Changing Higher Education
Major changes occurring in the world are redefining the metrics of excellence for higher education.
Who are our customers for education? II. Society as customer.
(Continuing the discussion of Who are our customers for education? I. The employer as customer.)
"Society" has traditionally been a major "customer" of higher education. At different times and places, higher education has been called on by society to do such diverse things as help create and/or maintain national identity, display national cultural and intellectual excellence, create societal mobility, preserve the societal status quo, contribute to economic growth and improved living conditions, fend off and counteract foreign ideas and influences, and provide critical expertise in times of war. Thus, the expectations of society as customer have and will vary according to time and place. In return for meeting these expectations, higher education (at least the non-profit side) generally has been well rewarded by society. Much of higher education globally traditionally has been run by the state, and thus received the great majority of its support from the state. Private non-profit institutions have received de facto state support through tax breaks of a variety of types, and are typically eligible for some types and levels of state support. Thus, the challenge is not to determine whether or not society is one of the customers of higher education- it is - but to define in this rapidly changing and globalizing world what "society" is, and what it expects (and will expect) of higher education. Further complicating the issue is that "society" has many levels, ranging from governmental structures at one end of organizational complexity to individuals at the other, and the relationships between these, and intervening, levels is also changing rapidly.
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April 22, 2007 in Economics, Globalization, Market-State, Mission | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: customer, globalization, higher education, intellectual capital. bologna. public good, market state, nation state, private benefit, societal expectations, vannevar bush
Can the stock market understand for-profit higher education?
The recent New York Times article concerning difficulties at the University of Phoenix and the earlier January 28, 2007 announcement that Laureate Education, Inc. was going to be taken private (for $3.8B)seem to share an important question for for-profit higher education: Is it possible to build a long-term viable, for-profit institution of higher education that is subject to the quarterly profit-growth demands of the stock market?
Laureate Education, on the other hand, is essentially inventing a new approach to globalization of higher education. One can imagine that there will times when creating academic sustainability of this new global educational enterprise will require more reinvestment and less profit than the growth-focused market can understand. In fact, Becker has stated," We have not taken dividends out of any of our universities around the world. They are free to build their excess revenues and to re-invest those funds in facilities or programs that benefit our students and grow our business."(p. 42) It is certain that academic sustainability is not the same as financial sustainability, although the two are clearly tightly linked in the case of for-profit higher education. Could this be one of the drivers behind the Laureate decision to move out of the of the market with its very short time horizon?
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February 20, 2007 in Competition, For-profit higher education, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: for-profit, higher education, Laureate Education, market, non-profit, University of Phoenix
The Creative University in a Flat World
“Tom Friedman, in his bestseller The World is Flat: a brief history of the 21st century describes a world in which decreasing trade barriers and rapid advances in technology, especially communication technology, have led to a revolutionary globalization of industry. In this new world, corporations create global supply chains for services and manufacturing by searching out the best providers wherever they may be. Companies in China, India, Brazil and Indonesia are now able to compete on a level playing field with American companies for spots in those global supply chains. The world has been flattened.
However, numerous studies show that the global playing field is not, in reality, completely flat. There are geographic areas where particular types of activities can be carried out with unusual efficiency and creativity. These are areas that John Hagel and John Seely Brown called local ecosystems that can amplify capability-building opportunities, that Susanne Berger calls clusters, and Richard Florida calls learning regions or creative centers. Special characteristics of these regions enable them to become centers of creative activity of one type or another. As a consequence, companies located in one of these areas still have a competitive advantage over similar companies not located in such a cluster elsewhere.
For many of these special local ecosystems- but not all - a university provides a center for creativity that plays an important role in producing the special characteristics of the region. Thus the ability of the university to encourage and support creativity is key to its role in such an ecosystem."
This is the beginning of a talk I recently gave at a USC Templeton Lecture entitled The Creative University in a Flat World. The subject of the talk was creativity generally, and the special role that universities that encourage creativity can play in a flattening world.
