英美大学：联手打造国际交流合作新模式

Higher Education and Collaboration in Global Context Building a Global Civil Society UK/US Study Group A private report to Prime Minister Gordon Brown July 2009 This report makes the case for a new model for UK/US collaboration, one that will develop multilateral partnerships and bring the longstanding UK/US partnership in higher education to bear in third locations. It argues that if the UK and the USA are to continue to assert their primacy in the realm of higher education (HE) within an increasingly competitive global context, they will best do so collaboratively. The emergent global HE picture represents a challenging but ultimately promising framework for newly-envisioned UK/US collaboration. Now, more than ever, collaboration across borders among our leading universities is absolutely necessary. The strength of the UK/US partnership, the longstanding preeminence of the two countries in the HE sector, and, more recently, the unfolding of the global economy, validate the case for deepened – and internationalised – collaboration. Furthering the UK/US collaborative HE relationship can no longer have as its sole goals mobility and partnership between the two, nor the advancement only of UK and US interests. The biggest challenge ahead is to focus on ways of extending the UK/US model to third locations. This will enrich immensely the universities of both countries, foster the growth of an open, competitive and accessible HE sector in other nations, and constitutes a vitally important form of soft diplomacy and power. Most critically, it will foster – if framed by ambitious initiatives – the development of a ‘global civil society’ which will bind universities and countries together through common values and principles, and counter the centripetal forces of the globalised era. The report provides an account of the origins and purpose of the group that produced it; assesses the history of UK/US higher education partnership, its strengths and weaknesses, and current context; and gives a forecast of developments with which the partnership must engage. Most critically, it makes a case for the absolute centrality of higher education in this emerging world, and provides ideas that capitalise on that centrality and begin to orient the longstanding UK/US partnership toward the globalised world before us for the creation of a global civil society. Summary Background 1 The origins and purpose of the UK/US Study Group 1 The context, bilateral and global An overview of UK/US commonalities, strengths, and core characteristics related to strength and pre-eminence 3 Summary and background of core shared strengths 3 Quality 4 Values 5 Structure/intellectual breadth 6 Governance 6 Research strength/knowledge transfer 7 Access 7 Financing 8 International orientation UK/US HE collaborative activity and trends 9 The origins of UK/US collaboration 9 UK/US higher education collaboration today 10 UK/US higher education collaboration and the emerging global context Assets of the UK/US higher education relationship 12 Existing research and teaching networks 12 Student and faculty mobility 13 Interest in UK/US HE systems from third party countries 13 Intellectual capital and property in the dawning ‘knowledge century’ 13 Increasing diversity Challenges to the UK/US higher education relationship 14 Funding and administrative barriers 14 Rapidly intensifying competition 15 Political systems have difficulty operating on a global, long-term horizon 16 Current global economic realities validate the case for cooperation 16 The need for ‘added value’ in the UK/US collaborative higher education relationship The world ahead 18 The students of the future 19 The map of the future: global ‘idea capitals’ 20 Universities now drive the research economy 22 Universities are a key hydraulic for economic and social health 23 The ‘utilitarian’ justification for the breadth of the UK and US curricula 23 The world ahead may not look as we expected 24 Technology as a tool in collaborative efforts 24 The UK/US partnership and its role in the world ahead 1 2 3 4 5 6 Contents Proposals for action: building a global civil society 26 The Atlantic Trust 27 Students – the Atlantic Scholars: creating a cohort of global citizens 28 The Atlantic Researchers 29 The Atlantic Partners: stimulating a matrix of university cooperation 31 Funding and structure Conclusion 32 Appendix A 33 UK/US Study Group members Appendix B 34 Key trends and activity in UK/US collaboration in higher education 7 8 1 Full biographies of all committee members appear in Appendix A. 2 Again, Academic Consortium 21 (AC 21), the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), and Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) are examples. The origins and purpose of the UK/US Study Group In the spring of 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown approached Rick Trainor, the Principal of King’s College London; and John Sexton, the President of New York University. Would they draw together a small group of higher education leaders to engage in a set of conversations on the state of UK/US collaboration in a global context? And would the group be willing to provide a short paper encapsulating their thoughts? The proposition was bold – encompassed within it was a tremendously challenging series of questions, ranging from the role of HE in civil society, to global economic trends, to the meaning of cooperation in a fundamentally competitive world. Indeed, part of the group’s mandate would be to respond to such pressing underlying questions. Trainor and Sexton agreed. Through the series of consultations requested by the Prime Minister, the group they pulled together worked over a six month period toward producing a white paper offering an analysis of the position of UK and US universities in the emerging global environment, flagging strengths and weaknesses; proposing pathways to stronger relationships between them; and offering ways to enhance their global positions and contributions, separately and in tandem. This document is that paper. Sections 1–5 provide information on the group itself, the group’s view of the basic principles that have guided UK and US HE to a position of preeminence, and the general history of UK/US collaboration. It is in Sections 6 and 7 that readers will find the real ‘meat’: an assessment of what the world ahead holds for HE in our two countries, and the group’s recommendations for meaningful UK/US collaboration within it. The group’s members are: Janet Finch, Christopher Snowden, Eric Thomas, Nigel Thrift, Rick Trainor (UK) and Robert Berdahl, Molly Corbett Broad, Jane McAuliffe, John Sexton, and Shirley Tilghman (USA).1 In addition, Shaun Curtis serves as deputy to Rick Trainor, and Katherine Fleming as deputy to John Sexton. The context, bilateral and global From the start, the group was unanimous in the view that its recommendations could not afford to be simply ‘more of the same’. UK/US collaboration in higher education, strong as it is, has established well-worn pathways – student and faculty exchanges, joint degree programmes, fellowships that promote mobility, and most ambitiously, networks of universities that have come together to leverage collective strength.2 While these are certainly not to be jettisoned, and indeed need in many respects to be strengthened, the relevance and vitality of collaboration in the emergent global context will rest on our ability to come up with new models for partnership and ambitious goals as to what it might accomplish. 