrees.  The process involves surveys of graduates, employers, and academics to get a clear picture of the learning outcomes that should be expected of specific disciplinary degree programs in the 21st century.  The process has moved along well in Europe, and has led to the formation of a Latin American Tuning Process that now involves institutions in about 18 Latin American countries.  High time the US joined the world and experimented with the approach! 

It is disappointing, but no surprise, that InsiderHigherEd reports that Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, is concerned that all of this could provide a threat “academic freedom”.  This is the usual argument advanced to derail attempts to define desired learning outcomes or to measure them. However, at one level, Nelson is certainly correct.  If faculty do not participate fully and creatively in helping to develop appropriate and meaningful statements of desired learning outcomes, someone else will eventually impose standards - and those externally  imposed standards quite possibly will provide a threat to academic freedom. 

Another sad story about outcomes assessment

Kevin Carey has written a number of very compelling articles relating to the use of outcomes measures in higher education(see Educational value added, Sept.1, 2006) .  One of his more recent was an op-ed, Blocking Public Comparisons Obstructs Knowledge, Too, in the Chronicle of Higher Education.   His “case study” for this article is the State University of New York at Buffalo, which apparently is suffering mightily from the economic downturn.  The President, John B. Simpson is turning to the legislature for both increased aid, and the ability to raise tuition.  However, as Carey points out:

Yet even as the SUNY system lurches toward financial crisis, it has squandered a golden opportunity to make its case to the taxpayers and their elected representatives, to demonstrate success in doing what the majority of those people care most about: helping students learn. By refusing to provide public, comparable measures of student-learning results, New York's great public-university system has sown the seeds of long-term marginalization. In that, too, it has plenty of company nationwide.

The situation facing President Simpson is particularly difficult because in 2003 the SUNY Trustees passed a resolution calling on the SUNY system to come up with uniform “before-after”measures of student attainment of general education goals. In other words, value added measures in the core area of general education.

What Carey describes as happening after that is not surprising -nor is it the type of response that is limited to the SUNY system:     

But in the year following the resolution, SUNY leadership was subjected to intense pressure from New York's Faculty Senate and other interest groups opposed to the plan. As a result, SUNY put in place a watered-down scheme in 2004. Value-added estimates of learning growth were no longer required. Instead of common systemwide measures, every university would choose its own standards, tests, and sampling procedures, making institutional comparisons difficult. They would also be made impossible because campus-specific data would be "used for confidential in-house discussions." The results, it was stressed, should never be used to "punish, publicly compare or embarrass faculty, courses, programs, departments, or institutions either individually or collectively.

Unfortunately, as Carey points out, even the resulting hodgepodge of measures contained some embarrassing results for specific programs, so additional efforts were required to water down the program.  He reports that a system task force studying implementation of the assessment program stated:

Institutions responded very strongly against the requirement that institutions must report to System Administration the percentage of students who 'exceed, meet, approach, or fail to meet standards

Economic value of international students: Australia

An important issue when thinking of national policies toward globalization of higher education is, quite simply, whether such globalization can provide a positive impact on the economy.  For example, NAFSA estimates that in 2007-2008, international students contributed $15.54B to the US economy. There are, however, many countries that have more actively reached out to international students than has the US.  How have their efforts translated into economic benefits?

Kris Olds at  GlobalHigherEd.com has several posts that look into different aspects of that question.  A recent post looks at recent data on the economic impact on Australia of international students.  The data comes from a report entitled The Australian Education Sector and the Economic Contribution of International Students.  The report shows that the economic impact of international students is very significant, making education the third largest export category earner for Australia.  Olds provides an overview and brief analysis of the data, and discusses the origins of the report itself. 

I have only skimmed the report, but it appears that the economic impact analysis looks only at international students coming to Australia.  The economic impact of the international students being taught at offshore sites of Australian universities is not considered, although this is clearly important for a number of Australian universities.  I also found Table 5-7, which looks at the number of international students who were granted visas to stay in Australia after study to be very interesting. 

The globalization of American higher education: approaching the tipping point

I was honored recently to be invited by the Regents Professors Group at Oklahoma State University to give a talk on globalization of higher education.  The title of this post was the title of that talk.    I had a great visit, and learned a lot about some very exciting things going on at OSU.  I thank Ramesh Sharda, Chair of the Group, for inviting me, and John Mowen, past Chair of the Group, for taking such good care of me on my visit. 

The presentation was videotaped by the Regents Professors Group, and can be found here.

Supply chains, revisited

In my musings on possible ways in which higher education might globalize, I have often referred to the modularization process that has been at the core of much of the globalization of industry. A key component of this process has been to turn from vertical integration of companies to a focus on core competencies with an evolved supply chain.   A recent article on Economist.com entitled Moving on up: Is the recession heralding a return to Henry Ford’s model? looks at how these supply chains have held up during the current economic downturn. Turns out many of these supply chains have had a lot of troubles as partners were unable to cope with the economic problems and went out of business.  This is leading some to yearn for the good old days of vertical integration.  The article reminds us of multiple reasons why vertical integration is not well suited for today’s world, but wisely rules nothing out in today’s unsettled conditions.

Most interestingly, the article points out that there is a “third way” to approach this problem:

A company can gain some of the benefits of vertical integration without full ownership. Consider Toyota, a motor company that has been a byword for decent management in a way that General Motors has not been. Toyota rigorously screens its suppliers for quality and financial health, and then spends time and money to ensure their efficiency and survival, sometimes taking minority stakes.In the 1980s, when Toyota chose Johnson Controls to supply seats, it blocked the supplier from expanding its facility, fearing that the additional cost would harm Johnson's profits and effectiveness. Instead, Toyota’s engineers worked with Johnson to streamline production, rearrange the factory floor, and cut inventories, ultimately showing that expansion wasn’t needed after all.

This approach creates:

a supply chain with the stability and efficiency of vertical integration but with some of the flexibility of looser networks of suppliers. The approach is also far cheaper than the traditional vertical method of owning suppliers outright, a virtue at a time when cash and credit are rare.

I will need to reflect a bit in order to see how this information might fit into my thoughts about the future of globalization of higher education. At a minimum, however, It provides a reminder that, in searching for optimal modularization, it is important to look at possible reasons that some of the partners might fail to perform.  Working with them in advance to strengthen their weak points may be in everyone's interest.