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January 18, 2007 in Competition, Creativity, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: creativity, flat world, Friedman, globalization, higher education, John Seely Brown, Richard Florida, Susanne Berger
Offshoring Executives, not Executive Jobs
The January 12,2007 Los Angeles Times has a fascinating article entitled “Cisco’s executive migration.” Cisco hopes to have 20% of its senior managers working at its Globalization Center in Bangalore by 2010. They will be a “mixture of rising stars from San Jose and Bangalore and talent plucked from acquisitions and competitors worldwide” - a very international mix. IBM, it turns out, already has about 150 executives living in emerging markets. This includes their Global Procurement office, now located in Shenzhen, China, which moved last summer with its American vice president in tow.
The author of the article, Rachel Konrad, says that all of this shows that “moving resources to far-flung parts of the world has evolved from cost arbitrage to strategic imperative”. This conclusion is very much in keeping with the conclusions of Hagel and Brown that I discussed in What has offshoring got to do with higher education?
Anna Lee Saxon, dean of the School of Information at UC Berkeley is quoted as saying,” People are finally realizing that the only way to create cultural capabilities, linguistic skills and personal social relationships is to move executives abroad.” We in universities should know (but often seem not to) that an extended stay abroad is the only way to accomplish the same goals with students. Education in this age of globalization will certainly call for greatly increased emphasis on a period spent in another culture - at least if we want to turn out the kinds of graduates that Cisco and IBM are looking for. See also my extended comments on time abroad in Modularity in university higher education: Education .
January 12, 2007 in Economics, Globalization, Learning, Workforce | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: Bangalore, cisco, executives, global, higher education, ibm, language teaching, offshore
More on private higher education globally
I commented recently on "A Tectonic Shift in Global Higher Education", by John Daniel, Asha Kanwar, and Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic, which describes the inroads that for-profit higher education is making around the world. I thought I should see what Daniel C. Levy and his excellent Program for Research on Private Higher Education might have to say on the matter, and discovered that he has a recent working paper entitled An Introductory Global Overview: The Private Fit to Salient Higher Education Tendencies. This paper concentrates on the non-profit side of private higher ed, but he notes “most of the findings we have identified as characteristics of private higher education are even more striking for the for-profit institutions.”. I also note that Levy has a number of databases looking at private higher education available on his website.
I will not try to describe all of his findings from this report, but rather suggest that you go to his paper. Instead, I will comment on a few of his findings that I found most interesting and provocative.
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December 04, 2006 in Competition, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Asia, competition, for-profit, globalization, higher education, non-profit, South Korea
Does the future of higher education belong to the for-profit sector?
My friend Joe Duffey very kindly called to my attention a very interesting article that I had somehow missed in Change Magazine. It is A Tectonic Shift in Global Higher Education, by John Daniel, Asha Kanwar, and Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic. Sir John Daniel is a person of wide experience in higher education, having headed Laurentian University and the Open University, and served as assistant director-general for education at NATO. When he co-authors an article predicting a “Tectonic Shift” in higher education, it deserves some attention.
The authors point out that the number of higher education students worldwide is growing much more rapidly than was predicted, and will probably reach 120 million by 2010. Not surprisingly, this growth is centered in developing countries. For example, China passed the US in number of students enrolled in higher ed in 2005, and Malaysia plans to increase enrollments almost three-fold in the next four years. This anticipated growth will require resources beyond those that developing countries can afford, and they will have to look for new approaches to the provision of higher education. The authors point out that “developing countries will soon account for the majority of enrollments in higher education worldwide”, and that therefore the approaches adopted by these countries “will effectively define the global profile of higher education in the 21st century.” Daniel et al argue that the most likely provider - and therefore the group that most impacts the evolving global profile of higher education - will turn out to be for-profit higher education.
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November 08, 2006 in Competition, For-profit higher education, Globalization, Learning | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: accreditation, cross border higher education, developing countries, for profit, higher education, non profit, quality control
More on International Students in the US
The ACE has just issued an excellent, hard-hitting brief entitled Students on the Move: the Future of International Students in the United States . The conclusion of the brief says it all:
"The United States continues to receive the largest number of international students. However, recent trends indicate that this position is significantly challenged and may not be sustainable if current trends continue. Although potential demand is high, a redistribution of international students among host countries is underway. This change may be due to perceptions that the United States is unwelcoming, vigorous competition from other countries, and successful national strategies from competitor countries to recruit international students. As the student marketplace becomes increasingly globalized and competition intensifies, it may be difficult for some institutions to begin recruiting international students, if they have not done so already, and for others to substantially increase their numbers,particularly if there is no coordinated support at the national or regional level.
