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The New Constants in Building University Excellence: Accountability, Competition, and Strategic Use of Resources and Opportunities

© Prof. Jan SadlakPresident of IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence

al-Farabi Kazakh National University

November 2011

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“New higher education landscape”: Evidence and causes of seeking “excellence” in HE and research

Unparallel changes with regard to the role and functioning of higher education at the global level due to:

massification of student enrolment big numbers [institutions, providers and programs] and

diversification science: global, highly competitive, costly and

economically relevant enterprise changes in relations between the state and higher

education

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Higher education: imperative of progress and competitiveness

Countries are investing in higher education in order to have their own globally competitive research–intensive institutions as foremost they are able to make contribution to development of new technologies, products and services.

The demand for highly qualified and talented students and researchers is a global phenomenon and universities are making great effort to attract such people.

University rankings can help to identify such attractive “world-class”

partners.

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Graduate global pool

•The annual Education at a Glance 2011 figures for the first time include analysis of education systems in the emerging economies of Brazil, China, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa, alongside the figures for the 34 advanced economies of the OECD states:

• - Expansion of HE in developing countries and emerging economies has meant that the global graduate talent pool is no longer predominantly in the US and Europe;

•- China now accounts for 12% of graduates in advanced and emerging economies, with roughly 255 million people with university education [Japan's 11% share of graduates].

Brazil, with 4% of graduates, is catching up with the UK, which has 5%. Korea is approaching Germany's 4.6% share of graduate talent and has overtaken France and Canada, which each have 3.6%. Higher education expansion has strong implications for the overall competitiveness of nations.

The more educated workforces give countries, regions and cities a head start in many high-skilled areas.

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Responses to competiveness and “quality challenge” [1]

China: National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) which has as a principal objective: “to speed up the transition from the world’s largest education system to one of the world’s best, and from a country with larger scale of human resource to a country rich in human resources”. With regard to HE: - increase of number of students from 29.79 in 2009 to 33.5 and 35.5 million students in 2020; - in order to sharpen a competitive edge of China’s higher education and science accelerate building of first-class universities and faculties (Project 985)-opening up of the best faculties to the world, and to participate in or set up collaborative international academic organizations or global science plans.

Indie: Under the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2012): 8 new Indian Institutes of Technology, 7 Indian Institutes of Management and 30 Central Universities [out of which 14 would be “world class universities”].

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Responses to competitiveness and “quality challenge” [2]

Europe-wide initiatives: Bologna ProcessGermany: Excellence Initiative [€ 1.9 billion for the 2006-2011 – 40 graduate

schools, 30 clusters of excellence, institutional strategies to promote top-level research].

France: Investir Pour l’Avenir: Priorités stratégiques d’investissement et emprunt national [€ 35 billions of ‘public borrowing’ - out of which € 16 billion for higher education and research to create some 5-10 world-class campuses].

Russia: creation of a special category of universities – 2 federal universities and some 40 national research institutions; automatic recognition of degrees of the world’s leading universities in order to attract high quality researchers and professionals (such list may include up to 300 institutions).

Denmark: within a so-called “Globalisation Funds” which foresee support the foundations for attaining world-class status for some Danish universities and as a goal “to have at least one university among the top 10 in Europe by 2020 as measured by the THE ranking”.

Finland: creation of cluster universities e.g. Alto University.Kazakhstan: creation of the Nazarbayev University. Mergers of universities are also foreseen in Latvia and Czech Republic.

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Quality, Productivity, Performance

Renewed attention to “quality”, “productivity”, “performance” in teaching and research at the individual, program, institutional and system levels.

Importance of various mechanisms for “quality assurance” based on shared basis for evaluation as well as information which is readable by a large and diversified stakeholders.

Main mechanisms and instruments: Accreditation; Benchmarking [peer review]; Rankings [league tables].

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Strengths of university rankings

Interpretative notion of “quality” in higher education. Consequently, a comprehensive assessment of university rankings needs to look at their strength and limitations.

Strength [arguments in favour of university rankings]:• provide basis “to make informed decision” when it requires information on

standing and performance of a given higher education institution or its activities [potential students, parents, politicians, foundations, funding agencies, research councils, employers, credit rating agencies, international organizations];

• present information in an accessible format;• offer basis for benchmarking performance within the national systems and

across borders• contributes to fostering a competition among HE institutions;• contributes to the emergence of “centres of excellence”;• diminishes academic malpractice, fraud and emergence of degree mills; • give additional rationale for allocation of funds; • offer additional rationale for selection of partners;• represents a convenient tool for marketing, policy debates, and public

relations.

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Limitations [criticisms] of university rankings

• biased towards the research productivity, encouraging convergence towards a research-dominated model of the university, therefore reducing the system diversity [academic drift];

• favours research outcomes in natural and life sciences vis-à-vis humanities and arts [not to mention that in addition to substantially better coverage in bibliometric data bases, they do not give sufficient credit to books thus do not recognize the value of textbooks and monographs in research assessment;

• does not reflect quality of teaching and leaning function of the university;• does not reflect cultural and social role of the university [the third mission]; • apply questionable methodologies in selection of proxy indicators and weighting

scales, and validation of supplementary information [especially that one obtained from surveys with low response rate];

• arbitrary selection of respondents for the reputational surveys;• lack or give insufficient “warning clause” about the methodological limitations of a

particular ranking;• favour strengths of well-established universities and promotes introduction of

hierarchies among HE institutions and members of the academic community;• “come off as well as possible in a ranking” can become an obsession and can result

in unhealthy competition within and outside of HE institutions; • tend to focus on certain academic fields and not comprehensive performance of

entire institution;• hinders open-to-everyone academic cooperation and encourages cluster mentality

which is not in line with an ethos of “academic corporatism”.

