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Research Universities |
NUMBER 47, SPRING 2007 |
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No World-Class University Left Behind
Robert Birnbaum
I don't wish to appear alarmist, but to judge from the growing literature we appear to be facing a World Class University ranking crisis. Our problem is not that we lack such lists, but rather that there are too many and they are too different. Because of the lack of uniformity, many institutions across the globe are claiming either that they plan to become World Class Universities by a date certain, or else that they have already achieved this status. World-classness has been projected or claimed for institutions in Viet Nam, Turkey, Chile, Kashmir and Malaysia, among others. Thailand has been particularly blessed with three institutions with such aspirations, the University of Timbuktu (which apparently was a WCU in the 12th Century) has announced its intention of regaining that status, and the president of the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research has claimed world-class status, even as the source of its accreditation is being questioned. As for the United States, a list of acknowledged or self-proclaimed world class universities include, not only the usual suspects of Association of American University members and wannabes, but also a number of institutions that some observers would identify as having merely regional, if not solely local, recognition. The U.S. does, however boast the only institution of which I am aware that is actually named World Class University. I was hoping that studying this institution in Tennessee might clarify the problem until I read their self-identification on the Internet as "the only barber college teaching the New Millennium Fading Technique." Perhaps globalization is to blame. It has suggested for some the desirability of constructing a single measure of World Classness that can be uniformly applied to institutions across all nations. In an effort to encourage scholars to think outside the hegemonical box, I am proposing for consideration five alternative ways of going about the process of identifying world class institutions. Each alternative has its foundations in a sound conceptual orientation. Bentham System—this scheme, based on the 19th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's principle of Utilitarianism, proposes that the best universities are those that bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Certainly, the intellectual pleasures created by the development of a new theory should be included in developing the Bentham ratings, but should not the pleasures obtained by students in their university experiences, whether in their dorm rooms or their classrooms, be given equal weight? After all, there many sources of happiness and little justification for selecting one source of happiness as being superior to another. As the 19th century French politician and gourmet Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said in his classic book The Physiology of Taste, "the discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star." Olympic System—we can all agree that the ranking of a university depends on the quality of its faculty. Competent faculty in the appropriate fields can easily deconstruct a novel, derive a mathematical formula, or compose a string quartet. And some faculty can also run a decent 100 meter dash or swim the butterfly. However, following the ideal of the Roman poet Juvenal's call for "mens sana in corpore sano" (i.e., a healthy mind in a healthy body), it takes truly world-class talent to calculate an asteroid orbit or produce an new philosophical theory while at the same time engaging in gymnastic or shot-putting competition. In the Olympic System, teams of university faculty would compete every four years in head to head competitions combining athletic and intellectual prowess to determine their world rankings. This would finally give unequivocal meaning to the term "scholar-athlete. Borges System—this system is based on the model developed in the short story "The Library of Babel" by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story posits the existence of a Library of indefinite size in which can be found all the books that could possibly be written, expressing all thoughts that could ever be conceived in any language. Obviously, a Library that contains all the books that ever were or could be written must, by definition, contain a book containing a true ranking of all the world's universities. There is no need to engage de novo in elaborate data analyses to determine world-classness: our scholarly task, as simplified by Borges, is merely to identify this book of true ratings from among the infinite number of books that contain very similar, but false, ratings which also exist in the Library. Sausage System—this system takes a problematic characteristic of rankings—that there are a large number of different systems, each with different results—and turns it from a weakness to a strength. Since there is not (and cannot be) agreement on which of the variables used are the most important, weighting them is of no benefit in developing a ranking system; the same general result can be determined merely by addition. Throw U.S. News, the Gourman Report, the Times Hiigher Education Supplement, and other rankings created by systems of all kinds into the same bowl, add and average out the results and voila! Add in rankings for best college newspaper? Best for community involvement? Most diverse? The best party school? NCAA rankings in various sports? Why not? Just as we do not know how a sausage is made (or, more to the point, we don't want to know) the Sausage System makes it difficult to understand just what has gone into any particular set of ratings. Opaqueness is its virtue.The system rejects the concept of "either/or" in favor of the more inclusive concept of "both/and." Lake Wobegon System—world-class rankings of all kinds establish artificial limits to the number of institutions that can be included. As an example, under our present system a listing of the Top 20 world-class universities will contain the names of only twenty institutions. But in Lake Wobegon, you will remember, all the children are above average. This suggests the possibility of significantly expanding the number of institutions that can be ranked as world class merely by increasing the number of institutions in each category. Naming perhaps 30 institutions as being in the top twenty might be a way to start, with numbers increased as we gain more experience. At least 50 research universities in the United States have stated their intention of moving into the top twenty. Under our present system most of them will be doomed to failure, but under the Lake Wobegon System many more will may be able to satisfy their ambitions. These examples provide merely a start for considering alternative ways of identifying World Class Universities. I am certain that other scholars will propose additional systems to rank institutions. For example, the Kenneth Lay System could compare institutions based on the total income earned by graduates; the Robert Putnam System could base ranks on the degree to which an institution contributes to the development of social capital; and the Kermit System could assess institutional commitments to sustainability (it's not easy being green). My suggestions, while tongue in cheek, should not be taken as a denigration of World Class elite institutions. They help define our civilization, serve as bastions of original thought, and respond to the quintessential human need to know. And we have many of them, even if we may not completely agree on their exact number or definition. But on a planet plagued by famine, genocide, war, preventable death due to diseases, and even unavailability of drinkable water, the need for additional world-class universities as a priority is at best unclear. At the very least, countries thinking about creating such institutions should consider alternative ways in which the resources they allocate for higher education might be expended. Before developing more elite universities we might focus attention on strengthening what we now refer to as second or third tier institutions. Using the metaphor created by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, educational policies should be built using cranes rather than skyhooks. A crane stands on solid ground. A skyhook, on the other hand, posits some kind of supernatural force than can raise things with no earthly support at all. Cranes require time and great effort, but they work. Skyhooks can be set up quickly and require little effort, but they don't work. We can establish World Class Universities using cranes when they are built, over time, on strong and indigenous educational and social foundations. But trying to develop them by using imported rhetoric, imported models and large sums of money is to follow the failed policies of skyhooks. Attempting to build World-Class Universities without attending first to the educational and social ground on which such institutions might stand is, as Ivan Illich once said, is "like trying to do urban renewal in New York City from the twelfth story up." Rather than more World Class Universities, what we really need in countries everywhere are more world-class technical institutes, world-class community colleges, world class colleges of agriculture, world class teachers colleges, and world class regional state universities. The United States doesn't have a world-class higher education system because it has many world-class universities; instead it has world-class universities because it has a world-class higher education system. Ratings or rankings pretend to be objective and scientific; in reality however they are manifestations of ideologies about the purposes of higher education. In an era of globalization, "world-class" has increasingly come to be synonymous with "Western." That means science, research, and lots of money - and poorer nations can not afford to compete in this arena. The pressure to conform to "universalistic standards" is constant, so that an institution that should be lauded for doing admirable work in its own domain may be considered a failure using World Class University standards. As nations strengthen and diversify their institutions, their excellence should not be judged by how well they emulate the West, but rather by how successfully they exploit their rich traditions and cultures so that their institutions develop their own unique character. [Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number47/p7_Birnbaum.htm
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