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Rick Reis’ today posted on his Tomorrow’s Professor mailing list a reprint of a review by Sandra L. Koresoja (and originally published in Planning for Higher Education, January-March, 2008) of College Unranked: Ending the College Admissions Frenzy, edited by Lloyd Thacker, published by Harvard University Press and Remaking the American University - Market Smart and Mission Centered, by Robert Zemsky, Gregory R. Wegner, and William F. Massy, published by Rurgers University Press. From the review:

In today’s colleges and universities, the influence of market forces has tended to alter faculty as well as institutional incentives, while Internet communications capabilities have blurred the boundaries of academic knowledge and created global research communities (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). Thacker begins the discussion regarding changes in the admissions process by asking in a section title, “Who Can Do What Needs to Be Done?” (Thacker, p. 181). His suggested initial steps to collective action are focused on students, parents, colleges, the College Board, and members of the media involved with ranking colleges. The suggestions of Zemsky, Wegner, and Massy for institutions seem less concrete. Yet, their book helps to explain the origins and broader context of the admissions arms race; it also furthers a larger discussion of importance to planners and policy makers by raising new questions about the “public good” purposes, or social value, of higher education in today’s increasingly globally connected world.

Read the entire review at Tomorrow’s Professor.

From a recent article from Inside Higher Ed:

For all the hyperbole, facts about what’s actually happening on the ground in China can be hard to come by. A new study by economists at universities in Canada, New Zealand and China aims to document what its title calls “the higher educational transformation of China and its global implications,” collecting in one place statistics and other information about enrollments, demographic changes, numbers of colleges and faculty publishing, among other categories.

From the working paper’s abstract:

The number of undergraduate and graduate students in China has been grown at approximately 30% per year since 1999, and the number of graduates at all levels of higher education in China has approximately quadrupled in the last 6 years. The size of entering classes of new students and total student enrollments have risen even faster, and have approximately quintupled. Prior to 1999 increases in these areas were much smaller. Much of the increased spending is focused on elite universities, and new academic contracts differ sharply from earlier ones with no tenure and annual publication quotas often used. All of these changes have already had large impacts on China’s higher educational system and are beginning to be felt by the wider global educational structure. We suggest that even more major impacts will follow in the years to come and there are implications for global trade both directly in ideas, and in idea derived products. (emphasis added)

Given the explosive growth of Chinese higher education –and potential effects on social, cultural, and economic transformations, it is not surprising that the impact has not been probed. Change may be occurring far faster than researchers and policy directors can measure.

(Thanks to Tom Abeles for forwarding the source article.)

The StarTribune reports that the town of Chaska, Minnesota, is planning for a new higher education campus, built by an outfit called “EdCampus.” What makes the site unique is that it is being built without a sole tenant in mind:

The company plans to erect classrooms as shells, line up higher education institutions as tenants to fill them, then customize the rooms for satellite classes or lectures offered by as many colleges and universities as it can line up.

“They could lease space to anyone from Harvard to North Dakota State,” Chaska Mayor Gary Van Eyll said.

According to the Mayor of Chaska:

EdCampus located in Chaska. It is hard to explain this facility. It will be an innovational educational model that leverages the power of combining dynamic students from diverse institutions into a single campus – outfitted with customizable classroom space and student-centric services.

EdCampus will offer state-of-the-art technology, never seen before in post-secondary education.

Since secondary education institutions develop a tremendous amount of educational technologies, I’m not sure what technologies have never been seen before in post-secondary education. (Also, does this high tech EdCampus have a website?) The real innovation, however, is that such a “campus” concept allows higher education institutions to create a presence in a community without outlaying a huge investment. Some institutions may wish to try certain communities/markets before making a large investment in facilities. Others will appreciate the pathways for rapid egress afforded by lease arrangements.

What does this ability to enter and exit new markets rapidly mean for land grant universities, which are intended to create lasting presences in the communities they serve?

Contrary to the closed access environments University of Iowa graduate students advocate, I believe that “intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.” Therefore, before the giant hairball of a banana that is my doctoral dissertation over-ripens beyond its useful life expectancy, I am releasing the document as a free download.

