The ofFuture

f t.co m/u n iver sit y

the
University O c t ob e r 7 20 14

su pp o rt e d by

Private revolution in India | China’s crisis | Campus starchitecture | Manchester’s Nancy Rothwell
 co nte nt s

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COVER BY Max Price on the impact of How universities are using
N I C K LOWN D E S selective research funding bold campus architecture to 46
market themselves c h in a
contributor s 6 Students are shunning an
William Dar is director- intro duc tio n outdated education system
general of ICRISAT; Emma Western universities are Regional angles
Jacobs is a Business Life chasing a generation of 50
writer; Amy Kazmin is south globally mobile students 34 latin a m e ric a
Asia correspondent; Edwin intro duc tio n New funding models aim to
Heathcote is architecture 10 The implications of a rapidly reverse academic decline
correspondent; Sarah qualit y growing and more mobile
Murray is a regular FT Today’s international higher world student population 54
contributor; Andreas Paleit education landscape makes in d ia
is Asia world news editor; measuring standards tricky 36 Private universities are a draw
PHoTo: DoUBLESPACE; NEvILLE WILLIAMS

Samantha Pearson is Brazil colum n for overseas students

correspondent; Max Price
is vice-chancellor of the
University of Cape Town;
Rafael Reif is president of
MIT; Barney Thompson is
a reporter and editor on the
UK desk; Patti Waldmeir
is Shanghai correspondent;
Helen Warrell is the public
policy correspondent
14
inte r view
Nancy Rothwell on being the
University of Manchester’s
first female vice-chancellor
18
moocs
Are massive open online
courses here to stay?
Rafael Reif sees huge benefits
from digital technology
38
la n gua g e s
English is tightening its hold
as the academic lingua franca
58
co lum n
William Dar advocates easier
access to published research
vid e o
Emma Boyde on the impact
of greater choice
www.ft.com/university

Elite strengths
Enrolment in higher education over
the past two decades has risen rapidly,
especially in emerging economies.
However, these countries lag far behind
in academic and research excellence,
and innovation more generally.
Sub-Saharan Africa provides
a paradigmatic example: student
numbers are expected to increase
from about 4m in 1996 to 19m in
2015, effectively doubling each decade.
But on the research front, African
countries, both north and south of the
Sahara, produce only 1.37 per cent of
the output in science and engineering
publications worldwide, even though
they account for 13.8 per cent of the
global population and 3.03 per cent
of the world’s gross domestic product.
Africa produced only 0.56 per cent of
the world’s patents in 2006-11.
While global ranking systems have
their shortcomings, there are only
four universities in the Times Higher
Education World University Rankings’
top 200 from lower- and middle-income
countries – three from China (Peking
University, Tsinghua University and
Fudan University) and one from South
Africa (the University of Cape Town).
Does this matter? The costs of
research universities are much higher
per student enrolled, as are the costs
of postgraduate training compared
with undergraduate. Is it perhaps
right that emerging economies
prioritise undergraduate education
and leave research to the well-endowed
PHoTo: REUTERS, MICHAEl HAMMonD/UCT
institutions of the north? While most
low-income countries are unlikely
to be able to sustain strong research
universities – for cost reasons as
well as the difficulty of attracting top
academics – middle-income, lower-
middle and emerging economies need
the capacity to undertake their own
original research, train their own
doctoral graduates and develop their
academic faculty. They therefore need
at least some research universities.
These institutions are central to their
countries’ ability to innovate. They help
set national standards of excellence.
Yet there is invariably a trade-off
between a rapid expansion of student
access to universities and a deepening of
research capacity. How should countries
proceed?
The first step is to recognise that
not all universities in a country can
or should be the same. only very few,
perhaps only one, should be developed
as research-intensive universities.
Critically, those that are selected to be
research-intensive will need significant
additional funding. The funding
not only supports research directly
but, most importantly, ensures that
academic staff are paid at levels that do
not require them to moonlight – doing
consulting at the expense of serious
research. Proper funding also ensures
student-staff ratios that leave time for
conducting research.
This strategy has informed policy
in some countries. In China, in 1998,
Body of evidence
Despite rising student
numbers, Africa lags
in global research
league tables
o p in io n
the authorities decided they were going
to support nine out of their 2,000
universities to become world class – a
strategy that has had spectacular
success. Germany and other countries
have done something similar.
Yet most developing countries,
usually for political reasons, have been
reluctant to signal clearly that they will
fund one or two universities at a much
higher level than the others in order to
make those few globally competitive.
There is little universities can do in the
absence of such a policy. But there are
strategies that can help.
For example, in South Africa the
core funding of higher education that
comes from the Ministry of Higher
Education and Training is separate
from the funding for research, the latter
being done through national science
councils. This research funding is largely
allocated on a competitive or strategic
basis – reinforcing research groups that
are already somewhat stronger, building
centres of excellence or steering foreign
research funds into selected universities.
Another enabling policy is to allow
universities to set their own fees and
salaries. Stronger universities will be
able to charge higher fees and increase
their revenue more rapidly, pay better
wages and cross-subsidise research.
Universities aspiring to make
themselves attractive to postgraduate
students, post-doctoral fellows,
internationally recognised researchers
and strong research partners from
abroad also need to identify where they
might have a comparative advantage or
niche area of expertise. This might be
their geographical location – such as a
particular biodiversity setting, profile
of local diseases or access to unique
communities and cultures.
A policy of selecting and investing
in a small number of universities to
become research institutions does not
mean research should not be conducted
at other universities too. But the selected
research universities should be funded at
a level that enables them to succeed in a
globally competitive environment – and
this clearly cannot be afforded for all.
Max Price is vice-chancellor of the
University of Cape Town
f t. c o m / u n i v e r s i t y | 5
 Generation
globetrotter

Pressure on places at universities in emerging

countries has created a globally mobile pool of
PHOTO: Wang JianHua/XinHua/eyevine

students that western institutions, many of them

desperate for revenue, are eager to tap into,
writes Helen Warrell

Degrees of success
A graduation ceremony at Peking University
in Beijing. China is spending $250bn a year
to improve its universities
 M ore than 150 years
ago, the Catholic cardinal John Henry Newman set
out his vision for a university as “a place of concourse,
whither students come from every quarter for every kind
of knowledge”. As students have become more mobile,
and higher education institutions more international,
Cardinal Newman might be surprised at the truly diverse
concourse of the modern education market.
Driving the globalisation of universities are children
from the middle classes in emerging economies who
aspire to highly skilled jobs. In Asia especially, the
development of universities has not kept pace with rising
levels of affluence, creating a shortfall of places. As a
result, western economies are vying to attract a growing
pool of youngsters looking to study abroad. And in fast-
growing nations such as India and Brazil, the race to build
more universities is on.
‘The western model of state-funded university
education is a luxury emerging markets,
with limited resources, cannot afford’
1.
8 | f t.Co m/U n iver sit y
Much of this change is necessitated by sheer
demographics. More than half of India’s population is
under 25 years old; by 2020 it will be ahead of China
as the country with the largest population at tertiary-
education age. The flow of Chinese students overseas is
expected to grow as much as 15 per cent a year until 2018.
Already, 2.5m students globally are studying outside their
home country, creating a sector worth $30bn a year for
the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, according to the
Parthenon Group education consultancy.
For these traditional markets, the boom could not
have come at a better time. Austerity has squeezed
higher education state subsidies, while expenditure
by universities is rising as competition – for the best
staff, technology and facilities – increases. In the US in
particular, rising costs and falling enrolments have put
the long-term viability of some weaker universities at risk.
Last year, a report by education business Pearson,
owner of the Financial Times, and the Institute for Public
Policy Research, the think-tank, predicted an “avalanche”
in the market that would challenge 20th-century higher
education institutions. Its authors observed that the
traditional relationship between universities, students
and national economies was increasingly under pressure.
Western governments are all too aware of the threat
to their academic centres and have made efforts to boost
higher education exports. Despite domestic political
concerns about immigration, Australia has loosened visa
rules around international students to draw youngsters
away from the two most popular university destinations,
the US and the UK.
In the UK, stricter border controls led to a 49 per
cent drop in enrolments from Indian students between
2011 and 2013, and a 38 per cent decrease for those from
Pakistan. But these falls have been largely offset by huge
increases from China, and a dedicated education export
unit in the Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills is working to build better links with international
universities via branch campuses and shared courses.
While revenue from overseas students has provided
a lifeline for cash-strapped institutions, Mike Boxall, a
higher education expert at PA Consulting Group, says
there are dangers in having too many incomers. “We are
hearing anecdotally that [in some universities] this has
reached an uncomfortable limit,” he says. “Students who
have come halfway round the world to get an English
experience… come into a classroom to find there are lots
of other international students there too.”
Emerging economies face different hurdles. China
has an ambitious $250bn-a-year programme to develop
its universities and research facilities, but governments
elsewhere are more restricted. Karan Khemka, co-head
of the Parthenon Group’s education practice, suggested in
an essay for Harvard Business Review that the “western
model” of state-funded university education “is a luxury
emerging markets, with limited resources, cannot afford”.

2.
Instead, these countries rely heavily on for-profit
providers to build a university sector that is rapidly
scalable and sustainable in the long term. The UK’s
university unions and some parts of its academic
establishment have been sceptical of private institutions,
casting doubts over their quality and value for money.
But across Asia and Latin America, these providers
do not carry the same stigma. In Malaysia, the private
higher education market was worth $2.4bn, or about 1
per cent of gross domestic product, in 2012.
“In emerging markets it is absolutely the case that
private universities are responding to growing demand,”
Khemka says. “In Brazil, most higher education
enrolments are in private universities.”
PHOTOs: geTTy; sergey POnOmarev/nyT/reduX/eyevine
As old and new economies battle with how to deliver
good-quality education to increasingly mobile students,
technology could provide part of the answer. Massive
open online courses, or Moocs, beam mostly free lectures
and teaching programmes designed by top academics
around the world to anyone with an internet connection.
Though some fear Moocs threaten the future of
traditional, campus-based universities – particularly
the attractiveness of this model to overseas students –
it seems more likely they will provide a different and
complementary way of consuming academic content.
Nick Hillman, director of the UK’s Higher Education
Policy Institute think-tank, says in large parts of the
world, including much of Asia, distance learning is still
an “untrusted model”. “My hunch is that Moocs have
most to offer the developing world, including large parts
of Africa, as the value added is greater for those people
who get access to trusted world-class resources for the
first time,” he says.
intro duc tio n
Disruptive technologies, demographic change and 1.
changing patterns of economic growth have shaped Quiet corners
overcrowded facilities in China
significant changes in how universities function. Hillman
force students to study in a stairwell
describes the new outlook as “more students, more focus
on teaching, a more international outlook, a more diverse 2.
range of providers and more collaboration on research”. Branching out
Long-standing academic institutions in countries such Construction of a new york
University outpost in Abu Dhabi
as the UK and US are finding new ways to distinguish
themselves. They are deepening links with industry to
fund research and help bring their findings to market,
and taking more notice of what employers want from
graduates. Some are opening international campuses in
Asia and the Middle East to entice local students and
using the internet to reach a wider audience.
Boxall believes in the UK, at least, three broad
categories of university will emerge – oligarchs,
innovators and zombies. Established brands such as
Oxford and Cambridge are the oligarchs, assured of
survival. Innovators are the middle-ranking universities
prepared to take risks to bring in new students.
Meanwhile, the zombies, which refuse to change and
suffer declining enrolments, will spiral into extinction.
He argues that the future challenge for higher
education institutions will be to stay in the game at a
time when it is easy for aspiring students to access the
knowledge and skills they need from elsewhere, whether
online, directly from working with industry or through
hybrid courses designed and funded by an employer.
“The world is in the business of finding solutions to
multi-faceted problems and yet universities are still in
the business of finding applications for curiosity-driven
research,” Boxall observes. “The threat is not recognising
this and becoming less and less relevant as time goes on.”
f t.Co m/U n iver sit y | 9
 Up with
the best