1 1.1 1.2 Background p1 Higher Education and Collaboration in Global Context: Building a Global Civil Society p2 UK/US Study Group Higher education has entered an unprecedented period of ‘globalisation’ – western universities are opening branch campuses abroad and at the same time attracting ever-growing numbers of international students to their home campuses; students from the USA and UK increasingly view time in another country as an essential component of their educations; nations around the world are ploughing vast sums of money into creating and building their own HE sectors. This context presents huge challenges but also huge opportunities – and demands some sort of sustained attention on the part of HE leaders, who must ponder the opportunities it might present for UK/US collaboration, and for the reassertion of HE as a – perhaps the – central public good. The longstanding tradition of bilateral ties between the UK and US in higher education provides the rationale for drawing together the universities of the UK and the USA in this endeavor. Indeed, in many ways these educational ties have long been one basis for the so-called ‘special relationship’ (though in recent years that relationship has to a degree been commandeered by other concerns – security, for instance, and military partnership). In the challenging new global context, there is a need to refocus the special relationship between the two nations on the core values upheld and fostered by HE. Universities are the freest places in our societies. Reasserting this fundamental strength – and reclaiming the principles that guided us before 11 September 2001 – must be the bedrock of future UK/US collaborations. Within both the UK and the USA, the HE sector has long held a position of prominence and prestige – though there are signs that this position is under threat, even as greater demands than ever are being placed upon HE. Universities are viewed as an engine for ameliorating an array of social ills, from poverty to security, yet in both the UK and US contexts, HE institutions are subject to resource constraints and to intense competition. Globalisation represents the latest, and likely most transformative, competitive arena that our countries face. Even as we determine how best to move together within a broader global context to strengthen the ties between our universities, we are each respectively working to strengthen our own institutions. What prevails, then, is something that might best be termed ‘coopetition’, a forceful driver in the global expansion of HE. This report endeavors to make the case for UK and US HE as the sector most uniquely equipped to engage globalisation and to shape the global intellectual community arising from it. In doing so, the report argues for the creation of significant programmes to turn competition to cooperation for common advancement. 3 IIE, Open Doors Report, 2008. See also for a summary: ‘UK top destination for US scholars’, International Focus, Issue 29, November 2008, p5, available at www.international.ac.uk 4 www.universityworldnews. com/article.php?story=200801 17161309513 5 And, within those, by a handful of individual universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge and colleges within the University of London in the UK, and Yale, Princeton and Harvard in the USA. 6 To give but one example: according to the Times Higher Education/QS Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, four UK universities are now in the top 10, and six from the USA. (THES-QS World University Rankings, 2008). Summary and background of core shared strengths There are obvious and major differences between the higher education systems of the UK and the USA – their funding sources, histories, and degree structures are perhaps most obvious. Nevertheless, the higher education systems of the USA and the UK have a good deal in common. The history of collaboration between them underscores this closeness: the longest-standing and best-known international exchange programmes, such as the Rhodes and Marshall scholarship funds, are examples, as are the huge numbers of students that travel between them each year. In 2007, for example, almost 33,000 students from the USA went to study in the UK, more than went to any other location3 (though statistics suggest that the UK may be losing its ‘stranglehold’ over the US study-abroad market). Worldwide, anglophone HE modelled explicitly on the systems of the UK and the USA is being actively developed: India, for example, recently announced that over the coming five years it plans to build 16 new universities, loosely on the American model, with significant input from UK higher education.4 The USA and the UK remain pre-eminent in HE, the most emulated and most popular as a study abroad destination for overseas students. The constituent points of commonality between their systems, however, rarely have been systematically laid out. As a starting point, the group thought it useful to undertake an analysis of the common characteristics and strengths of the higher education systems of the two nations. In discussion, eight rapidly emerged as particularly noteworthy: quality values/academic freedom structure/intellectual breadth governance research strength/knowledge transfer access/open competitive environment/peer review financing international orientation (students and staff). Each is considered briefly here in turn. Quality Rankings lists of all sorts are uniformly dominated by UK and US institutions,5 and the two countries have long been the destinations of choice for