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Reputation and prestige [1]

“Reputation and prestige” represents the group or social ascription of high performance [activity or product] by particular individual, group, institution or even country;

Hierachies in reputation are a social reality and is used in various situations; recruitment, employment, selection of peer reviewers, selection of institutions, financial credibility, etc.;

“Reputation and prestige” in HE can be influenced in variety of ways: peers, experts, stake holders [students, parents], media, employers, professional organizations, international organizations, etc.

“Reputation and prestige” is a marketing tool as well as asset particularly when HE tries to gain a competitive advantage.

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Reputation and prestige [2]

An important indicator in many rankings – yet one of the most contested one;

Who is assessing „reputation“ which is used in university rankings: „experts“ (in THES); employers and professionals (in US News); academic community/professors (in CHE): multiple reputations; academic community and peers – Nobel Committee and the International Mathematical Union (in ARWU)

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Reputation and prestige [3]

Contextuality of „reputation“ of universities:- as it may differ for different academic disciplines and

other activities [e.g. Athletics];- It can be vary between different social groups and

stakeholders, e.g. employers vs. professors;- It can be linked to national and regional aspects.

Reputation is a fairly stable social ascription that changes slowly over time [but it can be lost fast – academic corruption].

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“Reputation” and Financial Autonomy of the University

Financial autonomy [ability to borrow money] is one of key dimensions of university autonomy [recent scorecard of EUA on university autonomy in Europe]. Conditions under which such borrowings are done are determined by “risk assessment” [rating] usually determined by the rating agency. Reputation plays an important role in such assessment. Rating agencies have a quite clear view of what it means.

For example, the largest Canadian rating agency called the Dominion Bond Rating Service (DBRS) has defined it in the following way:“The reputation of a university is ultimately its trademark. A strong reputation will often translate into stronger and less volatile student demand as it extends the boundaries of the university’s draw beyond its regional catchment area and into more successful faculty recruitment and fundraising activities. Information of the used by DBRS to assess a university’s reputation includes reputable third-party university rankings, historical student application statistics across institutions and admission standards statistics (e.g., yield rates and entering grades).”

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Use of rankings for institutional improvement

University rankings as a leverage to do higher education in more effective and innovative ways - the case of the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Principles on how to think about rankings by agreeing that:• advancement in the ranking must never be a goal in itself;• the rankings should prompt each discipline to examine what constitutes excellence in that

discipline;• the most important goal of research is that it should contribute to the knowledge, make a

difference and have a positive economic and social impact.

The lesson learnt which could serve as a road map:• engage academics in open debate without dictating behaviour;• raise awareness of comparative data and focuses plans on defining and measuring excellence in

ways appropriate to each discipline;• highlight the importance of targeting publishers and journals that have the highest impact –

therefore best visibility – in each field;• show the importance of producing graduates that can hold their own in world-class institutions

(strengthens curricula evaluation, supervision, mentorship); • see rankings as additional incentive to focus effort and concentrate resources; • strengthens the nexus between administration and researchers setting up a common sense of

purpose.

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Seeking “quality improvement” at the system level: Initiative “Higher Education for Texas' Future” [1]

1. Measure teaching efficiency and effectiveness.• Goal: Improve the quality of teaching by making use of a public

measurement tool to evaluate faculty teaching performance that makes it possible to recognize excellent teachers.

2. Publicly recognize and reward extraordinary teachers.• Goal: Create a financial incentive to improve the effectiveness and

efficiency of teaching at Texas’ colleges and universities that will help attract the best teachers from across the nation.

3. Split research and teaching budgets to encourage excellence in both.• Goal:  Increase transparency and accountability by emphasizing teaching

and research as separate efforts in higher education, and making it easier to recognize excellence in each area.

4. Require evidence of teaching skill for tenure.• Goal: Highlight the importance of great teachers by evaluating teaching skill

in nominating and awarding faculty tenure.

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Seeking “quality improvement” at the system level: Initiative “Higher Education for Texas' Future” [2]

5. Use “results-based” contracts with students to measure quality.• Goal: Increase transparency and accountability to students with learning

contracts between Deans, department heads, and teachers that clearly state the promises of each degree program to each student.

6. Put state funding directly in the hands of students.• Goal: Increase college access and make students the actual customers for

higher education with student-directed scholarships for undergraduate and graduate education with funding from the state’s current appropriation that goes directly to colleges and universities.

7. Create results-based accrediting alternatives.• Goal: Encourage greater competition in higher education and more choices

for students by creating an alternative accrediting body that would focus on results and the college’s or university’s ability to uphold any obligation or promise made to the student.

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Seeking the “University excellence”

There is no agreed definition of “university excellence” but those performingwell in various rankings have the following features:• Extensive record of international presence, visibility and reach;• Vision and planning on leveraging its academic strengths;• Promotes learner-cantered education through programs which encourage

students to pursue studies in variety of fields and interdisciplinary programs in order to create “breadth with depth”;

• Develops strategic capabilities [as universities are slow systems] by; spanning disciplinary boundaries, promotes collaborations across academic units; promotes links between fundamental and applied research;

• Builds networks and partnerships focused on (1) enhancing own research and providing access to resources which are unavailable in own institution, (2) advancing promotional activities by reaching to “new audience and supporters”, (3) enables new educational opportunities;

• Integrates in university structure and culture a commitment to core academic values, natures experimentation which contributes to the mission and strategic development of the university;

• Leadership which assures cohesiveness and connects the past and leads towards future.