Though traditional elite institutions continue

to operate in a vacuum, the increasingly
international nature of the higher education
landscape poses challenges for the assessment
of quality, writes Sarah Murray
Photo: getty

Taking steps to compete

Vienna University of Economics
and Business, which offers degree
programmes in English
qualit y
1.
As higher education becomes increasingly global
and elite institutions in the UK and the US face
competition from new markets, being able to assess the
quality of a university is becoming ever more critical. yet
while a range of measurement tools and rankings exist,
the industry is still struggling to come up with indicators
that are more than proxies for quality.
When it comes to elite institutions, the league tables
demonstrate that the status quo prevails, with the top
US and UK universities continuing to dominate the
upper echelons of the rankings.
the top of the elite are “holding up pretty well”, says
Ben Sowter, head of the QS Intelligence Unit, which
produces the QS World University Rankings. “their best
faculty want to stay there and the best faculty from the
next tier of institutions want to get there.”
he argues that the Mooc (massive open online
course) movement (see pages 18-23) has, by giving more
people exposure to the quality of their expertise, done a
lot to enhance the prestige of leading institutions such as
Stanford, which launched its first Mooc in 2011.
While the gap in the league tables between US and
UK universities and their counterparts in other markets
is closing, the balance is unlikely to shift dramatically, at
least in the near term.
“Universities in the UK and US are in possession of
something extremely valuable – the english language,”
says Chris husbands, director of the Institute of
‘The league tables have been
giving us a very partial measure of
what institutions are doing’
12 | f t.co m/U n iVEr sit y
education at the University of London. Nevertheless,
US and UK institutions will not be able to count on
retaining their linguistic monopoly for much longer.
Indian institutions already teach courses in english, as
do many european universities, especially in Nordic
countries and the Netherlands. emerging markets are
starting to offer increasingly high-quality educational
experiences. And some Asian universities, especially
in China, are enhancing their teaching by establishing
partnerships with leading western institutions.
“At the moment they are focused on quantity and
putting up more places, but there is a lot of effort going
into improving the quality of the learning experience,”
says Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills
at the oeCD and special adviser on education policy to
the organisation’s secretary-general.
Sowter also sees growing competition coming from
Latin American and African institutions. “there is
certainly a focus on competitiveness in higher education
from both those regions and my instincts tell me we will
start seeing some interesting trends emerge in the next
10 years or so,” he says.
emerging market universities often offer better
value for money than western institutions. For students
in those markets, this means that rather than going
overseas to get a high-quality education, as they might
have done in the past, they now have the option of
staying at home to study. the search for value for money
may also alter the choice of some students in the UK,
PhotoS: AFP/getty
where universities charge up to £9,000 a year in tuition
fees. Meanwhile, in the US, students considering Ivy
League schools and other elite institutions may balk at
the prospect of graduating with up to $200,000 in debt.
As the higher education landscape becomes more
competitive, the question is how to assess the quality
of a particular institution and compare it with others.
In this process, league tables such as the QS World
University Rankings, the times higher education
World University Rankings and the Shanghai Jiao tong
University Academic Ranking of World Universities
(ARWU) have played a key role. Many argue, however,
that these league tables, which use indicators such as the
ratio of teachers to students, research funding levels or
the achievements of faculty, are poor measures of quality.
“they have been giving us a very partial measure of
what institutions are doing,” says Prof husbands.
the ARWU, for example, uses indicators that include
citations in journals and the number of alumni and staff
who have won Nobel prizes and Fields medals.
An alternative indicator is the success that students
graduating from different institutions have in securing
jobs. however, as Schleicher points out, this is highly
dependent on the nature of labour markets.
In the US, he says, the market is highly skill-
sensitive. “Whereas in Sweden, there is a lot of wage
compression, so even if you are highly skilled, you are
not going to earn a lot more than someone who is less
skilled. So these labour market outcomes don’t work
that well internationally.” Sowter also acknowledges the
difficulties. “there are layer upon layer of complications
with trying to quantitatively evaluate teaching across
countries,” he says. “And that is before you even get into
the varieties of pedagogy, different innovations and the
way technology is used in different contexts.”
efforts are being made to find alternative measures.
the oeCD, for example, has conducted a feasibility
study, the Assessment of higher education Learning
outcomes, on whether it is possible to assess what
students have learned from their higher education
courses and what their capabilities are on graduation.
the study looked at generic skills such as critical
thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving and
written communication as well as specific technical
2.
‘There are layer upon layer of
complications with trying to quantitatively
evaluate teaching across countries’
skills. Schleicher says, however, that institutional
resistance has hampered this effort. “We have not been
able to do this at university level because the institutions
are very strong,” he says. “they refuse to participate.”
Meanwhile, QS is working with Wharton business
school at the University of Pennsylvania on an
initiative called Reimagine education, a global awards
programme that will recognise innovations in higher
education teaching that enhance learning and improve
employability.
“We know the rankings don’t really get to teaching,”
says Sowter. “And we are not convinced they ever will, so
this is what we are doing to demonstrate that we believe
teaching is vitally important to the understanding of
university quality.”
Ultimately, however, students may find their own
ways of assessing quality by applying the approach they
might take when shopping online for shoes or mobile
phones to selecting a university course. 1.
For the next generation, this may change the way Passing the test
the oEcD is studying the
people make choices about higher education. Sowter feasibility of assessing students’
cites recent research by ofcom, the UK communications capabilities on graduation
regulator, that shows the average six-year-old is as
tech-savvy as the average 45-year-old, with the most 2.
Domestic matters
tech-savvy individuals being those aged 14-15. “that is
students may focus on universities’
university selection age,” he says. “they are going to be value for money, especially if they
pulling in data and information at a rate their parents have to move away from home
cannot keep up with, so the parental influence on these
decisions is probably going to diminish.” 3.
In tune with the market
this, of course, may also mean that those behind the indian institutions are encroaching
traditional methods of assessing university quality will on the English language monopoly
have to think again. of the UK and Us
3.
f t.co m/U n iVEr sit y | 13
 Northern
light

Dame Nancy Rothwell, a leading neuroscientist

and the University of Manchester’s first female
vice-chancellor, tells Emma Jacobs why
she refuses to see students as customers and
why she is grateful for her flirtation with art
Photographs by Neville Williams

Strong credentials Nancy Rothwell

says she thinks of herself as an
academic first and a
vice-chancellor second
inte r view

A
Funding equation
The Alan Turing Building,
completed in 2007, housing the
School of Mathematics at the
University of Manchester
‘Women are in the minority in science.
t the age of 14 Nancy Rothwell
decided to give up studying biology at school. “I found it
boring,” she reflects. She made the decision after
consulting with her father, a biology lecturer. So at A-level
she opted for art alongside maths, physics and chemistry,
in order to give her the option of studying at art school
instead of university. In the end she realised she “wasn’t
good enough to ever make any money” from art and
opted for physiology at the University of London instead.
This set her on a path as a scientist (her PhD took just
two years), earning a reputation for high-profile research
into the causes of obesity before moving into neuroscience
and becoming known for her work on strokes.
Today she is the University of Manchester’s first
female vice-chancellor and, until recently, was the only
female head of the 24 members of the elite Russell
Group – Prof Alice Gast took up her role as president of
Imperial College London in September, and Prof Janet
Beer will succeed Sir Howard Newby as Liverpool’s vice-
chancellor in February.
By today’s standards, the swerve in Prof Rothwell’s
early academic career away from biology seems
almost reckless. Twenty-first century students are,
she says, serious-minded by contrast with those in her
undergraduate and postgraduate days in the 1970s.
“Young people worry about their careers. I never thought
about careers after studying. I didn’t know what I
wanted to do as an undergraduate, apart from research –
I chose research not academia. It just happens I’ve spent
my career as an academic. PhDs are now taught about
funding and careers.” Modern students are also more
“earnings-oriented” than her peers were, she believes.
Prof Rothwell – who was until May the president of
the Society of Biology and is currently a non-executive
director of AstraZeneca, the pharmaceuticals group –
is used to being asked about the challenges of being a
female scientist. “It’s inevitable, especially as you become
more senior. Women are in the minority in science.”
Why? “A huge range of reasons – family commitments,
lack of role models.” Prof Rothwell has a partner but
no children and says that domestic life can be hard to
juggle alongside the demands of long hours in research
labs and travel to international conferences. Also, many
women, she believes, lack confidence. “Women look at
what they can’t do and don’t put themselves forward for
things.” To correct this, the University of Manchester has
worked at identifying and nurturing women with the
potential for senior roles.
Having a strong academic reputation has helped
prove her credentials to colleagues at Manchester, she
believes. “I always think of myself an academic first and
vice-chancellor second.” While she no longer heads a
laboratory, she continues to work in research, mainly on
strokes but also on brain haemorrhages and dementia,
contributing to the ideas, planning, funding and the
publishing of results.
She concedes that balancing her stewardship of the
university with the demands of her scientific work is
tricky. “The difficulty with research is you can always
put it off. I do sometimes push it back for the sake of my
university role.” The perks of the vice-chancellor job are
immense, however, she says. She relishes the chance to
“solve problems”. While she would never like to give up
research completely, she also would not like to go back
to pure research. “I enjoy raising funds and trying to
attract students and staff.”
Prof Rothwell does admit that being in the top job
can occasionally be “lonely”, so she tries to interact with
students and teaching staff as much as possible.
She insists that her scientific background does not
mean that she favours the university’s life sciences
departments. “If anything I might be harsher on my
subject. Half this university is humanities.” She has
maintained an interest in art and occasionally draws
in her sketchpad when she can find the time. She says
her hobby may have saved her from being seen as a
“complete philistine” by her colleagues in the humanities
departments.
Tuition fees have undoubtedly helped make students
more focused on their careers, says Prof Rothwell,
though she is wary of seeing the value of education
purely in professional advancement. “I have a problem
with measuring degrees in potential earning power.
PHoTo: GeTTY