students coming from abroad who are willing to travel long distances in order to obtain a quality education.6 While ranking systems vary in their criteria, by pretty much any measure findings are similar. p3 Higher Education and Collaboration in Global Context: Building a Global Civil Society 2 An overview of UK/US commonalities, strengths, and core characteristics related to strength and pre-eminence 2.1 2.2 p4 UK/US Study Group 7 See, for an overview, Robert Quinn’s article, ‘Defending ‘Dangerous’ Minds’, published by the SSRC in 2004, www.ssrc.org/workspace/ images/crm/new_publication_ 3/%7B5cebcead-2d60-de11- bd80-001cc477ec70%7D.pdf One hypothetical question to which the group turned its attention was this: 20 years from now, on a list of the world’s 100 top universities, how many will be in the USA or the UK? How many will be in countries not presently represented on world rankings lists? For the UK and the USA, it should be a high priority to sustain the prominence of our own HE systems in the global context. At the same time, there are clear benefits to be gained by all from the emergence of quality HE around the world. Must these objectives be mutually exclusive? Or might UK/US collaboration in HE find one of its most useful marks precisely in helping promote and generate quality HE around the world? Values The excellence of the UK and US systems of HE rests in large part on shared values, particularly those linked to strongly-held notions of academic freedom. From peer review, to scholarly work, to promotion processes, to curricular development, to faculty freedom in the classroom – essential elements of quality rest on the principles of academic freedom. Most fundamentally, the great universities of the UK and USA share the belief that freedom of inquiry of both faculty and students is central to the academic mission. The idea of freedom of inquiry (Lehrfreiheit) derives originally from Germany; in the 19th century, US scholars returning from Germany implanted it as a feature of US HE. In Britain, the Scottish Enlightenment and its English counterpart embedded such autonomy as a fundamental element of universities by the late 19th century. Today, four HE systems – the UK (and Commonwealth – Australia, New Zealand, Canada), US, French, and German – treat it as a bedrock principle of the academy. True knowledge, it is held, can only be generated in a context in which students and faculty alike have an uncompromised right to question received wisdom and to consider unpopular or unheard of opinions, views, and propositions without fear of interference or recriminations. While the principle of academic freedom is taken seriously in the UK and the USA, this is far from the case in many other world contexts. Prominent cases involving the imprisonment of scholars for espousing views or conducting research that do not conform to the dominant political or social positions of their government – in Egypt, Turkey, China, and a number of other countries – have led to the creation of such watchdog organisations as Scholars at Risk, which attempt to export and apply principles of academic freedom to foreign contexts and bring to bear the weight and influence of the UK and US HE establishments on behalf of scholars who do not enjoy academic freedom in their home contexts.7 2.3 8 William C Kirby, ‘On Chinese, European, and American universities’, Daedalus, 137.7 (Summer 2008), p139 9 In distinction, the ‘continental model’ (also in place at a number of Middle Eastern institutions), tends to offer courses over the length of the entire year, with exams only at the end (the UK model might more accurately be described as a hybrid of the two). As UK and US universities increasingly venture abroad, they must carry with them the commitment to the core value of academic freedom. Perhaps more than any other single intellectual ‘export’, this one may have the most critical global importance. The UK and the USA alike have long known that one advantage to hosting overseas students is the opportunity to expose them to the principles of academic freedom. The US Fulbright programme, to give but one example, was largely founded on this basis. As our paradigm for global education shifts, and increasingly involves the movement of UK and US institutions to international contexts, there is an opportunity to assert the commitment to academic freedom, in ever more diverse contexts – and the challenge to do so with sensitivity. Structure/intellectual breadth The universities of the UK and the USA are striking for their structural similarity, particularly in academic matters. Both take seriously the medieval notion of the ‘university’ as being a community of teachers and scholars (universitas magistrorum et scholarium). The emphasis, perhaps, is strongest on ‘community’: a university allows for tremendous intellectual breadth concentrated in one place. The universities of the UK and USA are organised around a set of core disciplines that have not changed to any great extent over a long period of time. These have been added to as new fields of inquiry arise, such as neurosciences or linguistics, but the core has remained the same. The inclusion of different subjects is not decided upon (at least, ideally it is not decided upon) by what may or may not be in intellectual vogue at any given moment, or by the market, or by other trends. As one observer puts it, ‘There has seldom been a higher academic ideal: good people embarking on the living study of great books in order to do good work in society’.8 While it is important to be open to the expansion of the canon to new ‘great books’, those that have proved their worth over centuries of study endure. Or as President John F Kennedy famously put it, in explaining why the arts are a critical part of a university’s portfolio, ‘art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.’ Our universities often fall far short of this ideal, of course – but it is striking nevertheless that pursuit of such a worthy ideal binds the UK and the USA. Other shared features of institutional structure are the range of degrees offered and the belief that vitality of a discipline rests on faculty or academic staff that is actively engaged in both teaching and research (indeed, that the two are connected). Universities both disseminate and produce knowledge. Thus teaching and research in both contexts is structured around terms (or, in the USA, ‘semesters’) that allow for a greater diversity and number of courses offered and taken, for greater mobility of students both to and from