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W 6: The limits of academic freedom

Academic freedom is one of the most prized assets of American higher education. Yet despite the flowery rhetoric, U.S. higher education has a tenuous history with academic freedom, largely due to its governance structure. Unlike countries whose higher education institutions follow the Humboldt model, where the faculty control most areas of governance (as was detailed in last week’s readings), U.S. higher education has always concentrated power towards the administrative leadership, such as the university president and chancellor. This power dynamic has occasionally challenged the integrity of academic freedom. From McCarthyism to the adjunctification of the teaching force, there have constantly been limits to academic freedom in U.S. higher education.

The issue of protecting the integrity of academic freedom becomes even more complicated when applied to an international context, as this week’s ACE/CIGE reading shows. While the reading glosses over the domestic limits of academic freedom, there is still much more academic freedom in the U.S. than many other countries. Because of this, the American Association of Universities developed its Principles and Guidelines for Establishing Joint Academic Programs and Campuses Abroad. A notable passage includes: “When establishing campuses abroad or joint academic programs, agreements between universities and foreign partners should strive to include a commitment to commonly accepted principles of academic freedom. Members of the academic community should be able to ask questions and engage in discussion, and write and publish without the fear of punishment of intrusion by governments or authorities holding public, private, or institutional power” (ACE/CIGE, 2014, pp. 31).

While these are important guidelines, they are difficult to enforce, especially in countries with different political and cultural histories. “Even if a partner institution is supportive of academic freedom in theory, encouraging or allowing discussion of certain topics could lead to considerable problems for the institution, as well as the individual faculty and students involved” (ACE/CIGE, 2014, pp. 32).

This made me think about the newly-launched Schwarzman Scholars program that I wrote about briefly a few weeks ago. The program, funded by U.S. businessman Stephen Schwarzmann, consists of fully-funded master’s degrees in Public Policy, Economics and Business, or International Studies in China. Its inaugural class will begin their coursework this upcoming fall and consists of 45% Americans, 20% Chinese, and 35% international students. While it is hosted by Tsinghua University in Beijing, courses will be held on Schwarzman College, which is a subset of the larger university. Since classes will be conducted on a U.S. campus within a foreign university, I imagine that academic freedom will be more prevalent than in other Chinese universities. However, I imagine this could prove to be a tricky aspect to overcome when trying to sell this program to top-U.S. students, who might also pursue their degrees in the U.S. or other western countries with a more traditional understanding of academic freedom.

One program that the report deemed a success between two countries with very different cultures and values was the partnership between Kabul University in Afghanistan and Boston College/Hunter College in the U.S. This partnership, “funded by UNICEF through a grant administered by the Afghan government (ACE/CIGE, 2014, pp. 28)”, set out to develop a social work program at Kabul University. The project included two phases: “the development of standards and curricula, then implementation of Afghanistan’s first bachelor’s level social work program at Kabul University” (28). While the project was only funded through the first initiative, overall it was a success because faculty from each institution were able to stay in contact with one another when the program was finally ready to be implemented.

Frankly, I was surprised to read about this kind of success given the rocky political relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan. My intuition tells me that academic partnerships and initiatives in the hard sciences will have more success than those with a more liberal arts/socio-political component, like social work, since there tends to be much more cultural, religious, and political debate around those disciplines than the hard sciences. It was encouraging to read that is not always the case, and that some degree of academic freedom can exist between countries with very different political and cultural histories.

 

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W5: The Marketization of Global Higher Education

The theme I was most interested about from this week’s readings was the increasing marketization of global higher education governance.  While this trend makes sense within the broader trend of globalization, I am curious as to how a more market approach to higher education will work in countries that historically have much different governance structures.

In the article An analytical framework for the cross-country comparison of higher education governance, the authors Dobbins, Knill, and Vogtle’s discuss the historical governance structures of higher education in Europe. The three main types of governance in European higher education institutions include:

  • the state-centered model, which originated in countries like France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and many formerly-communist Eastern European countries, which “conceives universities as state-operated institutions” (670). Under this model, “universities are understood as rational instruments employed to meet national priorities” (670). Admission requirements, curriculum, exams, and hiring of academic personnel and administrative staff are directly coordinated by the state.
  • the university as a self-governing community of scholars (the Humboldt model), which was established in Germany, Austria, and other post-communist countries. This type of governance is modeled off of Humboldt’s principe of Lern and Lehrfreigeit, which translates to “freedom of teaching and learning” (671). Under this model, the governance structure is centered around a strong faculty self-regulation model with weak university management. However, the university is almost entirely dependent on state funding, so there is a significant level of collective bargaining between the two.
  • the market-orientated model contends that “universities function more effectively when operating as economic enterprises within and for regional or global markets” (672). Governance-wise, most of the power is concentrated among the university management/administration, who see themselves as “the role of a producer and entrepreneur” who provide a service or commodity to students (672). This structure revolves around competition, entrepreneurship, and accountability, and it is most commonly associated with Anglo-American colleges and universities.

While Dobbins, Knill, and Vogtle point out that it is virtually impossible for a HE institution to follow one model purely, most countries do skew towards one over the others. However, in an era of higher education internationalization and the subsequent breakdown of geographical, political, and economic barriers, the authors point out that the market approach is becoming increasingly common, and countries who countries who have historically adopted alternative governance structures will have to adapt if they want to remain competitive and continue to attract students from their home countries and abroad.