Degrees are wider than that.” Nor does she want tuition
They look at what they can’t do and fees to make education a transaction. “I don’t think of
students as consumers or customers.” She prefers the
don’t put themselves forward for things’ student union’s suggestion that students should be

16 | f T.co M/U N iveR SiT y

seen as “partners”. The university is, however, putting
some effort into helping students from disadvantaged
backgrounds become more employable, advising them
on networking and forging contacts that their peers from
middle-class and professional homes take for granted.
About a quarter of Manchester’s students are from
overseas and are lured in part by the cosmopolitan mix
of the city and its proximity to an international airport.
The university has also put “a lot of effort into attracting”
these undergraduates – who pay higher fees than their
British peers – through marketing overseas as well as
helping with visas, orientation and advice.
While overseas students are critical to the university’s
bottom line, there are also challenges. Prof Rothwell
worries that the student population could become
divided by nationality. “When you have a large
international population it may be easier for them to
segregate and spend time together. We try to prise
them apart.” There are also, inevitably, problems with
homesickness and those that come from unstable
countries. She also fears that universities’ desire to lure
overseas students could mean that standards decline as
barriers to entry are dropped. The knock-on effect would
mean that future generations of foreign students choose
to go elsewhere, notably to the US.
Money is a perennial problem: there is “never
enough”, according to Prof Rothwell. “All universities
look at efficiency savings with public funding effectively
declining. There is no guarantee of capital funding –
we have been good at winning competitions, but you
can’t plan for winning a competition. That’s tough.
It’s not just buildings we need but great libraries and
updated equipment.”
As the economy has improved, so too has the amount
of research funding from industry, she says. This revenue
stream has become more significant, partly because the
university has got better at going after it. It has also been
targeting philanthropists and strengthening alumni
networks. “Budgets are always challenging – everyone
has interesting things they want to do. Colleagues vie
with each other.”
The university has launched five Mooc (massive
open online course) programmes to date. “We’ve been
selective as we wanted to offer high-quality courses.” It
is still too early, she says, to know how successful the
programmes are and whether people studying them will
convert to become full-time students on campus.
The highlight of Prof Rothwell’s academic year –
the time when she can cast aside the frustrations of
the future of universities’ funding – is not the start ‘I have a problem with measuring
but the end. “I love the degree ceremonies. It’s a
celebration; families are there. This year the sun was
degrees in potential earning power.
shining. It’s a nice time.” Degrees are wider than that’
 Virtual
value
Moocs, or massive open online courses,
have undoubtedly created a stir in the world
of higher education. But are they a fad or a
credible alternative to the lecture theatre?
Barney Thompson reports
PHOTO: GETTY
moocs

1.
1.
Signs of life
There are good reasons why
Moocs will not supplant
physical teaching
2.
Time to rethink
Udacity co-founder and chief
executive Sebastian Thrun
They are the new kids on education’s block and
most have only been around for a matter of months.
Yet massive open online courses, or Moocs, are already
starting to tread on the toes of the traditional degree.
Where once Mooc providers offered a smorgasbord
of courses lasting only a few weeks, taking in every
subject you could think of and a few more you had not,
Moocs are now being bundled into longer modules,
and these are starting to be recognised by universities
and employers as bona fide qualifications. With a
leading Mooc platform now offering an online masters
in computer science and US universities tentatively
accepting Moocs as credit, how long will it be before
you can take a full bachelor’s degree without ever
setting foot on campus?
This is not what the founders of Moocs had in mind
when they first experimented with uploading a few
lectures and some basic course materials, and there
are good reasons why the University of Mooc will not
supplant the bricks-and-mortar version. Yet the rise of
Moocs says fascinating things about the way we perceive
education: how long it should be and when, what it
should teach and how it should be taught. This reflects
today’s reality of varied careers that call for continually
updated skills.
“As we move into the 21st century we have to rethink
whether a once-in-a-lifetime education is the correct
solution,” says Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of Mooc
provider Udacity and one of the world’s most influential
scientists (he is a research professor of computer science
at Stanford University). “The university [model] was
invented when your education would get you your first
and last job. Now we live in a very dynamic society where
people have lots of careers, where technology moves
really fast and whatever you learn expires very quickly.”
In other words, if we are no longer faithful to one
company or even one profession, why should we be
faithful to one type of education at one institution, and
at only one point in our lives?
Moocs come in a wide range of shapes and sizes –
patterns to verify identity. Some are little more than a
series of lectures and slides; others peek into classrooms
and seminars, offer annotated texts and set a string of
tasks or short essays.
Whether dull or gloriously inventive, Moocs
continue to be an educational sensation. Coursera,
one of the largest providers, has more than 7m
users, edX has 2.7m, Udacity 1.6m and Alison, often
billed as the first Mooc provider, about 3m. Once
FutureLearn, the emerging British platform owned
by the Open University, comes out of beta-testing it
could add another few million. Not bad for such a new
phenomenon: while Alison was founded in 2007, most
of the big players were set up as recently as 2012.
Rick Levin, chief executive of Coursera and former
president of Yale University, calls Moocs “an extension
of some of the world’s greatest universities”. He adds:
“Coursera has no intention of becoming a university.
But we are proud to distribute content created by
those universities and [to be an] enabling device
to reach millions of people with work of the world’s
great teachers.”
“The progress [over the past six months] has been
exceptional,” says Anant Agarwal, chief executive of edX,
a non-profit platform founded by Harvard University
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that
now collaborates with 47 institutions around the
world. “We offer 220 subjects in everything from law
to medicine, humanities, arts, music, computer science
and engineering.” Enrolment for edX’s most popular
computer programming course has gone over 300,000.
But who are these millions of Mooc-ers? That
depends on which platform and course you want. Some
are offered by universities; other providers have gone
straight to leading companies such as Google, Microsoft
and AT&T to design the courses.
“It is hard to stereotype the Mooc consumer,” says
Agarwal. “We think 30 per cent go to university or high
school and are taking courses to learn different things
about their subject or to help gain admission to better
PHOTOS: dREAMSTIME; BLOOMBERG

and prices. Many are free, but some providers, such as
Udacity, charge after a trial period, while others sell
certificates proving that you (and not your older brother
or your mum) did all the work, or even record typing
‘As we move into the 21st century we have
to rethink whether a once-in-a-lifetime
education is the correct solution’
20 | f T.co M/U n iver SiT y
universities, while 70 per cent already have a degree or
better.” Coursera has a slightly different set of profiles,
dominated by people who it says “have either never
had access to a university or have finished university
and are looking to upgrade their job skills”. According
to Thrun, meanwhile, the typical Udacity student is a
young professional, “plus some high school students
and some retirees”.
An enormous variety, then, and with a huge age
range, “between eight and 90”, Agarwal adds. But there
is an obvious difference between the evangelistic ➤
2.
 visions that Moocs first generated – Ivy League
professors teaching impoverished teenagers in the
developing world, for free – and the more pragmatic
way the courses are being used. On the one hand, Moocs
were meant to provide a top-class education to anyone
who wanted it. On the other, they are also snapped up
by well-off professionals as a way of enhancing their CVs
and moving to better-paid jobs, or by people who long
since graduated and simply want to learn for the sake of
it, with no thought for certificates or careers. What, then,
should a Mooc be?
The trite answer is: ask again in a year’s time. Like
many technology companies, Mooc providers and
platforms are out there experimenting partly to see
where on earth all of this is going. Nevertheless, it is
already clear Moocs have to adapt if they are not to end
up as another educational fad.
In late 2013, Thrun cut through the mania for Moocs
– including the one he taught himself – by observing
that most were not, in fact, any good. (“Pretty lousy”,
he said, “and I stand by the comment.”) The proof was
in the astronomical drop-out rates: 90 per cent was
typical for a free course, though the rates improve
significantly if a student invests even a small sum for an
identity-verified certificate and has “skin in the game”,
as Agarwal puts it.
Some providers are untroubled. People shop around,
they say, sampling a lecture before going elsewhere.
“Nearly half who complete the first week complete
the course,” says Coursera’s Levin. Nonetheless, Mooc
providers are polishing their wares. For instance, Udacity
provides students with online tutors, which Thrun says
has pushed completion rates to between 60 and 90 per
cent. Coursera is making some courses “on demand”,
rather than requiring a student to stick to timetabled
lectures, tests and coursework, which it says has also
reduced attrition rates. The old method of dumping a
lecture and some notes online is no longer enough.
Second, Moocs will split into distinct types. Some
course lists will remain marvellously esoteric. In
Coursera’s portfolio, for example, courses such as
“Human Trafficking”, “How to Reason and Argue” and
“Unlocking the Manuscripts of Medieval Spain” jostle
with computer and business Moocs. Others will focus
PHOTO: dREAMSTIME
ruthlessly on driving careers. “Spending four years
studying full-time is something you cannot do with a
job and a mortgage,” says Thrun. “If you want to be a
programmer or data scientist, we can get you there in
half a year. It is about making the right investment to get
the skills you need to be employable.”
‘If you want to be a programmer or data
scientist, we can get you there in half a year.
It is about making the right investment’
Employment prospects are increasingly the priority.
Mooc platforms that offer paid-for certificates encourage
students to post them on networking sites such as
LinkedIn, while Coursera is developing its own website
to match top students with employers – for a fee, of
course. At the other end of the chain, the government
of Singapore offers small bonuses to state employees
to take a paid-for Coursera/Johns Hopkins University
series of data science courses. Udacity is even getting
tech companies to design the qualifications they would
want their employees to have under their belts.
If this worries universities, they aren’t showing it –
or, at least, they think “Mooc university” is a long way
off critical mass. Making friends, learning people skills,
doing research in labs and libraries, and diving into the
vast range of clubs and societies are all strong selling
points to life on campus – as an unscientific poll of
recent graduates confirmed.
What is more, Moocs give universities an enormous
pool of extra students to learn from. “Online courses
are a way for us to experiment, to build new teams and
bring in experts on assessment, data and analytics,” says
Joshua Kim, director of digital learning initiatives at the
dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning in
the US. “We hope the sheer numbers will provide a lot of
data as to what works and what doesn’t.”
And some Mooc techniques are already flowing the
other way, such as “flipping the class” – imparting large
amounts of information online before students gather
in the classroom. Lectures, in particular, are simple
to download and “attend” (in a cafe, or in bed) before
broader discussions take place. Even Moocs provided by
other universities or companies are now being used to
enhance traditional courses at relatively little cost.
Surely all it takes is a recognised syllabus and final
exam for the leaner, meaner Mooc degree to become
reality? “The arrival of Moocs is causing all of us in
higher education to up our games,” admits Kim. “We
want our children to have the kind of experience you
can’t get by just sitting in front of a screen – full seminars,
class discussions, learning how to learn. We want them to Flipping the class
Moocs can impart large
be taught by an experienced educator who is working in a amounts of information
hands-on way. What happens at university cannot be just before students
the same as what happens online.” meet in a classroom
f T.co M/U n iver SiT y | 23
 Campus
creativity
As competition between universities intensifies,
the trophy building is a strong brand statement.
But promoting exclusivity can have drawbacks
for cities, writes Edwin Heathcote