U.S. well-being is increasingly dependent on innovation and competitiveness in the global knowledgebased economy. International students and scholars have historically provided a source of new talent for innovation in the United States. Although the demand for education abroad is increasing, so is the global competition for the “best and brightest.” Declines in the number of international students, especially in the science and engineering fields so critical for innovation, will affect the ability of higher education, business, and government to engage in research and development. Additionally, international students represent an important means for strengthening U.S. cultural diplomacy around the world."
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October 17, 2006 in Competition, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: ACE, competition, global, higher education, international students, spellings
Bangalore decides to opt out of the global economy!
According to an article in the Oct. 2, 2006 Los Angeles Times, the state government of Karnataka, home of Bangalore, has decided that schools will have to cease offering courses in English immediately , and switch to Kannada, a local language. The government seems to have decided to reject the (presumable unneeded/unwanted) economic growth that Bangalore has seen as a consequence of its rapid English-speaking-enhanced entrance into the global marketplace. This far-sighted move reminds me of rather similar votes on creationism and intelligent design that occur in this country. It is good to be reminded that worldwide, politicians are ready to sacrifice the well-being of the whole to pander to the prejudices of the part.
October 02, 2006 in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
Whither English?
These are great times for native English speakers and the universities of the English speaking world, right? The rising tide of globalization has made English the new must-have skill, giving us native English speakers a major advantage, and assuring the Anglo-American universities of a never ending supply of students from around the world who want an English language college degree. But before you relax and break out the Champagne, you may want to read a new book by David Graddol, published by the British Council, called English Next. He suggests that things are not completely as they seem.
Graddol begins with a very interesting analysis of the transition from modernity, in which language played a key role in defining the nation and its identity, to postmodernity, in which the forces of globalization are leading to more complex concepts of individual and national identity, and to new forms of multilingualism. Because so many of the drivers and enablers of globalization have a major “English factor”, English is playing a central role in this transition. As Graddol notes, “On the one hand, the availability of English as a global language is accelerating globalisation. On the other, the globalisation is accelerating the use of English.” (p.22). English has become a key component of the took kit of skills that the postmodern worker must have, and English is being introduced as a required second language in grade schools in many countries of the world, including China. Since older workers are also upgrading their English skills, Graddol reports that computer models show that within a few years “Nearly a third of the world population will be trying to learn English at the same time.” (!) (p.101)
September 12, 2006 in Globalization, Learning | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: China, competition, English language, globalization, modern, postmodern
Will Europe be a winner or loser in the knowledge economy?
Jean Pisano-Ferry has a very interesting piece in the Financial Times entitled Europe’s Eroding Wealth of Knowledge (also can be found on MSNBC). In it, he looks at some of the assumptions behind the 2000 Lisbon summit goal of making the European Union a knowledge based economy. One of the prime underlying assumptions is that the EU has a relatively highly skilled work force, and that this provides a competitive advantage in a knowledge-based world. He shows, however, that the average adult in the EU is “significantly less educated than adults in other industrialized countries”. In terms of number of adults who have experienced some tertiary education, the US is in the lead with 25% of the global total, the Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) follow with 20%, while the EU can claim less than 15%. This poor showing of the EU can be attributed to historic reasons, and the flow of EU students into tertiary education now has increased greatly. However, growth in tertiary education in many other parts of the world has grown even more rapidly. For example, the Bric countries now have one-third of the world’s students in higher education, while the EU has 16% (and the US has only 15%!).
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August 22, 2006 in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: bric, education, Europe, knowledge economy, Lisbon summit, trade
Modularity in university higher education: Education
(Continuing the discussion begun in Modularity in university higher education, June 16, 2006)
Education, as a module or modules, is a lot more complicated than research. Choosing the appropriate definition for a module is not a sure thing since globalization may cause us to rethink our organization of education, and therefore of the appropriate definition of modules.