More information on my study, “A New Paradigm of Knowledge Production in Minnesota Higher Education,” is available at http://www.educationfutures.com/dissertation.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, University of Iowa students pedal backward on the global trend of opening access to information and knowledge:

The University of Iowa has backtracked on a plan to post all graduate students’ theses online and make them freely available to the public. The reversal came in response to vigorous protests last week from students in the university’s prestigious graduate program in writing…

More at: http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/03/2152n.htm?utm_source=aw&utm_medium=en (registration/sacrifice of first born child required)

“Tomorrow is yesterday,” Skyped an attendee at today’s Networks & Neighborhoods in Cyberspace conference at the University of Minnesota today. “Even worse - yesterday is tomorrow.” The irony is that this conference is supposed to be related to a Minnesota Futures grant project.

This conference is highlighting a key problem at the University of Minnesota that I am sure is endemic elsewhere: higher education is full of technology followers, but few leaders. In this conference on the virtues of innovative technologies in education, one panelist admitted to not using Web 2.0 in his work. Others complained of the obstructions and limitations presented by WebCT and Moodle. A few others admitted they have no idea what Facebook is, but feel obliged to promote it because their students use it.

At a Research I university, you think we would discuss the new technologies that we will create rather than try to describe the technologies that already exist that we don’t know how to use … or would prefer to not use. Instead of forming a Facebook or Moodle support group, can we start to talk about what we will create next?

Minnesota: 1998 called.  They want their educational technologies back.

Yesterday, I talked about all the good things that are said to be brought by university-industry collaboration. There is, however, other side of this seemingly almighty strategy.

Well, “other side” might be a bit too exaggerating. But there are some things we have to keep in our mind when we discuss university-industry collaboration. What I am going to talk about below applies not only to Japan but also to any countries in which university-industry collaboration takes place.

I say, it is necessary for us to consider possible dangers and negative outcomes in university-industry collaboration.

First of all, universities should consider that industrial interest which mainly focuses on near-market research and the aim of producing profit should not become the only priority of university at the expense of long-term orientation and basic research. In other words, money-generating research should not be always prioritized over fundamental or unprofitable research. This could put the fundamental philosophy of academic freedom in danger. There is also a danger that industrial requirements may jeopardize university’s initiative in building research themes. This is because private sectors place the utmost interest in making profits, and not necessarily purely academic intellectual exploration. Therefore, projects that are funded by private sectors may end up compromising universities’ academic agenda in order to comply with industry’s requests.

That is to say, university-industry collaboration has the inherent danger of allowing market criteria to dictate the paths of scientific inquiry.

When all is said, I would like to recommend a strategy to mitigate the possible dangers from university-industry collaboration.

First, it is crucial for universities to balance between innovation/technology-orientated research, and fundamental academic research and teaching. In other words, curricula should not favor only those studies with industrial cooperation. For instance, those disciplines that do not have much industrial needs, such as English, Philosophy, and Japanese literature, should be treated as equal as industry-related disciplines such as biochemistry, biotechnology, and aerospace-engineering.

Additionally, I suggest that Japanese universities introduce multiple major system which allows students to major more than one field of study or have minor. Though multiple majors are common in the U.S. , such systems are extremely rare in Japanese higher education. I think completing more than one major will provide students an advantage in today’s uncertain job market.

I know that university-industry collaboration brings many benefits to the society. Instead of completely agreeing with the idea, however, I just wanted to play devil’s advocate

In Japan, promotion of university-industry collaboration has been a key topic at many levels since the early 90’s, and especially since 2004 when all the former national universities became semi-privatized.

With this drastic reform in Japanese higher education in 2004, Japanese former national universities need to be transformed into a new mode of knowledge creation. With the increased autonomy in each university, now it is much easier for individual universities to seek cooperation with industry. Indeed, it is said that this reform was first proposed to make this collaboration easy (Prior to the privatization, professors at national university were civil servants and thus were not allowed to work elsewhere).

In the industrialized countries, technical innovation has become the main force for competitiveness. This results in a much stronger participation of industry in research and development (R & D). In industrialized countries, the participation of universities in R & D projects for industry has become key activity. Though in Japan, this trend is also apparent with 67% of research being financed by big companies, traditionally most of these universities have been the private ones.

Now under new regulations, newly privatized former national universities have a freedom to participate in this university-industry cooperation. Not only does university-industry cooperation will lead to a creation of knowledge-based society, this strategy could result in a win-win situation for both stakeholders, university and industry.

First, Japanese national universities can now target research and education to actual needs of the society which will strengthens the position of the university in the society and bring financial benefits. Also, they can mitigate their newly added financial constraint from not receiving subsidy from the Ministry of Education. Through university-industry collaboration, universities can use companies’ resources and expertise which may be up-to-date than those found in their universities.