Star turn The Jockey Club Innovation

Tower, home to Hong Kong Polytechnic
University’s School of Design, by
Zaha Hadid, completed in 2013
PHOTO: Virgile SimOn BerTrand
a rc h ite c ture

Holding court
The faculty of law at Cambridge,
by Foster and Partners,
completed in 1995
Universities have always used architecture as
marketing. From the massive brick towers and shady
arcades of Bologna to the elegant quads of Oxford, from
the gothic towers of Cornell to the colourful collapsing
forms at massachusetts institute of Technology,
architecture has been used to attract students and
academics, to proclaim the power of knowledge and
the wealth of benefactors and to demonstrate to the
city that these are buildings that mean something.
The first universities were monastic and the lineage
shows in the cloisters and quads that still form our
fundamental idea of how an old college should look. it is
a surprisingly universal idea – the madrasas of the islamic
world, of Baghdad, damascus and the first caliphate were
organised around the same ideas: arched, shady corridors
surrounding a courtyard. it is a cosmic model, a garden
of paradise surrounded by spaces of contemplation.
The religious nature was abandoned in the renaissance,
but the sense of the university as something sacred – in
particular of the library as a nexus of knowledge and a
Borgesian heavenly space – has never been lost.
The cathedral has long been supplanted as a place of
urban pilgrimage by the art gallery and, one could argue,
it is with galleries and cultural buildings that universities
have most in common. in their attempt to establish a
microcosmic city, a place of meaning and transformation
through learning, universities remain one of the few
building types where architects are not only allowed
but encouraged to experiment with extravagance. The
result is that some campuses have themselves become
architectural museums, extraordinary collections of
buildings tracing the vicissitudes of architectural history.
The 38 colleges of Oxford seem to represent every style
from Sir Christopher Wren’s and nicholas Hawksmoor’s
english baroque right up to arne Jacobsen’s obsessive
modernism in which everything from the building to
the cutlery was designed by the danish architect as an
incredible minimal Gesamtkunstwerk.
dixon Jones’s Saïd Business School, with its islamic-
outdo each other not only with the best classrooms and
student halls but also with the best gyms, the best pools,
even wellness centres.
Universities have suddenly become playgrounds for
starchitects in an explosion of shape-making. The big
names are having a ball. Frank gehry, whose sculptural
Stata Center at miT proved a startling backdrop to the
chase for the Boston bombers last year, is building a
huge, characteristically crumpled building (the dr Chau
Chak Wing Building) at the University of Technology in
Sydney, australia. rem Koolhaas built the extravagantly
cantilevered milstein Hall at his alma mater, Cornell
University in the US, while Koolhaas’s former pupil
Hadid designed the truly extraordinary library and
learning Centre at Vienna University of economics and
Business (itself an amazing architectural playground).
The dramatic building leans out at an unsettling angle,
while its interior is a sci-fi landscape of sweeping ramps
and curving walls. Smaller but equally theatrical is
Hadid’s issam Fares institute at the american University
of Beirut. norman Foster too has been in on the act
with some blockbuster buildings. There is the Petronas
University of Technology in malaysia, the faculty of law
at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the broad,
sweeping almost art deco curves of italy’s University of
Turin, among many others.
Foster’s technocratic, elegant architecture, projecting
an image of cool, calm, meticulously engineered
neo-modernism, particularly appeals to business schools.
in the US, the edward P evans Hall at Yale’s School of
management exemplifies the type. it is grand but not
monumental, with a transparent clarity, and it revives
the cloister and courtyard archetype of historic centres of
learning.
more than any other type of university building in
fact it is the business and management schools that
are supercharging their campuses with ambitious
architecture by the big international names. david
Chipperfield’s austerely elegant building for the HeC

PHOTOS: Virgile SimOn BerTrand; dreamSTime; rOSie Hallam;

inflected forms, even refers to the madrasas as well as to School of management in Paris is a magnificent
the historic quads. Swiss architects Herzog & de meuron building designed with a kind of classical permanence.

nigel YOUng/FOSTer + ParTnerS; iWan Baan/Oma; geTTY

are building the university’s striking-looking Blavatnik
School of government, a stack of glass discs, while St
antony’s College even has a gleaming new bridge by Zaha
Hadid.
This explosion of architecture is also a symptom of
the notion that universities now need to sell themselves
and their facilities to the students – and their parents.
in the US this has long been the case, but in the UK,
and increasingly in continental europe, where higher
education was until recently state-sponsored and free, it
is an emerging market, a competition pushing schools to
The sense of the university as something
sacred — the library as a Borgesian
heavenly space — has never been lost
26 | F T.Co m/U n Iver SIT y
david adjaye’s building for the Skolkovo School of
management on the edge of moscow builds on the
russian Constructivist revolutionary avant garde with
little apparent irony. Japanese architect Tadao ando
recently completed the new architecture school at the
University of monterrey in mexico, a monumental
concrete structure with a hole at its heart.
irish firm grafton architects, meanwhile, built the
luigi Bocconi University School of economics in milan, a
hulking but very striking neo-brutalist building on a tight
urban site. another irish practice, O’donnell Tuomey,
recently completed the london School of economics’
Saw Swee Hock Student Centre. This faceted, oddly
angled brick building has made a huge physical and
aesthetic impact on the dense Holborn campus, a marker
for student life and a central landmark for the campus.
it has been shortlisted for this year’s royal institute of
British architects’ Stirling Prize. ➤
 1. 2.

1.
Meeting of styles
The cantilevered milstein Hall at
Cornell University

2.
Bricks and the city
Saw Swee Hock Student Centre at
the London School of economics

3.
Design statement
Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s
Jockey Club Innovation Tower,
by Zaha Hadid

4.
Fractal fun
The Stata Center, by Frank
Gehry at mIT

5.
Transparent clarity
edward P evans Hall at yale School
of management

3.

5.

4.

F T.Co m/U n Iver SIT y | 27

a rc h ite c ture

1.

1. if architecture can act as branding for universities

Constructivism revisited
Skolkovo moscow School of
management, completed in 2010
2.
Modern angles
Arne Jacobsen’s Catherine’s
College, oxford
2.
Universities demand a degree of
attempting to reassert themselves or to update their
image, it is sometimes also called on to create the entire
image – nowhere more visibly than at Qatar’s vast, hot
and dusty education City. This educational centrepiece
of the Qatar Foundation needs architecture not just
to attract staff and students but also to attract the
educational institutions themselves.
Just as abu dhabi has done with its cultural quarter
Saadiyat island, Qatar gives institutions a chance
to reinvent themselves using self-consciously iconic
buildings. arata isozaki’s garish fairytale tree-fronted
national Convention Centre sets the kitschy tone, but
there is also a low-lying library by Koolhaas’s Oma
practice (which is also designing two other buildings on
the site) and a vast health and sports centre.
architecture is being used to make places, to create
campuses and identities, but there is a danger they become
collections of trophy buildings, poorly integrated into their
surroundings and host cities. There is great wealth on
display here and to flash the cash when the surrounding
infrastructure may remain resentful is to tempt the kind
of urban segregation that does cities no good.
Those campuses inserted into existing city centres
often force architects into more complex and more
rewarding architectures – the lSe is just the most
visible recent example. Ultimately, can’t these facilities
be opened up to the cities around them? Universities
demand a degree of exclusivity, but it should not be at
PHOTO: geTTY

the expense of their neighbours. Oxford, Cambridge and

exclusivity but it should not be at the Harvard are wonderful to wander through because they
are (mostly) public. To make real cities takes more than
expense of their neighbours ambitious architecture.

28 | F T.Co m/U n Iver SIT y

 Regional
42
inte r view
hong Kong university
president Peter Mathieson
relations with China

angles
46
c h in a
the infamous gaokao
entrance test epitomises
a failing university system

50
latin a m e ric a
New funding models offer hope of
reversing years of academic decline

54
in d ia
overseas students are flocking
to the country’s booming
private universities
Photo: reuters

f t.co m/u n iver sit y | 33

New world order
The migration of students abroad is
accelerating, while more and more young
people in emerging countries are
entering higher education. These trends and
their implications are explored over the
following pages. By Emma Boyde