One example of the way in which educational modules are being redefined by the forces of globalization is given by the Bologna Process. The Bologna Process describes a truly immense and courageous educational reform movement encompassing most of Europe. In the past, most European countries had a first higher education degree that took of the order of six years to obtain, and was at a level roughly equal to that of an American Master’s degree. That, therefore, probably would have been a reasonable module for European education. However, characteristics of these degrees varied significantly from country to country, thereby making student movement between countries difficult, and the long time to degree kept students out of the workplace for a long period. Lack of uniformity in degree definitions, and the long time to degree significantly decreased the desirability of these programs to non-European students. Increasing global competition made those undesirable consequences. In order to get around these difficulties, the Bologna Process set out to have in place by 2010 a European Higher Education Area. Within this area, the old six year programs will be divided into a 3-4 year Bachelor’s program, and a 1-2 year Master’s program, thus moving into closer alignment with the typical Anglo-American approach. The resulting bachelors will in many cases be less “professional”and broader and more general than was the original longer degree, with professionalization coming through the Master’s. The stated goals of this process are twofold: 1) to create an intellectual community that will help to define the identity of the new Europe; and 2) to attract the best students from around the world to the new European education. Thus, at least in this instance, forces of globalization have pushed one important region into a set of educational modules similar to those that would be most reasonable to define for the United States, but it need not always be this way.
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August 07, 2006 in Globalization, Learning, Mission | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.
July 31, 2006 in Globalization, Market-State | Permalink | Comments (1)
A preliminary report from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education
The Commission for the Future of Higher Education has just released a draft report, which was apparently prepared by staff, not the Commission members. Thus we can expect that the Commission will wade in and carry our a significant rewriting. So, rather than respond to the draft (other than to say that I find some of the things in it to be right on target, and others to be just silly), I will describe a few things I would like to see in the final report.
First, a discussion of the changes they see in the world, and why those changes put our higher education system at risk. There are surely many things wrong with our system of higher education (and those of all of our competitors, for that matter), and we are unlikely to have the enthusiasm or resources to fix them all. What threats do they believe their solutions are protecting us against? At present, we cannot judge the utility of their solutions, since we do not know the problems for which they are solutions
Second, what should we be teaching students in today’s world? If we want to do outcomes testing of learning, we had better be real sure we are testing for the desired outcomes, because the test will become the driver. Reports show that offshoring is creeping up the educational-attainment ladder. The key issue seems to me to be, what do today’s students need to learn so that they have a good chance of being successful in the increasingly globalized competition for jobs?
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June 27, 2006 in Competition, Globalization, Learning, Market-State | Permalink | Comments (0)
Are we losing the competition for international students?
The National Association of International Educators (NAFSA) has just released a new report Restoring U.S. Competitiveness for International Students and Scholars. It is an excellent hard-hitting report that deserves wide attention. It does, however, miss a couple of important issues that I discuss below.
The report notes that the era of robust growth in international student enrollments ended three years age, and that “there are now fewer international students enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions than there were in the fall of 2001." In addition, senior international scholars are encountering continuing difficulties in coming to the United States, and there is a growing negativity on their part towards this county. As the report emphasizes, this “intellectual anti-global” stand on the part of the United States has a number of extremely negative implications for our future competitiveness and well-being.
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June 21, 2006 in Globalization, Learning | Permalink | Comments (1)
Modularity in university higher education: Research
(Continuing the discussion begun in Modularity in university higher education, June 16, 2006)
Research is, of course, what defines the reputation of most university faculty. In turn, the reputation of the faculty builds the reputation of the university. Thus the connecting input characteristics of the research module must be defined in a way that it supports the efforts of the faculty in this domain. In addition, there are very close ties between research and Ph.D. education, and so one of the outputs that one would have to maintain for a research module is that it be appropriate for graduate training and, increasingly, undergraduate research experiences. However, in many if not most of our major research universities, there are research centers- often quite large - whose primary mission is not training, but production of focused sponsored research for, typically, government, sometimes industry. Indeed, at one limit, many such centers do classified research, which is inappropriate for the training of students. Much of the research in these centers generally is not carried out by regular faculty, but by a staff of professional researchers. Thus, even in some cases when the research itself may be quite appropriate for graduate training, lack of involved faculty mentors may give these centers marginal value for graduate training. The rational for having such centers will vary from university to university, but for those centers most removed from the academic center, the rational is often tied up in the larger service role of the university. Such centers can contribute significantly to the reputation of the university, thus bringing value in a different dimension.
