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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

Ten Years: The Center for International Higher Education and International Higher Education

Philip G. Altbach
Philip G. Altbach is Monan professor of higher education and director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.

The Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) and its flagship publication, International Higher Education (IHE), are entering their 11th year of activity in 2005. It is appropriate to look at what has been accomplished and how higher education has changed in the past decade. We started our work in 1994 with the aim of providing objective and analytical perspectives on higher education worldwide. We had, from the beginning, a special focus on developing countries and a commitment to higher education in the Roman Catholic tradition-reflecting Boston College’s Jesuit roots. We wanted to highlight countries and regions that received little attention from analysts and in the research literature. We were motivated by a commitment to the “public good” and the perception of universities as central institutions that produce and transmit knowledge. Higher education is not simply a commodity to be sold for a profit-these convictions separate our perspective from those of many contemporary analysts of higher education.

CIHE started with limited resources from Boston College, some big ideas, and notions for ways to serve a higher education audience worldwide. From the beginning, we were committed to communication, publishing, and networking-feeling that the sharing of information and insights is central to analysis and reform. We are also committed to ensuring that communication is a two-way street-and we have featured the work of researchers and commentators from many countries and regions. We have tried, in our own way, to break with the idea that the only knowledge that is worthwhile comes from the wealthy academic systems of the North. We have also tried to feature the work of younger researchers and scholars in the field-students in the field of higher education at Boston College as well as many others worldwide.

These ideas resonated with Dr. Jorge Balan at the Ford Foundation. For 9 of our 10 years of existence, the Ford Foundation has been a steady supporter of our work, making it possible to for us to publish our books and IHE, and to sponsor several research projects. We have also received additional assistance from, among others, the Toyota Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the MacArthur Foundation, and anonymous donors.

CIHE has always been an integral part of the Program in Higher Education Administration in the Lynch School of Education (LSOE) at Boston College. CIHE’s activities depend on the master’s and doctoral students in the higher education program who have a special interest in international higher education. Some of these students have received financial help from CIHE and have provided staff and research assistance. Many have graduated and have gone on to careers in higher education in the United States and in other countries. At least 25 students have been sponsored by the Center and perhaps double that number have chosen to focus on international higher education as part of their graduate education at Boston College. The faculty members in higher education have provided steady support for the CIHE, as has the administration of the LSOE and of Boston College. The J. Donald Monan SJ Chair has also backed my work and has been instrumental in providing a resource base for the CIHE as well. Strong local institutional support has been combined with external funding to make our work possible.

Communication
Our commitment to knowledge dissemination led to two early initiatives, the establishment of a quarterly publication and a website. IHE has published 40 issues and is now well established as a key resource worldwide for information about higher education. We send the paper edition of IHE to more than 2,500 readers in some 80 countries without charge. IHE is also available on the Internet, and many more readers access it electronically. All IHE articles are available in full text on the web, and readers are assisted in locating relevant material through an interactive index. IHE articles are now frequently cited by researchers and others and are reprinted in publications worldwide-a strong indication of our impact. Almost immediately after the establishment of the Center, we started a website focusing on international higher education issues. This pioneering website, one of the first in the field, links up with many others, and is considered a major resource-it has won several awards and is widely used. It is a featured link of several prominent organizations. Indeed, the CIHE appears at or near the top of the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo, indicating its early advent and prominence as a tool for knowledge in the field. We have recently started a new website-based initiative, called the International Higher Education Clearinghouse, with the cooperation of the American Council on Education, the Institute of International Education, and NAFSA, to focus in-depth on key international higher education issues as a way of serving practitioners worldwide. A similar initiative, the Higher Education Corruption Monitor, is a website that features news and analysis on the unfortunately growing phenomenon of corruption in all aspects of academic life.

The products of our research have been disseminated in the form of books and other publications. We have, through our grant support, been able to provide copies of the 13 books we have published to readers in developing countries without cost. We have been able to arrange for translated editions of most of our books into other languages-notably Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese.

As part of our networking effort, we have hosted visiting scholars from around the world, including Lebanon, Jordan, India, Japan, China, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, the Netherlands, South Africa, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. We have worked with research centers and agencies in other countries and have an informal collaborative agreement with the Center for the Study of the University at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Research and Publications
In the past decade, the CIHE has sponsored research projects on several important themes in higher education. Typically, we have recruited researchers from a dozen or so countries to research a theme, then brought the research group together for discussions, followed by revision of the essays and their publication as a book. These research conferences have taken place at Boston College, Nagoya University in Japan, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center in Italy. We have sponsored research on private higher education, the changing academic workplace and the academic profession, the future of Asian higher education, and most recently the role of research universities. In all cases, we have had a special focus on developing countries. We have also directed smaller research projects on reforms in Japanese higher education, women’s higher education, corruption in higher education, and other topics. We prepared a guide to journals in the field of higher education everywhere and developed an inventory of all higher education programs, research institutes, and centers worldwide. We track the literature on higher education through short reviews of new books in IHE.

Africa Focus
Under the leadership of Damtew Teferra, research assistant professor at Boston College and a graduate of the BC higher education doctoral program, the CIHE sponsored two major Africa projects, African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook, and the Journal of Higher Education in Africa. The journal is cosponsored by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, based in Senegal. We sponsor INHEA-the International Network on Higher Education in Africa-a major website focusing on African higher education issues.

Themes
The CIHE has concentrated on several themes, reflecting our broader commitments, our sense of some of the key issues in higher education, and the interests of our students and researchers. Our topics in the past decade have included private higher education and the privatization of public higher education (some of this work has been in cooperation with the Program for Research on Private Higher Education at the University at Albany), the academic profession and the changing academic workplace, globalization and internationalization in higher education, the future of Asian higher education (in collaboration with Nagoya University in Japan), the role of the research university in developing countries, Catholic higher education, corruption in higher education, and women’s higher education.

The Center enters its second decade with a continuing commitment to serving the higher education community worldwide with thoughtful analysis, networking possibilities, and providing access to the growing research literature on higher education. For the immediate future, we have identified several focal points for our work. Our ongoing research project on research (“flagship”) universities in developing and middle-income countries will provide insights into the challenges facing academic institutions seeking to build research capacity and work in the top ranks of academe worldwide. Our International Higher Education Clearinghouse and the Corruption Monitor are building web-based resources that are of use to the field. We plan to develop a handbook for academic leaders in developing countries that will serve a resource for new administrators and policymakers.

The Center’s work is inspired by the conviction that higher education is an essential part of any successful society and that the university plays a central role in social and economic development everywhere. Much more than just a tool for career development and individual benefit, higher education is truly a public good.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number41/p20_Altbach.htm