W ith so
much focus on the likely impact of
the online learning tsunami, it is easy
to forget that another wave of equal
proportions is already washing over
the world of tertiary education –
internationalisation. More students
are going abroad to study and more
degrees are being offered in countries
that are relative newcomers to the
world of academia.
Part of the new landscape is that
not only are there more programmes,
but an increasing number of them
are being offered in english even in
countries where english is not the
native language (see pages 38-41).
the rise of english as the lingua
franca of academia might be
contributing to the rise in globally
mobile students. Large numbers now
enrol for university-level education
outside their home country. in 2012, the
latest year for which figures are available,
Photo: Zheng huansong/Xinhua/eyevine
4.5m students enrolled abroad, says the
oeCD. this was more than double the
number that left their home country
to study at the start of the millennium.
although europe and north america
remain the top destinations for foreign
students, other regions are growing
Emerging talents faster, says the oeCD.
A child from a slum
area of New Delhi, India,
From a student’s point of view,
learns at a free class there are just so many more university
under a metro overpass places to choose from. Researchers
intro duc tio n
for a British Council paper published
in 2012, which looked at the future of
higher education, noted that the main
drivers of higher education demand
were demographics and economics.
in other words, if you are looking
for growth in higher education, it
might be wise to look at developing
nations. the researchers pointed to
a correlation between the wealth of a
nation (in per capita gross domestic
product at purchasing power parity)
and tertiary enrolment.
People power also counts – as we
look into the future, it is clear that
developing nations are likely to be the
home of a bigger slice of the world’s
student-age population. the British
Council researchers estimated that
by 2020, india, China, the us and
indonesia would account for more than
half of all 18-22-year-olds globally and
predicted that many emerging nations
were likely to see growing numbers of
citizens in this age bracket.
however, this increase in global
provision is not coming without
problems, whether it is trying to
reform a hated college admissions
system, such as in China (see pages
46-49) or struggling to gain better
recognition in international rankings
(see pages 50-53). one thing is for
sure, though: the global centre of
gravity in academia has begun to move.
f t.co m/u N Iver sIt y | 35
o p in io n
Access all areas
The modern research university
came to life as a deliberate act of
disruption. In Massachusetts Institute
of Technology’s case, on the eve of the
US civil war, our founder, William
Barton Rogers, called forth a scientific
university that would be grounded
in practice and insist on hands-on
learning. It would not be an ivory
tower but a laboratory for brilliant
minds geared to tackling real-world
problems.
Variations of that story played out
around the world, and the radical
new model worked. Contributions
from universities have improved lives
(genomics), created new industries
(computing) and revealed mysteries of
the universe itself (particle physics).
As different as they are from each
other, all these innovations were
made possible by that pedagogical
leap of faith – replacing an emphasis
on rote memorisation with an
emphasis on hands-on learning
and experimentation – which in
turn shaped the modern research
university, whose output fuels the
modern economy.
Today, research universities face a
new kind of disruption unlocked by a
force they themselves have pioneered:
technology. The internet and its
burgeoning tools may unleash the
greatest change to how we learn – and
who gets to learn – since the arrival
of the printing press. We can use this
technology to transform our pedagogy,
extend our impact on the world and
lower barriers to access.
This will neither happen overnight
nor without intense debate. There is,
after all, an inherent tension: how
do we preserve what is best about
universities while pushing ourselves
to change?
The opportunity begins with the
transformation of pedagogy, thanks
to the power of digital technologies to
radically lower the cost of transmitting
information. Since the invention of
the internet, those technologies have
36 | f t.co m/u n iver sit y
become effective not only for sharing
information, such as lecture notes, but
for connecting teachers with students
and students with each other, vastly
expanding access to knowledge and
opportunity.
In 2011, taking advantage of
that progress, MIT launched MITx,
a learning platform that offers
interactive online versions of MIT
We can use technology to
extend our impact on the world
and lower barriers to access
courses free of charge. With its
“open-source” design, the teaching
technology itself is also available
free for institutions and coders
everywhere to use – and improve.
MITx inspired MIT to join with
Harvard University to build edX,
an online learning portal that offers
online courses from universities
around the world.
That same technology brings this
unexpected advantage: to create
more opportunity on campus for
hands-on learning. If students can
use digital technology to view lectures
in their own time and at their own
pace, teaching time can be much
more interactive and problem-based.
digital technology also opens doors
to flexibility: can we make our classes
more modular, and can we offer
students shorter (or longer) paths
towards graduation?
Tomorrow’s research university
will have the campus as the centre
of a much-widened sphere. Right
now, some of the most selective
universities have acceptance
rates in the single digits. This is a
heartbreaking statistic: many of those
we do not admit are fully qualified.
digital technology holds the power
to increase radically the number of
students who can access our teaching.
It forces us to ask: can’t there be
other kinds of learners besides the
small number of students we can
teach on campus? Can’t there be some
meaningful credentials apart from the
traditional university degree?
The possibilities we see at MIT
are stunning. Today, 1m people
around the world are taking MITx
courses. Online-learning sceptics
have correctly noted that only
a fraction of them complete the
courses they begin. (Though it is
worth noting that even those “tiny
fractions” are many multiples of
the total students we can teach in
person!) But this itself represents a
trend: a hunger for subjects offered
in something other than an “all or
nothing” fashion. As we learn more
about how people wish to learn, we
will develop firmer answers to the
question, “How many kinds of MIT
students should there be?”
The financial implications of that
question may be significant for all
of us in higher education. Research
universities make the future possible
but are inherently expensive to run.
If we can create value propositions
for millions of people around the
world who would benefit from online
credentials, we can better support
campuses that welcome not only full-
time students, but online learners who
visit us for brief periods.
What’s more, we can use digital
technology not merely to teach
more people around the world but
also to learn from them as well.
The university of the future will
The wisdom of crowds harness the knowledge of the global
mit offers academic community of learners who have PHOTO: Ed dELOng, dAVId KARL/MIT; dOMInICK REUTER
excellence to students different perspectives and leverage
across the world
their expertise in pursuing the world’s
online, to foster research.
right: image
hardest problems. At universities
of microbes from a everywhere we should dare to be as
study by the school of bold as our founders.
engineering
Rafael Reif, president of MIT,
published a report in August on the
future of education at that university
The university of the future
will harness the knowledge of a
global community of learners
Planet
English
From mathematics in Maastricht to sociology
in Stockholm, universities around the
world are teaching more and more
in English. Michael Skapinker explores the
rise of academia’s new lingua franca
PHOTO: GETTY
la n gua g e
When Darja Stoeva was finishing high school
in Macedonia, she had two ambitions: to study
mathematics and to do it in English. She looked around.
The UK would have been the obvious destination, but
rising tuition fees meant she could not afford a British
university degree.
She extended her search to continental Europe,
where she found the combination of maths and English,
or rather maths in English, she was looking for – in
the Netherlands. She has just begun her final year at
Maastricht University’s Science Programme.
All her courses have been in English. And as
she hasn’t met any other Macedonian students at
Maastricht, all her social interactions have been in
English too. Has she learnt any Dutch? “Not really. Just
International angle ‘thank you’,” she says.
Kyung Hee University in Stoeva, and Maastricht, are not alone. Starting
Seoul, South Korea, which
primarily in the Netherlands and the Nordic countries,
conducts a number of
courses in English
university courses in English have spread around the
globe. The Bologna Process, launched in 1999, was
intended to allow mobility and exchange between
European universities – for example, by creating a
common structure of bachelor’s and master’s degrees
and ensuring that students could get credit for time
spent studying outside their own country.
This drive to create an open market in European
higher education has encouraged more and more
universities to offer at least some of their degrees in
English. Of 17 bachelor’s programmes at Maastricht,
eight are only in English and three in either English
or Dutch. At master’s level, Maastricht offers 55
programmes in English and only eight exclusively
in Dutch. Many other European universities offer
programmes in English, but the phenomenon extends
far beyond Europe: there are universities in Japan and
China, for example, offering courses in English.
Why has it happened? English has become the
language of international communication. It is the
language people need to write in if they want their
papers published in the world’s most prestigious
‘The students are not just translating;
they are bringing a sense
of what values are important’
40 | f t.co m/U n ivEr Sit y
journals. At international academic conferences, a
Korean professor who wants to talk to a Colombian
counterpart will almost certainly do it in English.
It has not always been this way. Two generations ago,
academics might just as easily have addressed each other
in German or French. As Jim Coleman, a professor at
the UK’s Open University pointed out in a 2006 paper, a
century ago, English, French and German enjoyed near
parity in global academic literature.
The destruction of Germany’s universities by the
Nazis in the 1930s, and the exiling of Jewish professors
and political opponents, primarily to English-language
institutions in the US and UK, badly eroded German’s
long and distinguished academic position. The economic
supremacy of the US after the second world war
cemented the dominance of English over French.
As Prof Coleman points out, it is not the first time
that Europe’s universities have had a common language.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the
common language was Latin. But back then, he says,
“higher education was the reserve of a small elite”. Today,
higher education “belongs to a globalised market”. And
that market speaks English. The world has never had a
world language. It does now.
It is not just university academics, eager to see their
work published in the most respected journals, who
insist on English. Students, like Stoeva, do too. They
are prepared to move to another country to study, and
universities worldwide that are competing to attract
them have to offer courses in the language that most
of them have learnt. “The student has become the
customer. Universities are no longer institutions but
brands,” says Prof Coleman.
But what is it like to study in a language that is not
your native tongue? And what is it like to teach in it?
Do non-native English-speakers learn as much when
they are studying in English? And do their teachers
teach as effectively?
In a 2011 survey of the research, John Airey of
Uppsala University and Linnaeus University in Sweden
said some studies had shown that non-English-speaking
students reading in English acquired only a surface
understanding of the text. However, another study
he cited found that Swedish students read an English
biology textbook as well as their British counterparts –
they just needed more time.
Studies into listening to lectures in English found
that non-English-speaking students had trouble taking
notes. They also asked fewer questions in classes.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG; ALAN KNOx
Some lecturers in Sweden said that, when teaching in
English, they improvised less and stuck more closely
to their script.
Teun Dekker, who teaches political philosophy
at Maastricht, accepts that teaching and learning in
another language has its problems. It is not just about
speaking in and listening to another language; it is about
taking on the baggage that this language carries.
“It is challenging, because language shapes
your framework. Language brings with it a host
of assumptions and ways of looking at the world.
That’s very difficult. The students are not just
translating; they are bringing a sense of what values
are important,” he says.
But that doesn’t mean native English speakers –
students from the US, Australia, the UK or the English-
speaking Caribbean – have a natural advantage when
they arrive at university. “Just because one is a native
speaker of English doesn’t mean one is a native speaker
of academic English,” Prof Dekker says. A German
student, for example, who learnt to read academic texts
at school might have an advantage over a native English-
speaking student who did not.
Prof Dekker says he recognises some of the problems
mentioned in the research – that non-native speakers
might hesitate to ask questions or participate in
discussions and that it can be difficult for them to take
notes during lectures. But he insists there are ways of
dealing with this. If you put them in small groups for
tutorials, students who do not have English as their first
language can be encouraged to speak up. “Within three
months, in a system like that, students improve very
quickly,” he says. “They learn. It’s wonderful to see the
transformation.”
Lectures, he concedes, are more difficult for non-
native speaker students to understand. But technology
offers a way around that. Many students at Maastricht
ask for permission to record lectures on their phones,
which is granted. Prof Dekker says his faculty does not
put lectures online for fear that it would stop students
coming to them, but says that some other parts of the
university do.
Stoeva says that matches her experience. Her English
was good when she arrived at university. She had studied
it at primary and secondary school and had had private
English classes from the age of seven. But participating
in class discussions at Maastricht was hard in the
beginning. “I needed some time at first because I was
shy,” she says. But, she adds, “I learnt to get into the
zone, to be able to communicate freely”.
As to what she will do when she graduates, Stoeva
says: “I still don’t know. I will continue with something
in maths or maybe programming.” Back home in Skopje
or somewhere else? “I might go to Spain,” she says.
She has enjoyed her time in the Netherlands, but the
weather can be grey. “I’d like to live in a city where it’s
warm.” And the language? “I’d have to learn Spanish.”
 Building
bridges