Thus we see within a typical large university at least two different types of research module. One of these is closely aligned with aspirations of regular faculty and with graduate training, and therefore has rather well defined input and output characteristics that allow it to work synergistically with other modules (e.g. education) in the university. The other is more divorced from the educational component of the university, and tied in perhaps with the service component. Its output requirements are primarily that it satisfy its funding sources, input requirement that it do so in a way that enhances the reputation of the university e.g. through service, or perceived excellence. Of course, the reality is that there is a continuum of possibilities that lies between these two types of modules. However, these two extreme cases will let us investigate how the opportunities of globalization might lead to improvements in both.
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June 16, 2006 in Globalization, Research | Permalink | Comments (0)
Modularity in university higher education
(Continuing the discussion begun in Globalization and Internationalization, June 7, 2006)
“Modularity” is an ill-defined concept as used in discussing globalization of the modern corporation, in that it may mean very different things to different organizations at different times. Generally, however, it has to do with breaking a process into separable blocks (modules) that have sufficiently well defined inputs and outputs that the blocks can later be fit together and recombined into a complete process. “Globalization” then has to do with accessing resources world-wide to produce those modules in the most effective and efficient manner. As shown by Berger’s research (see The many pathways to globalization, April 21, 2006), there does not seem to be any “right” way to define and produce the various modules of a process. Rather, the way in which a process is modularized by a particular company is likely to be highly dependent on the history and conditions of that company - its legacy.
Thus, examining modularity in higher education is unlikely to lead to a generic model modularization. However, the impossibility of achieving a single unique answer should not dissuade us from exploring some of the possibilities for modularity, and the role of globalization for those possibilities.
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June 16, 2006 in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: globalization, higher education, modules
Globalization and Internationalization
Samuel Palmisano, Chair of the Board and CEO of IBM, provides an interesting and concise perspective of what globalization means in the corporate world in an article, The Globally Integrated Enterprise, that appeared in the May/June 2006 edition of Foreign Affairs. In this article, he outlined the evolution of corporations into global entities, and contrasted the newer, globally integrated corporation with earlier international and multinational corporations. It is interesting to use his framework to look at internationalization activities in university higher education.
June 07, 2006 in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1)
Where is the engine of the world economy?
In a Feb.17, 2006 post, the World in 2020, I described how the National Intelligence Council imagined the world might look only 14 years from now. One of the most powerful suggestions of the NIC report was that the engine of the world’s economy in 2020 would no longer be the United States, but rather that role will have shifted to China and other Asian countries.
In this light, an article in the May 14 Los Angeles Times entitled Emerging Nations Power World Economic Boom leapt right out at me. In that article, Tom Petruno writes, “Yet this is a different kind of boom from any other in the post-World War II era, analysts say. The soaring economies of China, India, Russia, Brazil and other emerging nations increasingly are setting the pace, overshadowing the slower growth of the United States, Europe and Japan, where the benefits of the expansion have eluded many workers.” Numerous statements in the article indicate that the underpinning of the boom in the emerging nations is the buying power of the United States, so one cannot yet take the US out of the driver’s seat. However, it is obvious that the global economic situation today could be interpreted as a step on the way to the condition predicted for 2020 by the NIC.
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May 15, 2006 in Globalization, Learning | Permalink | Comments (0)
Do Australia's public universities have a future?
I recently ran into a very interesting article by Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, entitled The rising phoenix of competition: what futures for Australia’s public universities? It appeared in the Autumn 2006 edition of the Griffith Review. Davis is a very thoughtful higher education leader who tries to peer into the future of higher education in Australia. A number of his other presentations can be found on the University of Melbourne "Speeches" site
In this article, Davis gives a very nice sketch of the history and present organization and status of higher education in Australia. He describes government policies that have tended to force all of Australian higher education (both public and private) into a Humboltian model of the research university. He also explains how government funding policies have pushed Australian universities to aggressively search out international students. Then, backing off to take a more global (literally) view, he describes the internal and external forces that are making this model unsustainable.