And last but not least, universities can finally develop skills and resources for transferring research results to end users. Traditionally, knowledge generated in universities tended to just sit in an ivory tower without being utilized in a real world. Through university-industry collaboration, universities can learn the strategy to convey their newly generated knowledge to the society.

There are many benefits for industry as well.  First and foremost, they can obtain top-notch information on recent developments in science and technology.  Having direct access to research results will enable industry to develop more competitive products and services.

Sounds wonderful, right?  Yep, this university-industry collaboration seems as though it could be a panacea for everyone and everything.  It is actually a pretty good deal.

But! (and there is always “but”)  there are a few things that we might want to be careful and keep in our mind when promoting this strategy. 

I will talk about those points tomorrow… 

I have been reading this book titled “Highly-Educated Working Poor - Graduate School as a Manufacturer of Part-timers ” (written in Japanese).  Sounds pessimistic?  Yep, this is a very pessimistic book, indeed.

Pessimistic it may be, the book conveys the critical truth about post PhD lives in my country.  In Japan, a lot of new graduate schools were established around the time all the national university became semi-privatized in 2004.  It was a part of the government policy along with the privatization to increase the number of graduate schools.  Consequently, there have been more and more graduates with higher degrees.  However, the author of the book claims that the society is not ready to utilize so many MAs, MSs, and especially PhDs. 

This book also reminded me of a website called “A Village of One-hundred Doctors” that I recently came across (also in Japanese).  According to this website:

Of 100 new Doctors,

16 are MDs (medical doctors)

14 become professors

20 become post doctoral fellows (postdocs)

8 become company workers

11 become civil service employees

7 completely changes their areas of specialization

16 are unemployed

And the rest 8 go MISSING!!!

Is this depressing or what?!  Oh this is not a world average - this is a Japanese case, if that makes you non-Japanese people feel better. 

OK, enough of this bleak story.  I will write something more positive tomorrow, I promise. 

World Competitiveness. For the first entry of my guest-blogging, this topic would not be too bad, I suppose.

Thus, World Competitiveness.

According to World Competitive Yearbook 2007 by IMD (International Institute for Management Development), Japan is now ranked in the 24th place, sliding out of the top twenty. Allowing China to pass (China rose from 18 to 15), Japan has moved down eight spots, from the 16th in 2006. In fact, Japan is now surpassed by many of it’s neighboring countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and even Malaysia (See the below ranking for details). Though there is a debate over if China truly deserves to be ranked so high, let’s put away that debate for the moment and I would like to think why Japan has fallen dramatically.

One IMD research fellow points out why Japan is slipping, noting some of the factors that I have also pondered many times in the past when thinking about my own country’s higher education system. As she puts it:

[...] Entrepreneurship is not widespread (ranking 57th out of 61 countries), business managers are not characterized as having much international experience (52nd) and there is a low participation of women in business (47th). [...] Other obstacles to global integration include a national culture that is closed to foreign ideas (54th) and strict immigration laws (55th), despite the fact that Japan ranks higher for its “attitude towards globalization” (14th).

It has also been pointed out that this low ranking is caused by the serious descrepancies between the skills companies need and the skills Japanese university provides to students.

What does this mean?

To me, it means that the higher education system needs to focus on producing a new type of college graduate: someone who is ready for the globalized economy of the 21st century, someone who can think independently and able to function in the international market, and someone who has great creative mind as well as entrepreneurship.

Yes yes, these points have been discussed for many years by now, but nothing has changed so far, as Japan’s competitiveness ranking keeps dropping down.

I am unwilling to admit, but it looks as though it will take some time before Japan starts climbing back up the rankings… *sigh*

IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2007 (top 30)

1. U.S.A, 2. Singapore, 3. Hong Kong, 4.Luxembourg, 5. Denmark, 6. Switzeland, 7. Iceland, 8. Netherlands, 9. Sweden, 10. Canada, 11. Austria, 12. Australia, 13. Norway, 14. Ireland, 15. Mainland China, 16. Germany, 17. Finland, 18. Taiwan, 19. New Zealand, 20. United Kingdom, 21. Israel, 22. Estonia, 23. Malaysia, 24. Japan, 25. Belgium, 26. Chile, 27. India, 28. France, 29. Korea, 30. Spain.

(Source: http://www.imd.ch/research/publications/wcy/announcing.cfm)