Peter Mathieson has had a turbulent start as

University of Hong Kong president, amid tensions
between the territory and Beijing. But he is
adamant the university must strengthen ties with
the mainland, he tells Andreas Paleit
Photograph by Philipp Engelhorn
inte r view
P
eter Mathieson appears to be a man at ease. Wearing
a grey suit and one of his “12 or so” University of Hong
Kong (HKU) ties, the 55-year-old Englishman sits back
in his 10th-floor office and reflects on his new role. “I’m
happy about the way it’s gone – in terms of the way I
feel, in terms of the way I’ve been received, in terms of
my personal life,” he says four months into his tenure as
HKU’s vice-chancellor and president.
While not dodging the fact that his appointment
a year ago was greeted with a fierce backlash among
students, alumni and staff, he plays the controversy
down as though it were simply another occupational
hazard. So how has he responded to the disapproval that
included accusations from senior colleagues of being
“ignorant and incapable” and of having “a complete lack
of understanding” of China and Hong Kong?
“I’ve learned a hell of a lot in the last six months,”
says Prof Mathieson, who was previously dean of the
Cutting edge
Research into Sars at
faculty of medicine and dentistry at the University of
HKU’s department Bristol in the UK. “The politics here is complicated and
of microbiology rapidly changing, so you’ve got to run to keep up. But I’m
enjoying it and so far it seems to be going OK.”
The political situation is certainly complex – and
now Prof Mathieson is “enmeshed” in it. Hong Kong is
in the grip of a fierce dispute between Beijing loyalists
and democracy activists. One group of democrats,
founded by a fellow HKU professor and with strong
student representation, is squaring up to the communist
motherland with promises of civil disobedience if reforms
do not live up to activists’ hopes. Hailing from Hong
Kong’s former colonial power – which never gave local
people the vote – Prof Mathieson is in a sensitive position.
‘As an English-speaking university in
China, we’re fantastically placed to
exploit the opportunities in the mainland’
44 | f t.co m/U n iveR Sit y
He deftly steers through the topic of the territory’s
universal suffrage, stating his support for democratic
principles while refusing to align himself with the
activists, whose campaigns Beijing has labelled “illegal”,
and warning that “getting to the goal is one thing,
but the method of getting there can have unintended
consequences; people have to be very careful about that”.
Beyond politics, Prof Mathieson finds himself head
of an institution in an enviable position. Founded in
1911, HKU is arguably the most venerable university
in the Chinese territory, with a history and brand that
Mathieson admits “must irritate the hell out of younger
universities”. It is also healthily funded, he says – when
colleagues complain of being under-resourced, he feels
“like saying to them, ‘you should try working in the UK’ –
because actually the contrast is really striking”.
Perhaps HKU’s most striking advantage, however,
is its role as an English-speaking university in greater
China – a unique bridge between the rising Asian giant
and the established western academic order. This has
helped generate fierce competition for entry; with almost
50,000 applicants for about 3,400 spaces for 2013-14,
“we get the best students, so we’re in a great position: we
are attractive to students and staff ”, says Prof Mathieson.
(Government policy is that 80 per cent of undergraduate
places must go to Hong Kong “locals”.)
But the university’s biggest challenge, he says, is to
avoid resting on its laurels. In recent years HKU has
successfully manoeuvred the potentially wrenching
change from a three-year to a four-year curriculum, built
a new state-of the art campus housing the faculties of
arts, law and social science, and celebrated its centenary.
Prof Mathieson says the biggest danger now “is
to avoid any kind of loss of momentum, to avoid any
complacency based on 100 years of distinguished
heritage and to seize the opportunities which face us now
– of which mainland China is clearly the major one”.
At a time when Beijing is extending its political
influence over its territory, Prof Mathieson swiftly
quashes the notion that there is a conflict between
maintaining HKU’s heritage as an English-speaking
university and embracing the future as Hong Kong
becomes ever more assimilated into its mainland parent.
“Hong Kong is part of China now and in 33 years will
be even more a part of China, so that has to be the future.
But I don’t think that’s at the expense of [HKU] being a
global university – the two are inextricably linked. Every
university in the UK, and probably in North America and
Australasia as well, wants links with mainland China.
“As an English-speaking university in China, with our
heritage, 100-year history and links with distinguished
universities around the world, we’re fantastically placed
to exploit the opportunities in the mainland and I don’t
PHOTOS: AFP/GETTY; EPA
want to be deflected by politics from achieving that.”
However, just as Prof Mathieson is aware HKU is
in a privileged position, he realises it will require canny
handling to maintain its status. He says HKU cannot
simply ride on China’s coat tails for ever. “There’s going
to come a time when they no longer need Hong Kong
or HKU as a window to the rest of the world. I don’t
know how long that period will be – probably 10 or 20
years. The opportunity for us is now and if we don’t
seize it, we’ll miss it.”
And HKU’s position in global league tables is
under threat. It slipped two places to 28th in the QS
World University Rankings 2014/15, although its
nearest rival, the Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, suffered an even greater decline, dropping
six places to 40th. Among Asia-Pacific universities,
HKU – once regarded as the region’s premier institution
– was in second place but remained the number one
in greater China.
Prof Mathieson brushes aside the notion that such
rankings should dictate university policy. “We have
to aspire to excellence in everything we do,” he says.
“We have to pursue the initiatives we think are in the
best interests of the university and if we do everything
successfully the league tables will follow, and if the league
tables don’t follow then they’re not judging the criteria
we want to be judged by.”
Competitors have also stolen a march on HKU in their
links to business. Prof Mathieson admits initial surprise
at the slowness with which the university seems to have
built alliances with the corporate world, suggesting there
should be a requirement “that we contribute more to
society, we engage more with industry, we have more
spin-out from our research”.
But with the territory’s days as an industrial hub
long behind it, if HKU is to build relationships with
industry, “we’re going to have to look outside Hong Kong,
including the mainland”. To that end, it has embarked on
a series of ventures with mainland organisations. There
is a business school partnership with Fudan University in
Shanghai, where students can gain an HKU international
MBA, and HKU describes Zhejiang Institute of Research Heads on the block
and Innovation in eastern China as “an extension into Pro-democracy activists have
their heads shaved in protest
the Chinese mainland of the research conducted by the
at the Beijing government
University of Hong Kong”. last month
In Shenzhen, the nearest mainland city to Hong Kong,
HKU has been building a hospital. The project became
mired in controversy this summer when it emerged
there was discord between HKU and the Shenzhen
government over their respective funding commitments.
Media reports suggested with the hospital running at
only a quarter of its capacity, HKU had already spent
HK$200m ($26m) and stood to lose many hundreds of
millions more over the next decade.
Prof Mathieson denies this, saying his “current
understanding” is that the money will not be lost – but
he suggests the project was set up without the crucial
goal to “augment our teaching and create new research
opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise exist”. While
pulling the plug on the project “has to be an option”, he
still sees “enough opportunity” to “remain engaged”.
The need for such partnerships, Prof Mathieson
says, “is another reason why we should overcome the
practical and political issues concerning the relationship
with the mainland, because this is another area where
we need to develop”.
As he sets out his plans to navigate HKU through the
tricky waters ahead, Prof Mathieson hopes his critics will
judge him on his “actions and on the outcomes”.
“Clearly, as soon as I do something stupid or make
a big mistake, these people will probably come back,
but I consider my job quite simple. I’ve got to do
what’s best for HKU and not be deflected by politics,
or finance, or individuals. Basically I’ve just got to keep
my eye on the ball.”
f t.co m/U n iveR Sit y | 45
PHOTO: ReuTeRs
 Lost
in
transition

China’s university system faces criticism for being

unfit for a modern economy. Reforms aimed
at updating the creativity-sapping gaokao entrance
test are failing and students increasingly are
opting to study overseas, writes Patti Waldmeir

Regimented living
Parents of students newly arrived at
university in Wuhan sleep on the floor of a
gymnasium on the campus as they help their
children settle into university life
 E
c h in a
very year at this time, thousands of
parents sleep on the floor of university gymnasiums
throughout China, eager to help their precious only child
secure what for many is the family’s chief asset: a degree
from a Chinese university.
But in recent years that certificate has lost its lustre:
hundreds of thousands of Chinese families have voted
with their tuition dollars to avoid the domestic university
system and send their child overseas to study. The flight
from Chinese universities has accelerated to the point
where nearly one in three international students in the
us is now Chinese (a total of 287,000). And education
experts back home say the deficiencies of the local
university system – from excessive bureaucracy to poor-
quality teaching, from corruption to lack of academic
freedom – are largely to blame.
The difficulty in navigating these choices was
highlighted in early september when three of China’s
leading universities responded to a call from President
Xi Jinping to intensify “ideological education” in China.
The Chinese Communist party committee of Fudan
university, one of the mainland’s most prestigious,
published a commentary in the official press saying: “It
is an extremely important political mission of the party
committees at universities to guide middle-aged and
young teachers who lived overseas for many years – and
are tempted to compare the developmental levels overseas
with ours, who have only an obscure knowledge of the
social system, development path and values of our country
– to overcome their shortages and grow in a healthy way.”
For centuries, when much of the world was sunk
in the dark ages, China boasted one of the world’s
most advanced education systems. From the seventh
century until the early 20th, its renowned “imperial
examinations” controlled entrance to the ranks of the
‘The problem is… universities in China
are run by the government. They are overly
bureaucratic and have no autonomy’
48 | f t.co m/u n iver sit y
1.
Number of gaokao candidates
Million
10
8
6
4
Number who
2 passed the
gaokao
0
1977 80 85 90 95 2000 05 10 12
emperor’s civil service; scholars spent years preparing
for them. But Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution,
which targeted universities along with other symbols
of privilege, hobbled higher education in China for
a decade. By the time universities resumed normal
admissions in the late 1970s, only about a quarter of
a million students were enrolled for university study
each year – out of a total mainland population of nearly
1bn. since then, university admissions have exploded:
by 2012, the latest year for which figures are available,
China was turning out nearly 7m graduates a year, or
three-quarters of those who sat the college entrance
exam, known as the gaokao, compared with fewer than 5
per cent of those who sat the exam in 1977. The goal is to
educate 40 per cent of those of university age by 2020.
According to the ministry of education, 34.5 per cent of
that age group were in higher education in 2013.
But numbers are not everything – local education
experts criticise the domestic university system for
failing to turn out the kind of creative thinkers on
which the increasingly innovative society depends for
future growth. “The kids who have the best memory
and ability to conform to the system succeed, but
their number one quality is an ability to take orders
and be micromanaged,” says Jiang Xueqin, education
consultant. “That kind of student is easy to manage at
junior levels, but at senior levels they have never learned

