Por recomendación del colega y amigo Hugo Lavados, reproduzco este buen artículo publicado en Inside Higher Ed.
<http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/09/international-educators-debate-higher-education-priorities-developing-countries#.T14XVlGjgx4.email%23ixzz1pC1ItNoP>
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/09/international-educators-debate-higher-education-priorities-developing-countries#.T14XVlGjgx4.email
‘World-Class’ vs. Mass Education
March 9, 2012 – 3:00am
*By *
Doug Lederman <http://www.insidehighered.com/users/doug-lederman>
Should developing nations expend their money and energy trying to build
“world-class” universities that conduct job-creating research and educate
the nation’s elite, or focus on building more and better institutions to
train the masses?
That question — which echoes debates within many American states about
relative funding for flagship research universities vs. community colleges
and regional institutions — drew barely a mention in the summary
statement<http://ems.gtc.ox.ac.uk/images/ems/EMS2012-TE/ems2012-tertiaryeducation_officialpressrelease.pdf>that
emerged from an
unusual symposium <http://ems.gtc.ox.ac.uk/tertiary-education.html> at the
University of Oxford’s Green Templeton College in January (though it was
addressed a bit more directly in a set of
recommendations<http://ems.gtc.ox.ac.uk/tertiary-education/terecommendations.html>released
last month).
But the issue of whether developing nations should emphasize excellence or
access as they build and strengthen their higher education systems
undergirded much of the discussion of the three-day event, flaring at times
into sharp disagreement among the attendees over “the extent to which the
emerging world should be part of the educational arms race,” says Simon
Marginson, a professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne.
Different observers would define that race differently, and with varying
degrees of sympathy and scorn. But in general, most experts on higher
education would equate it with the push to have institutions in the top of
worldwide rankings (or “league tables,” as they’re called in much of the
world) — rankings dominated by criteria such as research funding and
student selectivity as opposed to measures that emphasize democratic
student access.
Those rankings have historically been dominated by American and European
institutions, but many countries in Asia and other parts of the world have
focused their energy (and resources) on building “world-class” institutions
that are capable of elbowing their way into the ever-growing number of
international rankings such as *Times Higher Education’*s World University
Rankings and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World
Universities. The institutions do so both to build their internal research
and leadership capacities and to carve out a niche on the world stage.
But doing so often takes enormous resources, given the large expense
required to engage in high-quality academic research (particularly in the
sciences), and can raise questions about relative priorities given the
perceived need in virtually every country to produce more and
better-educated rank and file citizenries to feed economic growth.
The meeting, which featured current and former government officials,
university leaders, academics and other
experts<http://ems.gtc.ox.ac.uk/tertiary-education/teparticipants.html>from
developed and developing countries, took as its starting point the
idea that “economic growth and social development crucially depend on
increasing supplies of trained and educated” entrepreneurs, workers and
citizens, and that higher education is key to doing that. But given the
great variation in the situations and challenges of individual countries,
says Ian Scott, the symposium’s executive director, the group aimed less to
develop common, “prescriptive” recommendations than to suggest a general
set of strategic objectives that might apply across them.
The question of how much attention developing nations should pay to
building elite institutions rather than those that serve the masses was
raised most directly in comments by Jo
Ritzen,<http://mgsog.merit.unu.edu/about/profile.php?id=1358>president
emeritus of the Netherlands’ Maastricht University and now a
professorial fellow at the university’s Graduate School of Governance.
Ritzen, the former Dutch minister of education, argued that the symposium
should encourage every developing country to develop at least one major
university — “centers of excellence” — to ensure that they are positioned
to produce as well as distribute knowledge, and to play on a world stage.
In an interview with *Inside Higher Ed,* Ritzen said he was not framing
developing nations’ pursuit of world class universities as an either-or
proposition. “Mass higher education is necessary for a country to belong to
the league of developed countries,” he said. “At the same time, it’s very
important to make sure that you are also going to be part of the world
elite…. There doesn’t have to be a conflict. The Chinese do exactly this.
There is no question about the broadening of access in China, but also no
question about the fact that some Chinese universities are elite.”
But Ritzen’s comments at the symposium drew significant pushback from many
of the policy makers and other experts in attendance, said David W.
Breneman, the Newton and Rita Meyers Professor in Economics of Education at
the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, who was among them.
They argued, broadly, that “there is enough pressure on these countries to
do this anyway,” Breneman said, and that “this is not the direction they
should be working in.”
Chief among those taking this position was David
Watson,<http://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/academic/fellowship/673-sir-david-watson.html>a
professor of higher education and principal (president) of Green
Templeton College. He argued that “politicians and institutions … are
obsessed with a poorly designed concept of comparative ‘world-classness,’ ”
and that they should be focusing instead on “geographically specific
‘engagement,’ ” Watson said in an e-mail to *Inside Higher Ed. “*What
governments say they want from higher education systems represent almost
the opposite of what the international league tables they also exhort us to
climb actually measure”: research over teaching quality, graduate education
over undergraduate and skills training, an international focus over service
to business and the community, etc.
Breneman said he was struck by how the conversation mirrored issues that he
and his co-authors examined in their new book, *Financing American Higher
Education in the Era of Globalization* (Harvard Education
Press<http://www.hepg.org/hep/book/156/FinancingAmericanHigherEducationInTheEraOfGlobalization>),
in which many U.S. states (and leaders of public universities) have focused
their limited funds on building elite research universities rather than on
“the core, workhorse institutions that they tend to neglect” — community
colleges, regional public universities, and for-profit institutions.
Marginson, the University of Melbourne scholar, framed the discussion a
little differently. In an interview, he described the view that developing
nations should focus exclusively on mass higher education as a
self-interested (and perhaps condescending) view on the part of the
traditional academic powers in the Western world — that “they should take
their science from us and focus on becoming literate — eventually they’ll
be ready for something better,” he said.
Marginson said that a tradeoff undoubtedly exists in building a tertiary
system that can adequately educate a country’s masses and at the same time
train its elite and get it onto the global map in research — and that the
tradeoff is all the more acute in times of limited economic growth. So
while China (like some other Asian nations) has been able to do it, as
Ritzen noted, many other countries cannot compete with Western nations for
the top professors and research infrastructure needed to build
“world-class” institutions.
But from a rhetorical standpoint, he argued, it would be as much a mistake
to discourage developing nations from “pushing into the main international
game” as it would be to urge them to go all in on world-class education.
And while the findings and
recommendations<http://ems.gtc.ox.ac.uk/tertiary-education/terecommendations.html>that
emerged from the symposium paid short shrift to the relative balance
of world class vs. mass education — focusing more fundamentally on the
need for more and better education as a driver of economic and social
development — the document did include one finding that sought to strike a
balance between the two poles. Titled “The search for prestige can detract
from mainstream needs,” it reads:
*Some emerging markets (like some high income countries) place undue
emphasis on elite institutions. Flagship institutions and centres of
excellence in tertiary education play legitimate roles as centres of
advanced research, as aspirational beacons and as benchmarks. They provide
indispensable connections to global science and the innovation economy.
They augment national culture and are crucial to building advanced capacity
in governance, regulation and policy. Emerging markets should devote some
scarce resources to their development. But policies, practices and
priorities for tertiary education should balance the development of elite
institutions with the improvement of mainstream institutions that serve the
majority of students and play central roles in the evolution of economies
and societies.*
*Emerging market governments should recognize that the search for
excellence should not be confined to whole institutions; that departments,
units and faculties within a given institution may shine brighter than
others; and that uniform institution-wide standards may neither be feasible
nor cost-effective.*
Read more:
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