Transcript `Rank/lings`: European Higher Education, Global League Tables and

‘Rank/lings’:
European Higher Education, Global League
Tables and World Re-Orderings
Susan Robertson
U of Bristol, UK
ESRC Seminar Series
‘Education and Changing Cultures of
Competitivism’,
University of Bristol
23rd January, 2009
‘Within Europe’
Phases of European Higher Education
‘Regionalising’ and ‘Globalising’
Phase I
Inter/national
Deepening internal
1960’s- relations 1990s ‘Europeanisation’
and regionalisation
Phase II
External
2000s
Extending outward globalisation and
interregionalisations
The political economy of Europe, world order and the European
Higher Education Area
1. The USA and Europe’s share of goods production has declined
since the 1980s, whilst the emerging economies (China, Brazil, India)
share 30% of world’s goods production.
2. The USA and Europe are net exporters of trade in services; to secure
global leadership they need to control the conditions of trade in
services.
3. The USA and EU have a common interest in expanding the global
services (education, health, finance etc) economy.
4. The USA and EU are also rivals. As a single nation, the USA currently
dominates with 14.3% of global services. However, the combined total
share of the EU-25 is 46%.
5. This share of the services economy increases the potential for the EU
to set global standards (knowledge, skills, recognition for labour
markets) and consolidate its leadership. This is where Bologna (HE)
and its ‘technologies’ for governing meet the EU’s Lisbon strategy.
The economic and political imperatives behind the creation of a
European Higher Education Area
6. Europe’s economic imaginary can be seen in Lisbon 2000: “to
become the most competitive, and dynamic knowledgebased economy in the world, with more and better jobs…..”
(European Council, 2000). It was affirmed in the New Lisbon
2005 Strategy – the outcome of a shift in social forces within
Europe.
7 The European Commission has advanced its project of HE
reform and rule, citing the rise of China and India as new
economic competitors
8. This has meant a closer, though tension-ridden, alignment
between the Bologna and Lisbon strategies over time
9. As a result, we can see competing ‘political’ projects in the
various ‘dimensions’ and purposes of the Bologna Process.
Bologna Process ‘dimensions’
Bologna
Process
‘dimension’
structural
degree
architecture
social
European
external
public
good equity
and
access
quality
standard
plus
visibility
of
‘Europe’
attractiveness
competitiveness
and model
agenda setting
strategy globally
Europe’s Knowledge-Economy Strategy Goes Global
1. Kok Report – Mid-Term Review (2004) of Lisbon 2000 gave the
European Commission the legitimacy to push forward an aggressive
policy that now linked Lisbon and Bologna together and elevated
the global dimension.
2. Kok argued…the Lisbon strategy had failed to deliver a satisfactory
economic growth performance and that Europe was falling far behind
both the USA and Asia. The spectre of China and India, as threat and
opportunity, now added a new level of threat to the external
challenges (Kok, 2004: 12).
…For Europe to compete, it needed to urgently “…develop its own area of
specialisms, excellence and comparative advantage which inevitably
must lie in a commitment to the knowledge economy in its widest
sense… Europe has no option but to radically improve its knowledge
economy and underlying economic performance if it is to respond to
the challenges of Asia and the US” (Kok, 2004: 12).
Europe’s HE ‘Knowledge-Economy’ Strategy
The Bologna Process/Tuning Project/EQAR is thus
about..
… internal change, external readability for competitiveness,
and global standard setting….
.…it involves attracting/retaining the best brains for
economic development, creating a higher education market
to inject more capital into the sector, generating
mechanisms and momentum for standard-setting using
intra-and inter-regionalising projects…
…a process seeking to constitute Europe as sovereign
ruler, the European citizen, and Europe as centre of ‘soft’
power rule over wider territories.