His perspective is particularly worthwhile since Australia has been perhaps the most aggressive country in reaching out to international students both at home and abroad- what might be seen as the first stage of globalization of higher education. Davis's concerns focus on the effects of increasing competition and educational innovation that globalization will bring to bear on the Australian model as globalization of higher education moves on to the next stage.
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May 09, 2006 in Competition, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
Excess Intellectual Capacity
This post might well be titled The Many Pathways to Globalization II. As I thought about Suzanne Berger’s discussion in How We Compete regarding the need for corporations to have “excess capacity” –both in terms of production capabilities and research - in order to respond quickly to future opportunities, I realized I had heard some of that argument before in a very different, but not unrelated, context. In 1945, Vannevar Bush in his enormously influential report Science-The Endless Frontier, made a very closely related point in arguing for government support of basic university research.
April 24, 2006 in Books, Globalization, Research | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: corporate research, globalization, intellectual capital, research university, vannevar bush
The many pathways to globalization
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
Thomas Jefferson
If one looks to the globalization of the corporate world as giving hints as to possible futures of higher education (I am certainly one of those), then How We Compete: What Companies Around The World Are Doing To Make It In Today’s Global Economy by Suzanne Berger is not to be missed. Professor Berger and her colleagues at the MIT Industrial Performance Center set out to study how individual corporations are actually responding to the pressures of globalization. Over a five year period, they conducted interviews at over 500 companies of varying size worldwide. They focused on sectors where underlying technologies are rapidly and on those where the underlying technologies are slowly changing. In the former, they looked at electronics and software, and in the latter, auto and auto parts and textile and apparel. Their goal was to let data, rather than theory, drive conclusions about the impacts of globalization on corporations. That is to say, this book is neither impressionistic nor evangelical, as are many of the other books looking at the effects of globalization, but rather is data driven.
April 21, 2006 in Books, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
A Nation-State Institution in a Market-State World
The other day I Googled Amarket-state higher education Bobbitt@, and came up with several interesting hits. One of these was a 2004 speech by Peter Scott, Vice Chancellor of Kingston University entitled The Impact of Globalization on Universities.
For me, Scott=s most thought provoking point begins with the statement that most universities have been created as a consequence of policies of States. As such, he argues, the university=s identity is ultimately aligned with the interests of its State. Of course, those interests have changed over time as constitutional organization has moved from the Princely State through the Nation-State, and universities have changed in response. Consequently, he concludes, the modern university is in myriad ways closely defined by the aspirations and organization of the Nation-State, and, in particular, its own Nation-State.
Our issue, then, is that the university of today is a Nation-State institution in a world transforming into a Market-State!
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March 28, 2006 in Globalization, Market-State, Mission | Permalink | Comments (1)
Offshoring moves up the education ladder
The Los Angeles Times reported on March 6, 2006 that advanced education is providing less of a buffer against offshoring than had been supposed. The article quotes Alan Blinder, a Princeton economics professor and former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, as estimating that one-third of the total jobs in the US were susceptible to offshoring. Regarding the role of education in providing protection, he is quoted, “More education has been the right answer for the past decades, but I am not so convinced that it is the right course” for coping with the upheavals of globalization. (See related article by Blinder in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006)
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March 07, 2006 in Competition, Economics, Globalization, Workforce | Permalink | Comments (0)
What business are we in?
A key question for every corporation over the recent decades of turbulence in the national and international marketplace has been "What business are we in?" As conditions changed, those corporations that really understood their business were best able to emerge in a strengthened situation. Often, companies decided that their existing understanding of their businesses were too restrictive. An oft-cited example of such a case is UPS, which realized its business was not simply delivering packages in its familiar brown trucks, but rather provision of logistics processes to a diverse spectrum of customers. They are supply chain managers for companies of all sizes worldwide, working intimately with companies to design every aspect of their supply-chain. In doing so, UPS moved from being a simple shipper of goods on request for corporations, to being a partner with corporations in the production and sales (and repairs) of their products. This partnership enables the corporations to better focus on their core businesses, and has enabled UPS to flourish. (A nice description of the UPS role in the changing world is given by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat, p 141-150.)
