Rupak D Sharma in Bangkok
Asia News Network
Publication Date : 07-06-2010
Asia, the world’s factory for manufactured goods, is now striving to churn out some of the best brains in the world
Last October, nine prestigious Chinese universities created a buzz in the international education sector when they announced formation of an alliance called C9.
The establishment of the group—regarded as the Chinese version of the Ivy League, an alliance of eight oldest and finest institutions of higher learning in the US including Harvard and Yale—was a subtle way of saying the country recognises the role of quality university education in economic development and wants to create some of the finest post-secondary educational institutions in the world.
The world’s largest factory of manufactured goods has been striving to create the world’s finest universities for the last several years. To churn out some of the best brains in the world, it has been investing around 1.5 per cent of its gross domestic product on university education per year—while the US and the UK are cutting down on education and research budgets.
In the last decade alone, it has invested more than US$10 billion on tertiary education, building state-of-the-art research laboratories and embracing technologies similar to that in the West. Since then it has also more than doubled the number of higher education institutions from 1,022 to 2,263.
“The strategy is to surround their star faculties with the brightest students, give them academic leeway, and provide competitive salaries and additional non-salary incentives,” said a recent World Bank report titled ‘World-class Universities’.
Yet these efforts have not been able to bring about desired changes. This was reflected in the recent rankings of Asia’s top universities, where mainland Chinese institutions were not able to secure top 10 positions. The rankings published by UK education researcher Quacquarelli Symonds showed that Peking University had fallen to 12th place from the previous 10th, while Tsinghua slipped from 15th to 16th position.
This, experts say, is because of the Chinese government’s way of running universities like state departments—mired with suffocating bureaucracy and insufficient autonomy.
But the recent formation of alliance between nine universities is expected to bring changes, at least in some of the best institutions in China, as it aspires for inter-campus integration and resource-sharing, which will ultimately broaden the horizon of universities, a China Daily editorial said. The alliance will also allow students to take full advantage of the strengths of nine schools—which was impossible earlier—brightening the prospects of students of the member schools, the editorial added.
“In 25 years, only a generation’s time, these universities could rival the Ivy League,” professor Richard Levin, president of Yale University, declared earlier this year. How the alliance works that out should be exemplary for other schools and could be emulated by other universities in the country, China Daily said.
The significance of higher education is increasing in Asia’s developing countries as they have realised that knowledge-based society is the driving force in rapidly changing globalised world. These countries have learnt from the Western experience that sustainable economic growth is only possible through creation of highly skilled work force. They have also realised that in a world that treasures innovation, it is essential to foster creative minds, which is only possible through quality higher education.
Japan and South Korea had realised these facts long time ago and invested heavily in education. That’s why these countries are so successful. Singapore is also not far behind in this game. The country is already a home to some of the best universities in the world, including Asia’s third best, the National University of Singapore (NUS). And with the establishment of new higher education institutions in collaboration with world’s best like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and New York University, the country is emerging as an educational hub not only for Asian students but for students from Western countries as well. Today, the proportion of foreign students at NUS, for instance, is 20 per cent at the undergraduate level and 43 per cent at the graduate level, according to World Bank. The target now is to enroll 150,000 international students in its higher education institutions by 2015, up from 97,000 in 2008.
Other countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand is also aiming to be a higher-education hub for the Greater Mekong Sub-region by 2016, and a hub for Southeast Asia by 2026, while Malaysia is striving to attract students especially from the Gulf countries.
“But developing top universities is a tall order,” professor Levin wrote in a recent article. “World-class universities achieve their status by assembling scholars who are global leaders in their fields. In the sciences, this requires first-class facilities, adequate funding and competitive salaries and benefits.”
China is making substantial investments on all three fronts, according to professor Levin. But another Asian giant India seems to be dithering along the way despite placing education—especially science and technology—high on the agenda decades ago.
Soon after gaining independence from British rule in the late 1940s, India established its first Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)—based on the MIT model—in 1951. Four more IITs were established in various parts of the country by 1960s and 10 more were added in the last two decades. These institutions churn out one of the best engineers in the world, who are snapped up immediately by reputed global firms like Microsoft, IBM and India’s largest IT services providers like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro.
But these world-class institutions are losing their competitive edge as they are facing shortage of lecturers, said the World Bank report. It is estimated that the IITs are already suffering from a shortage of at least 900 qualified faculty as fewer promising graduates seek an academic career due to low salary level, the report said. And “without the autonomy to raise salaries and offer more competitive employment packages”, these institutions cannot make adequate contribution to intellectual and scientific development.
Besides, India has not been able to make significant progress in other disciplines of education as the government cannot afford to spend more than 0.37 per cent of the GDP on higher education. To fill this gap, the Indian government is now planning to liberalise the education sector and is even talking about allowing 100 per cent foreign direct investment in it.
But “no matter how much money is thrown at the endeavour, instant results are impossible. Achieving the goals of creating a culture of excellence and achieving high-quality outputs take many years and sustained commitment on the part of the entire constituency of the institution, internal and external,” the World Bank report said.
However, one positive aspect is that most experts agree that Asian universities are on the right track. They may not be able to catapult to the world’s top positions overnight. But according to professor Levin: “It may happen faster than ever before.”Published in AsiaNews
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