…it also seeks to challenge the normative power of the US
The external dimension - using existing inter-regionalism and
instruments to ‘diffuse’ higher education norms
1. Central Asia - Tempus Project - 11 Kyrgyz higher ed institutions linked to 2
European universities (instruments such as Tempus, Bologna + Tuning)
2. Euro-Mediterranean Partnership - Catania Agreement 2006 -working toward a
Euro-Mediterranean Area (includes Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Jordan)
3. Euro-Africa - Bologna a model for regional collaboration using colonial ties;
- Afrique francophone (Conference held in Senegal, 2005; Morocco, 2006;
Congo, 2007)
- African Lusophone - (Angola)
4. Mahgred region - Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria (Middle East and North Africa)
5. Lusophone Higher Education Area (ELES)
6. EU-LAC Common Area - EU-Latin American and Caribbean - includes
Tuning Latino Americana (181 LAC universities involved so far) as well as
mobility and scholarship instruments (e.g. Erasmus Mundus, Apha)
7. Asia-Link/ASEAN Initiatives (2006-) - China and other Asian economies workshops on Bologna, deploying mobility and scholarship instruments
Model for
Norm Setting
Minds for
Knowledge
Economy
Lisbon
state
building
strategy
Mobility of academics,
students and
labour
Markets
for Service
Economy
EUROPE:
A GLOBAL
BRAND?
Bologna
EHEA
globalising
through
‘regions’
European Research Area
‘Quality’
and
Attractiveness of
EHEA
Mechanism of
Cooperation,
Learning
Global rankings: EU rank/lings
Shanghai Jiao Tong – (began in 2003) to rank the distance between
China’s universities in relation to the perceived world class universities.
Has data on 510 institutions; awards a total score to the top 101
universities with a ranking from 1 downward; uses Nobel Prize winners
and other medals (current and alumni); number of highly cited papers
mostly in hard sciences (only 2 of the 21 disciplines belong to social
science); favours the US; does not distinguish size of institution.
Times Higher Education Supplement-QS World University Rankings
- (began in 2004) uses peer review, employer review, citations per
capita; student teaching ratios; international orientation; UK does
relatively well on this - other ‘European’ universities do not.
Both are struggling for global position; they are also shaping
immigration policy (Netherlands uses THES and SJT) to recruit skilled
labour; access to finance (S&P uses rankings to rate institution’s
creditworthiness; recruitment of students and staff; philanthropy.
Challenging hegemony: diverse projects
Berlin Principles – developed in ‘major ranking interests’ in 2004
by Institute for HE Policy in Washington and UNESCO-CEPES
Bucharest – outlines basis of good practice in the emerging ‘niche’
industry
Centre for Higher Education (CHE) Germany (since 2005
published rankings with Die Zeit) – subject-based interactive
rankings that produce high, medium and low bands
Lisbon Council (Brussels) – think-tank established in 2004;
created a University Systems Ranking (inclusiveness, access,
effectiveness, age range, responsiveness)
Leiden University – Leiden Ranking based on own bibliometric
indicators (web of science) and related to size of institution
CHEPS – Netherlands- European classification of higher education
institutions (2005-)
Challenging US ‘knowledge production’ hegemony: concluding
remarks
1. Challenging existing global league tables represents an attempt to further
extend EU normative leadership
2. Further develops a higher education industry with ‘regional’ interests and
recurring returns as different ‘packagings’ for particular interests are
identified, made visible, and sold.
3. A ‘Multidimensional European Ranking System’ (MDERS) would be
brokered globally along with Tuning, Bologna and the EQF – using old
colonial footprints and new incursions into Central Asia/SE Asia
4. A ‘MDERS’ would act as a form of strategic selectivity, advancing a
reordering, whilst at the same time further embedding the EHEA project
within the region and into national state spaces
5. A ‘MDERS’ to act as a tool of European governance
6. New tensions between competitiveness and equity, excellence and
egalitarianism, the role of the ‘cultural’ in HE.
7. However has very little sense of China and an emerging power, aside from
as a market.