Universities have tended not to ask what business we are in. Or perhaps the answer seemed to be too obvious - " what we are doing now is our business." As we look to the future of universities, however, this obvious answer simply will not enable us to imagine a broad enough spectrum of possible futures. As conditions change, what opportunities should we embrace, which should we ignore? What components of what we do today are to be strengthened, and which might be phased out?
This will be my first take this important question, and is intended to begin exploration of various models rather than provide a proposal for action. The model that I discuss here might be called the “UPS model”, or, more specifically, the Knowledge Chain Manager model.
March 01, 2006 in Economics, Globalization, Learning, Mission, Research | Permalink | Comments (0)
What has offshoring got to do with research universities?
Globalization is a fact of life for almost every large sector of the world economy. How this globalization will affect higher education is an ongoing theme of these blogs. One very visible component of globalization has been the outsourcing and offshoring movement. One generally thinks of this as a way to cut costs, and as such, this seems like a movement unrelated to the research and teaching missions of the university. However, a very interesting new book by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, The Only Sustainable Edge, presents a different take on outsourcing and offshoring that could well have major implications for the way universities think about globalization.
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February 22, 2006 in Books, Economics, Globalization, Mission | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: globalization, higher education, offshoring, process network
Welcome to the Market-State
From time to time, I will bring to your attention some book that has greatly influenced my thinking about the future of research universities. One of these is The Shield of Achilles, by Philip Bobbitt, Knopf, 2002. In the interests of full disclosure, I must state that Philip came to speak several times to the planning group drafting our 2004 Plan.
Bobbitt is the A. W Walker Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law at the University of Texas. He has also held academic positions at Oxford(history) and King's College (nuclear strategy), and served in several senior positions on the National Security Council. He brings this breadth of experience to bear in this book on a deep analysis of the evolution of constitutional order - the compact between the governors and the governed - from the early 1400's into the present.
Bobbitt is among those who believe that the constitutional arrangement called the nation-state is dying . The social compact of the nation-state, in Bobbitt's terms, calls for the state having as mission the improvement of the welfare of its people, and being accorded in return the ability to call on its citizens for sacrifice to preserve the state. Modern technologies, demographics, and markets have made this compact increasingly difficult to sustain, however. For example, States can no longer control their currencies, their economies, their borders, or their cultures. This does not signal the end of the State, however, but rather that a new constitutional order will appear - in fact, is already appearing.
February 20, 2006 in Books, Globalization, Market-State | Permalink | Comments (2)
For Profit and/or Non Profit future?
How do views on the future of higher education held by for-profit and non-profit universities differ? What aspirations do they hold in common, and where do their differences lie? Where do for-profits have an advantage over the non-profits?
I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss some of these and other issues with Douglas Becker, Chairman and CEO of Laureate Education, Inc. as part of our joint presentation of the 2004 Earl V. Pullias lecture at USC. The title of our presentation was Higher Education and the Global Marketplace: Entrepreneurial Activity in a Dynamic Environment.
February 20, 2006 in Competition, For-profit higher education, Globalization, Mission | Permalink | Comments (2)
The World in 2020
Higher education will be increasingly changed by powerful global forces. The National Intelligence Council (NIC) has recently released a very interesting report describing their view of the forces at work in the world, and some possible futures for the year 2020. The NIC is a center of strategic thinking within the US government, reporting to the Director of National Intelligence. I recommend that you look at Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project.
Among its many findings, the report predicts that globalization will be "a force so ubiquitous that it will substantially shape all the other major trends in the world of 2020". It is likely that China and India - as well as a few smaller states - will emerge economically and politically as major global players. Both China and India are well positioned to become global technology leaders, and adoption of new technologies will be the key to maximizing the benefits of globalization. By 2020, China probably will have the world's second largest economy, and Asia will have displaced the West as the engine of international economic dynamism. Political Islam will continue to increase in global impact. Insecurity on all fronts- political, economic, and cultural - will be globally pervasive, and there will be no abatement of the factors that feed international terrorism.
February 17, 2006 in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
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