the things that allow them to be good managers,” he
says, echoing complaints often heard from multinational
employers in China.
Beijing is aware of the problem and has adopted a
decade-long plan to reform the university system – and
the much-hated gaokao. But at almost the mid point
of the plan period, which covers the years 2010-20, not
much has been achieved, education experts say. Parents
and children, increasingly exposed to overseas education
systems through travel, are less and less willing to submit
to the rigours of the current system, which relies on
years of rote learning and memorisation to pass an exam
whose relevance is increasingly coming into question.
The number of students taking the gaokao has
declined from a high of 10.1m in 2007 to 9.4m last year,
partly because it requires at least a year of near round-
the-clock study, sometimes with the support of a parent
who must give up their job to ensure the test taker
can devote every waking moment to hitting the books.
Only those earning the best scores can gain entrance
to China’s top universities; the rest are left in mediocre
provincial institutions or studying subjects not of their
choice. “The problem with Chinese higher education is
that universities in China are run by the government.
They are overly bureaucratic and have no autonomy,”
says Xiong Bingqi, vice-president of the 21st Century
education Research Institute in Beijing. “You end up
with 1,000 universities that are all alike – and they focus
too much on scale and not enough on quality,” he says.
The reform plan calls for administrative power to
be devolved from central government level – heads of
31 top Chinese universities have a civil service rank
equivalent to deputy minister in the current system – to
local government and then to the university itself. schools
would also be given more autonomy in choosing students,
and students in choosing schools, and there would be a
relaxation of the ultra-rigid gaokao. some autonomy is
built into the current system: bonus points are awarded
to those participating in some sports and international
competitions, to minorities and even sometimes to rural
females (to help redress a gender imbalance in rural
society). extra “morality points” are also available.
But giving universities more power over the
PHOTOs: AFP/geTTY; ReuTeRs
admissions process can lead to problems. Late last year,
the head of admissions for China’s prestigious Renmin
university was detained for selling university seats.
Last month the ministry of education tightened up
the criteria for bonus points, reducing the number of
sports for which extra points are awarded from 70 to 17.
Frustration with the system led in 2007 to the
establishment of a revolutionary new university, the
south university of science and Technology in shenzhen,
2. 3.
1.
In the zone
students wearing t-shirts with
the slogan “fear nothing” prepare
to sit the gaokao
2.
Hopes and fears
family members wait outside
a school as students sit
the exam inside
3. and 4.
Undercover tricks
equipment used by students to
cheat, and confiscated by the
authorities
4.
which initially tried admitting students without requiring
them to take the gaokao. But within a few years it had
capitulated to pressure from central government, using
gaokao scores as the main criterion for choosing students.
The reformist head of the university was also replaced by
a government appointee. “The experiment at the south
university of science and Technology has failed,” says
Xiong of the 21st Century education Research Institute.
“Their ideals were inevitably consumed by reality.” Overall,
little of the ambitious national reform plan has been
implemented. “university heads are still appointed by
government and have administrative ranks, and there is
still no clear path agreed to reform the gaokao,” says Xiong.
“some Chinese people were at first very optimistic
about the education reforms. But now the reality that
the reforms are hard to pursue has disappointed them,”
he says. “Therefore, more and more choose to send their
kids to study abroad.”
so these days, Chinese parents are faced with the
choice of forcing their child to endure the ordeal of
the gaokao to grab one of the few seats at a top local
university or saving and sacrificing even more to
send their only child overseas to study. And no one is
predicting that students will stop fleeing the Chinese
educational system anytime soon.
Additional reporting by Zhang Yan
f t.co m/u n iver sit y | 49
Financial
formulas
A lack of investment has pushed Latin America’s PHOTO: AnA CArOlinA FernAndes/nYT/redux/eYevine

universities down the international rankings

and created a vicious circle of academic decline.
But new funding models are cause for optimism,
writes Samantha Pearson

Thinking time Students at the National

Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics,
in Rio de Janeiro, where researcher
Artur Avila has earned a distinction
 latin a m e ric a
Rio de Janeiro, long known for its beaches and
bikinis, has a new claim to fame: dynamical systems
theory. in August, Artur Avila, a researcher from rio’s
national institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics,
won the Fields Medal, one of the highest distinctions for
contributions to mathematics.
Often seen in shorts and flip-flops, the muscular
35-year-old looks more like one of rio’s surfers than
the man who is revolutionising dynamical systems, the
branch of mathematics that explores systems that evolve
over time according to a particular set of rules. in an
interview with Quanta Magazine, the maths wunderkind
explained his unlikely ascent into the academic elite
1.
from a middle class family in rio. He was expelled from
school and still likes to sleep well into the afternoon. “i
1.
Dynamical dynamo would get fired pretty fast from most jobs,” he said. His
Prize-winning Brazilian story is perhaps even more remarkable because of his
mathematician Artur Avila nationality. As a Brazilian, he is the first latin American
to win the Fields Medal in its near 80-year history.
2.
Public education
latin America is one of the fastest-developing regions
Rio de Janeiro State in the world and is home to some of the world’s top
University in Brazil companies, artistic and sporting talents, and wealthiest
individuals. The two richest bankers on the planet, luis
Carlos sarmiento and Joseph safra, are from Colombia
and Brazil respectively.
There is, however, still a dearth of academic talent
in the region, not just in mathematics but across most
disciplines. There is not one university from latin
America in the top 100 institutions in the 2013-14 Times
Higher education (THe) World university rankings,
the Qs World university rankings 2014/15 or China’s
Academic ranking of World universities. The university
of são Paulo, considered the best in the region by THe,
is ranked only in the top 250, behind universities from
other emerging markets such as China, south Africa,
Turkey, Taiwan and russia.
some dispute the methodology of the rankings,
criticising the lists’ focus on research activities and their
failure to recognise the idiosyncrasies of the region.
However, latin American academics are the first to
admit the rankings also reflect the poor state not only of
higher education but of education as whole in the region.
Furthermore, latin America’s poor showing poses a
huge challenge for the region’s future, they say. Countries
such as Brazil desperately need to increase productivity
to keep growing and this will only be possible with
greater innovation and a better-educated workforce.
For roberto rigobon, the venezuelan-born professor
of management and applied economics at MiT sloan
school of Management in the us, the reason why latin
American universities have fallen behind is simple: a
lack of investment.
‘[Federal] resources come stamped with their
final destination, so the university has
little freedom to decide how to invest funds’
52 | f t.co M/U N IveR SIt y
“latin America actually has an incredible history of
education,” he says, pointing to Argentina’s success in
tackling illiteracy as early as the 19th century. Continued
investment at the beginning of the 20th century helped
establish centres of excellence in the region, particularly
in science and applied science, he adds. However,
over the past few decades, spending on education
has not kept pace with population growth. “We have
underinvested tremendously in universities and the
quality has stagnated,” Prof rigobon says.
low salaries for academics also force many to opt for
consultancy work rather than research, damaging their
university’s position in the rankings. “it’s very hard to be
a pure academic in latin America, especially in public
universities,” he adds.
under the THe’s methodology, teaching is only
worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking, while research
activities (both the research itself and the extent to
which that research is cited in other publications) is
worth 60 per cent of the final score.
“One important reason for the scarcity of successful
universities in our region is that latin America and
the Caribbean account for less than 3 per cent of
global investment in research and development, while
the us and europe account for 34 and 25 per cent
respectively,” says Marco Antonio Zago, dean of the
university of são Paulo.
in countries such as Brazil, public universities face
additional challenges depending on whether their
funding comes from the federal or the state government.
Jaime Arturo ramírez, dean of the Federal university
of Minas Gerais, says one of the university’s biggest
challenges is its dependence on funding from the federal
government in Brasília, which follows rigid guidelines
and focuses on teaching rather than research.
“The resources come stamped with their final
destination, so the university has little freedom to decide
how to invest these funds,” says Prof ramírez.
Meanwhile, the university of são Paulo highlights its
reliance on state funding as a reason for its success. “Our
success is partly due to stable and consistent funding by
the são Paulo state government, including significant
resources for research,” says Prof Zago.
some public universities manage to get around the
limitations of federal funding by forming partnerships
with the private sector. Coppead, the Graduate school
of Business of the Federal university of rio de Janeiro,
is one of the most innovative in this respect. About half
of its total funding comes from private sector companies
PHOTO: AlFredO BrAnT; GeTTY
such as carmaker Fiat and l’Oréal, the cosmetics
company, which finances research at the university into
consumer behaviour. Aside from financing ongoing
studies, some companies receive executive training in
return for financial support, while others simply donate
to guarantee the quality of their future employees, says
vicente Ferreira, dean of Coppead.
The extra cash and freedom to invest has turned
Coppead into one of the world’s top 100 business schools
(it is 79th in the Financial Times Global MBA ranking).
However, Coppead’s funding model is only largely viable
for economics- or business-based courses. rio’s Federal
university as a whole does not even feature among the
top 400 universities in the THe ranking.
Others have turned to the not-for-profit model to get
ahead. insper, one of Brazil’s other top business schools,
based in são Paulo, is an independent institution that
depends on donations and student fees rather than
government support. “The key is to create a virtuous
circle,” says Claudio Haddad, insper’s president and
founder. “We have to attract a good faculty, which then
attracts good students, who in turn attract other good
students and a good faculty and so on.” The school
will soon begin offering engineering courses as well as
business, economics and law.
For-profit institutions have also revolutionised the
market, providing reasonably good-quality courses at a
relatively low cost for students. last year, Brazil’s biggest
and second-biggest players in the market, Kroton and
Anhanguera educacional Participações respectively,
agreed to merge to form the world’s largest for-profit
education company.
in Chile, university funding is also undergoing a
period of deep change. Following widespread student
riots over the past few years, President Michelle Bachelet
has proposed a series of reforms to overhaul the
country’s education system, which is often considered
expensive and of poor quality. One of her boldest
promises is to make university education free. However,
she has struggled to push the reforms through Congress
and will likely only tackle the question of university
funding later this year once reforms to school funding
have been passed.
Meanwhile, other countries such as Mexico have
focused on expanding their student loan programmes to
widen access to higher education.
Aside from adopting innovative new funding models, 2.
latin America’s higher education institutions are
rapidly becoming more international, giving themselves
a greater chance of being recognised by the english
language-focused rankings. ‘We have to attract a good faculty,
To this end, many latin American governments
have created specific programmes to encourage the
which attracts good students, who in turn attract
international exchange of students and researchers. other good students and a good faculty’
under Brazil’s science Without Borders programme,
the country is sending 100,000 science, engineering
and maths students to study abroad. Chile has a universities are likely to continue to climb up
similar programme in place and Mexico recently the international rankings, academics say. The
proposed the Proyecta 100,000 programme to increase achievements of researchers such as Artur Avila are
the number of Mexican students studying in the us to also vital, they say, and encourage latin America’s
100,000 by 2018. younger generations to explore their raw talents and
Colombia’s universities have made a particular aspire to academic success. in the field of economics,
effort to send their students abroad. The university at least, latin Americans already have the upper
of the Andes, for example, has partnerships with the hand when it comes to analysing periods of economic
world’s top universities, such as Harvard in the us, turmoil and crafting response measures, says MiT
while national funding bodies such as Colfuturo help sloan’s Prof rigobon.
Colombian students study abroad. “As a region, we have suffered every conceivable
With further advances and greater improvements economic crisis,” he says. “in many cases, we invented
in the sector’s funding structures, the region’s the crisis.”

