Knowledge, the univ., and development (1)

Altbach, P. G. (1998). Comparative higher education: Knowledge, the university, and development. Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing.

Intro: Comparative perspectives in the 21st century

• The modern university is at the center of an international system that encompasses technology, communications, and culture. (p. xvii)
• Internationalism
  
  • The university is an international institution with strong national roots. However, most analysts overlook the international origins and role of the university, focusing exclusively on national realities (p. xviii)
  • The modern American university, arguably the most influential academic model today, grows out of 3 basic ideas - the English collegiate model, the German research university ideal of the late 19th century, and the American concept of service to society
  • All of the world's universities stem from the medieval European model - common academic culture worldwide
  • Study abroad, brain drain
  • Knowledge is international; English language and new ICT contributed to the internationalizationalism; International higher ed. has become a significant "industry"
• The estates
  
  • Senior staff (professoriate): eroding power. Future - less full-time permanent positions, more diverse, less research-oriented, less able academically
    
  • Students: "student consumerism"; nature of the student population
  • Non-academic staff: gaining power
    
• Roots and implications of crisis (国学技研私付钱）
  
  • Diminished state funding (high enrollment, tech, salaries)
    
  • Who should pay? (Taxpayer - individual, equity, financial stability, access)
    
  • Privatization (revenue-producing strategies)
    
  • Technology (expensive, quickly outdated, difficult to integrate, time consuming, training)
    
  • Basic research and graduate study (fiscal climate - hard to sustain)
    
  • Internationalization (positive aspect but need mechanisms for financing and administering)
    
  • The academic profession (core of the university; under pressure; change)
    

Part I. Perspectives

1. Patterns in higher ed development

• Role of universities: Knowledge creation and distribution; political function
• A common heritage: follow institutional patterns derivative of Western models
• Networks of knowledge and higher ed: West-centered, English dominated, brain drain, the Third World scientific diaspora
• Expansion: Hallmark of the postwar era.
  
• Change and reform:
  
  • 1960s Interdisciplinary program; Curricular vocationalism
  • 1990s Improving the administrative efficiency & accountability
• The Millennium
  
  • Access and adaptation (equal higher ed. opportunity for disenfranchised groups)
    
  • Administration, accountability, and governance (bureaucracy, budget)
    
  • Knowledge creation and dissemination (changing forms, tech, cost, control & ownership, Western domination)
    
  • The academic profession (the professoriate is under pressure, challenged by demands for accountability, increased bureaucratization of institutions, fiscal constraints in many countries, and an increasingly diverse student body
    
  • Private resources & public responsibility (a change in values and orientations)
    
  • Diversification & stratification
  • Economic disparities (developed nations v. developing ones)
    

2. The university as center and periphery
The inequalities of the international knowledge system run very deep, have strong institutional support and significant historical roots, and are often in the interest of those who wield power, whether that power is military, economic, intellectual, or technological (p. 20)

• Third World Realities (univ remain elitist institutions, a key means of social mobility, mainly urban, often use European languages as the language of instruction)
  
• The anatomy of inequality
  
  • The historical tradition of universities is a Western tradition, and has little if anything to do with the intellectual or educational traditions of the Third World
  • The language of higher ed in many Third World nations is a Western language (language of power and of wealth)
  • Third World nations are basically "consumers" of knowledge, dependent on industrialized nations for research, interpretations of scientific advances, and, in general, information (difficult to develop indigenous model)
    
  • The means of communication of knowledge are in the hands of the industrialized nations (Internet may change the landscape? but access is a problem)
  • Large numbers of students from the Third World study in the industrialized nations
    
• Dependency & Neocolonialism
  
  • Neocolonialism: the policies of the industrialized nations that attempt to maintain their domination over the Third World (Education is a "fourth dimension" of foreign policy because it is seen to fit integrally into the national objectives of industrialized nations, p. 28)
  • Academics trained in Western universities to feel natural to continue using Western models
    
• Peripheral centers & central peripheries
  
  • Peripheral centers - The public in the Third World sees higher ed as a means of social mobility in societies with severe economic problems; faculty members see themselves as part of an international academic community
  • Central peripheries - International scholarship is communicated in English; some Western univ. lack funding and infrastructure; study abroad and maintain contacts with academics in the U.S. or Britain
    
• Removal of inequality
  
  • America is a sample of success that completed periphery-center transition
  • Sustained economic growth combined with national policies that have supported higher ed have fostered this development
  • removing inequalities as part of a commitment to a new international order is extraordinarily difficult to achieve (p. 34)
    

3. Twisted roots: The Western impact on Asian higher ed

• As a consequences of the industrial revolution, the products and the science of Europe, and later North America, came to dominate much of Asia (p. 41)
• The West tries to retain its central position (e.g. government-sponsored programs that are cultural and intellectual in nature)
• The heritage of colonialism: the use of the mother language; academic structures patterned after metropolitan models; the curriculum was like that in the metropole and not relevant to Asian realities; acdemic staff were from the metropole; culture of subordination; sources of cultural, political, and intellectual ferment; stressed contact with the metropole
• The noncolonized heritage: China, Japan, Thailand
• The contemporary impact of the West
  
  • The pervasive and subtle influence of the English language
  • The effect of foreign study (center-periphery flow)
    
  • Scientific exports
  • Western academic structures
    
• The indigenous response: change, accommodation, evolve
  

4. The American academic model in comparative perspective

• The American academic system in historical perspective
  
  • The English academic tradition (liberal arts) changed and democratized by the American experience (the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries)
  • The emergence of graduate education (the end of the 19th century, land-grant ideas - direct service to society, research as part of the academic enterprise)
  • Implantation of research (the early 20th century, German research concept)
    
• The elements of the American academic system
  
  • The research university at the pinnacle of the system
  • The undergraduate arts and sciences colleges (basic ed. in the liberal arts)
  • The community college ("open access" to higher ed)
    
• The relevance of the American Model
  
  • The community of scholars and governance (department - a unique organizational model adapted from the European "chair" system)
    
  • An administrative cadre (professor-turned senior admin v. career admin)
    
  • Curricular expansion (flexibility to serve employment needs)
    
  • Research (P&T stress research & publication; funding & salary: reward-related; "publish or perish")
    
  • Autonomy & accountability (academic freedom v. social responsibilities)
    
  • Service (commercialized?)
    
  • Stability & change (peripheral change)
    
  • Dealing with adversity (financial problems, demographic changes, government cutbacks and shifts in emphasis away from education
    
  • Student services (loco parentis; extracurricular activities)