f t.co M/U N IveR SIt y | 53

PHOTO: afP/GETTY
 Thinking
globally

As India’s elite public universities struggle

to meet demand, the most vigorous growth in the
country’s higher education sector is coming
from the many private universities that are courting
students from overseas, writes Amy Kazmin

International outlook Students at Lovely

Professional University in Punjab listen to
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai speak after
receiving an honorary degree in 2013
in d ia
I
t was in his native Zambia nearly four years ago that
Gabriel Katatula, then working for the Zambian
state electricity company, stumbled on a newspaper
advertisement for Lovely Professional University, a
private college in India’s northern state of Punjab.
Though he had completed a three-year diploma in
engineering at home, Katatula knew a fully fledged
bachelor’s degree would bring greater opportunities,
and was considering overseas study, including in
Malaysia. While he was not familiar with LPU, he
found the prospect of an Indian education enticing.
“Zambia always has respect for India,” Katatula says.
“We had Indian lecturers in Zambian universities, and
if you look at the engineering we are doing, we’ve been
using Indian textbooks. We have seen their commitment
to work and their field.”
an LPU agent in Zambia helped Katatula engage in
discussions with the university, which said it would treat
his Zambian diploma as the equivalent of the first year
of its four-year degree in electrical engineering, allowing
him to complete the four-year course in three years.
Today, Katatula is in the final year of an electrical
engineering programme at LPU. He is one of more
than 2,000 international students, from 26 countries,
enrolled on undergraduate and graduate courses at the
sprawling 250ha campus near the industrial town of
Home from home
More than 2,000 international
Jalandhar, about 400km north of New Delhi.
students from 26 countries aman Mittal, the director of LPU’s international
are registered at Lovely office, which provides support to foreign students,
Professional University says the university, which has about 30,000 students,
including 18,000 in residence, has been making a
determined effort since 2010 to woo students from
abroad as part of its effort to enrich its campus
environment.
The university has participated in educational
fairs, advertised in newspapers and set up a system
of agents to spread the word, especially in africa,
about the opportunities it offers. “We always wanted
to create diversity in the campus nationally, as well as
internationally,” Mittal says. “This diversity is going to
‘The discussions in the classroom have
gone to a very different level, with people
adding a global perspective’
56 | f t.co M/U n iver Sit y
bring a different educational culture to the university.
The discussions in the classroom have gone to a very
different level, with people adding a global perspective.”
LPU is one of a clutch of Indian private universities
that are aggressively recruiting international students –
especially in technical and professional education – and
slowly trying to put the giant asian economy on the
global higher education map.
Until now, India – where thinking about higher
education has been dominated by a few elite public
institutions – has been far more preoccupied with
overcoming its acute shortage of capacity to provide
quality education for Indian youth than with attracting
additional international students to its shores.
Indian students face famously fierce competition
for a coveted place at one of the state institutions
offering affordable international-standard education,
while tens of thousands of young Indians head overseas
each year in search of educational opportunities they
cannot find at home.
“The government view is, ‘in principle, we want more
foreign students’, but in practice it really hasn’t been a
priority up until now,” says Devesh Kapur, director of
the University of Pennsylvania’s Centre for the advanced
Study of India. “There is such a huge demand within
India for quality institutions that the priority has been
expansion for the domestic market.”
But India’s higher education system has expanded
dramatically in recent years, fuelled by thousands of new
private institutions offering technical and professional
education. India had more than 35,500 colleges in 2011,
up from around 12,800 a decade earlier.
While many Indian colleges are struggling with
a dearth of qualified faculty and churn out barely
employable graduates, India does have a number of
large well-established private institutions, such as
Manipal, in the state of Karnataka, and Symbiosis, in
of Maharashtra state, that have emerged as credible
providers of quality education.
It is these institutions that are now actively wooing
foreign students, as per government rules that permit
up to 15 per cent of a private university’s places to go
to overseas candidates. “The fees from the foreign
students help subsidise the cost for the Indian
students,” says a spokesperson for Manipal University,
which has about 2,000 foreign students, many of them
of ethnic Indian origin, from Malaysia, the Gulf and
North america.
Of the 28m students enrolled in some form of
higher education in India in 2011-12, some 31,630 were
foreigners – just a fraction of the roughly 300,000
enrolled in China but a significant jump from the 27,000
enrolled the previous year.
Many foreign students in India are drawn from
PHOTO: rEUTErS
neighbouring and nearby countries with which India has
a long history of cultural, political and trade ties. around
17 per cent of foreign students in India come from
Nepal, 17 per cent from Iran and afghanistan combined
and 5 per cent from tiny Bhutan.
 But the numbers of students coming from further
afield, including africa, are growing, aided by
perceptions of Indian institutions as offering high-
quality education that is both more relevant and less
expensive than western offerings.
“India is also a developing nation, so we feel some of
the challenges India has are the same challenges we have
in Zambia,” says Katatula.
India has also seen the emergence of new
philanthropy-driven higher education institutions, such
as Shiv Nadar University and ashoka University, each
situated within 50km of New Delhi. While these are still
at the earliest stages of establishing themselves, they are
expected to seek to woo foreign students in the future.
Meanwhile, the Indian government, which is slowly
waking up to the potential of higher education as a
means of projecting soft power overseas, has also begun
to get into the act, spearheading the establishment
of new institutions intended to serve as a beacon for
foreign students, especially from across asia.
In September, the first 15 students, including one
from Japan and one from Bhutan, and 11 teachers, many 1.
from abroad, arrived in a remote part of Bihar state
for the start of classes at the new Nalanda University,
1.
which is being built a few kilometres from the site of Class action
its ancient counterpart. In its heyday, Nalanda, which Lovely Professional University has
was active from the fifth century until its destruction by wooed foreign students to enrich
invaders in the 12th century, was a beacon of learning, its campus environment

drawing scholars of Buddhism, philosophy, medicine 2.

and mathematics from across asia – a community of Bricks and mortar boards
intellectual discovery that India hopes to recreate today. Part of the sprawling 250ha
The Indian government has also allocated $300m campus of Lovely Professional
University
and promised a large plot of land in south New Delhi
for the so-called South asian University, which has been 3.
established to educate students from across the region. Future generations
However, Kapur of the University of Pennsylvania Schoolchildren in Delhi, which,
has criticised such projects as attempts to create new like most indian cities, is short on
public university capacity
elite ghettos – albeit, in the case of Nalanda, in a remote
location likely to struggle to attract students or faculty. 2.
“It’s a boondoggle,” he says. “Don’t set up a university in
place you would not send your own children to.”
Kapur argues that the public funds India is
spending on these new university projects would be
far more effectively deployed in strengthening existing
universities both for domestic students and to make
them more attractive to international students.
India could still do more to open itself up to foreign
students. Universities complain that students often have
trouble obtaining visas for the duration of their course,
or even for an academic year. But Indian colleges will
undoubtedly continue to court foreign students, whose
numbers are expected to grow gradually as some of the
country’s young but serious fledgling private institutions
mature.
“We are universities, so we have to be universal in
our approach,” says LPU’s Mittal. “We have to widen our
vision. If you want to compete with global universities,
and be a global nation satisfying global requirements, we
cannot just think so locally.” 3.
o p in io n
Information feed
More than 200 years ago, Thomas
Jefferson spoke of “an ardent desire
to see knowledge so disseminated
through the mass of mankind that it
may, at length, reach even the extremes
of society: beggars and kings”. He
spoke at a time when only a tiny elite
had access to education. Yet today,
despite the spread of universities,
digital libraries and internet access in
the developing world, research is not
easily available. Among the culprits is
academic publishing.
Researchers are often judged by
their “impact factor” – the number
of articles they publish in reputable
journals with a very strict peer review
process. However, subscribing to these
journals is expensive, restricting them
to a limited audience. Research output
remains inaccessible to many in the
developing world.
Over more than 40 years, the
International Crops Research Institute
for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)
has been helping poor smallholder
farmers in the drylands through
cutting-edge and scaleable agricultural
research. Preserving high-quality
research publishing is important.
But I also believe research should be
judged through its uptake and use on
the ground.
Look at the contribution
of agricultural research to
global food security. Today,
nearly 1bn people suffer from
hunger. Many of these are
smallholder farming families
in developing countries.
Solutions exist, nurtured by
many agricultural research
institutions and universities
from the north, but also,
increasingly, from those in
Africa, India and elsewhere
in the south. Examples
include better yielding, heat-
and drought-tolerant crops,
like new chickpea varieties
in Ethiopia that enable small
farmers both to increase
58 | f t.co m/u n iver sit y
their income and enrich their soil.
But far too often, these innovations
remain confidential, adopted by few.
One key is to ensure that agricultural
knowledge flows freely and is easily
available to people in the developing
world, including farmers, researchers
and students. This should normally
be integrated into the mission of any
public research institution. In fact,
in recent years, donors such as the
UK Department for International
Development have made all their
funded research openly accessible.
Open access means anyone with
an internet connection can have free,
unrestricted sight of peer-reviewed
scholarly research. With the internet
more available and affordable, this not
only helps make university research
more accessible but also helps to
build the research capacity of poorly
endowed universities in sub-Saharan
Africa or south Asia. It also helps
people to tailor global research into
useful local applications more quickly.
In 2009, ICRISAT launched open
access for all its publications and this
has proved hugely successful.
Some traditional academic
publishers have promoted free access
to some of their publications for
Grassroots needs
A turkana woman
in Koriabok, north of
Lodwar, in the drought-
stricken turkana region
of Kenya this march
Locally funded research
must be dictated by local needs
and priorities
researchers in the developing world.
Some have adopted the “author pays”
model, where researchers pay to have
their work published, rather than
subscribers paying to read it. But not
all researchers can afford to pay for
publication. It is easier for a European
or US researcher to pay a typical
$2,500 publishing fee than for one in
Dhaka or Nairobi to do so.
Also, in spite of the falling cost, not
everyone in the developing world has
internet access, even at universities.
The key is to build research
excellence from the grassroots and
not rely on a top-down north-to-south
approach.
The bulk of open-access knowledge
today comes from universities in
the developed world where many
publications may not be relevant to
the challenges researchers deal with
in developing countries. For instance,
the latest findings in conservation
agriculture designed for large cereal
crop farms in Europe or North
America may not fit the labour and
resource constraints of a small farm in
Burkina Faso or Tanzania.
Academic experts and students in
the emerging world need to participate
fully in the new knowledge economy. In
fact, to truly benefit from globalisation,
developing countries should invest in
their own research capacity. In addition
to providing researchers and students
with open access to high-quality and
relevant publications, strengthening
“local” open-access journals is key,
so that knowledge can flow better
from south to south, where farming
constraints are similar.
Locally funded research must be
dictated by local needs and priorities,
and not only the research agenda of
global journals. We must make this
happen if we want a more food-secure
future for our children.
William Dar is director-general of
ICRISAT, based in Patancheru, India
PHOTO: AFP/gETTY