However, that is easier said than done. This article made me think about my experience as a student in Paris in 2009. The program I did through CIEE (in theory) partnered with Parisian universities, so the majority of my coursework should have taken place there. Almost immediately when I arrived, however, it was quickly clear that would not be the case. Thousands of French students and faculty went on strike, protesting then-President Sarkozy’s market-based reforms to the French university system, which included tuition hikes, job cuts, and a change in governance structures that would give university presidents much more power. The French higher education and research minister Valérie Pécresse told The Guardian, “‘The reforms are necessary to improve the way French universities work.” The article continued, “She has previously argued that reforms are necessary to improve the competitiveness of French universities, which are lagging behind internationally.” With no end in sight to the strikes, my program had to take quick action, so they arranged a new curriculum for us that was based entirely at the CIEE campus. As I’m sure you can imagine, this was incredibly frustrating since the whole reason I chose this program was because of its emphasis on immersing students in French university life.

This example demonstrates the tension many historically state-centered and Humboldt modeled universities will face as the market approach to higher education continues to increase globally. As an American student, I couldn’t help but think that the protesters were being a bit unreasonable. Of course, I was used to a market-based model, where education is a commodity. I was used to paying incredible sums for my education. However, for countries who have traditionally had a much more egalitarian approach to higher education, these kinds of reforms are quite the shock to the system. As one French student explained, “They are trying to make the university into a place for the elite, the American way.”

This article only applied to European countries, but I expect many other non-Western countries will face similar challenges as France as the market approach to higher education continues to become more prevalent.

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W4: Internationalizing U.S. higher education: Is it possible in the era of Donald Trump?

In my first week’s blog post, I posed a series of questions that I hoped we would answer this semester. This week’s reading, which focused on internationalizing U.S. higher education, answered one of them: What role does an increasingly isolationist Republican Party play in shaping international higher education?

The United States is a country profoundly distrusting of centralized power, which goes all the way back to its founding following the American Revolution. This distrust of centralized power includes how the U.S. creates and implements higher education policy. Whereas most other countries have a central Ministry of Education type of office, the United States lacks a federal office that focuses exclusively on higher education. Instead, the main offices that handle higher education internationalization in the U.S. are the Department of State, Department of Education, and the Department of Defense (p. 4). Additionally, the National Science Foundation, state governments, and individual higher education institutions themselves are also major players when it comes to higher education internationalization in the United States.

Thus, while the U.S. does not have a centralized office that is solely responsible for handling higher education initiatives like most other countries, the federal government still has tremendous influence on higher education internationalization initiatives — both directly (congressional funding, visa policies, etc) and indirectly (foreign policy initiatives and setting the general political atmosphere). “In the absence of a broad federal policy, institutional internationalization and ‘foreign relations’ policies — and the resulting programs and initiatives — collectively constitute a substantial part of the United States’ de facto higher education internationalization policy landscape.” (p. 34).

This is where Donald Trump comes in.

Many polls are predicting he will become the Republican nominee in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. While I still think it’s highly unlikely that he has any chance of winning a general election, this campaign season has repeatedly defied traditional norms and expectations. So, what would a hypothetical President Trump mean for international higher education initiatives in the U.S.?

For starters, in his efforts to “make America great again”, he probably won’t put a high priority on realizing President Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative, “a national effort designed to increase dramatically the number and diversity of composition of American students studying in China (p. 16-17)”, or the 100,000 Strong in the Americas presidential initiative, “the stated goal of which is to double student mobility (both inbound and outbound) between the U.S. and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean by 2020” (p. 17). Regarding incoming international students, his not-so-subtle racism and immigrant-bashing would likely turn off many prospective international students, who, as we saw in Madeline Green’s article from week 1, already prefer to study abroad in other countries besides the U.S. When it comes to international research and scholarly initiatives, his isolationist rhetoric seems to suggest that Americans need to be looking inward, rather than outward, to solve pressing 21st century challenges.

In the absence of an official national policy towards higher education internationalization in the United States, our national leaders have a tremendous direct and indirect impact in shaping and implementing U.S. higher education initiatives and policies. I went abroad in 2007 and again in 2009 and the reaction when I told people I was American couldn’t have been more different. In 2007, the minute I mentioned I was American I often got an eye roll and lecture about our foreign policy mishaps. In 2009, by contrast, people seemed genuinely happy about President Obama being in the White House and in general had a more positive outlook towards the United States. A report from PEW backs this up, finding that overall ” President Obama’s global popularity is much higher than his predecessor, George W. Bush.” This isn’t necessarily a Democrat vs. Republican thing, though Republicans should take note that policies favored by Democrats are more generally aligned with international sentiments.

Here’s to hoping that our next president–whoever he or she may be–continues to follow President Obama’s lead in promoting and expanding U.S. higher education internationalization.

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W3: China, China, and more China

We’ve spent the last few weeks discussing the different motivations behind why countries pursue internationalization in higher education. These motivations range from economic to diplomatic concerns — and everything else in between. Because I live and work in the United States and have a particular interest in U.S. history and politics, I have found myself always relating internationalization back to the U.S. — what are we doing well, versus the (many) things we need to work on. This week, in both the reading and in my professional life, I have been particularly interested in China’s strategies for internationalization in higher education. I will first discuss what I found interesting in this week’s readings and then I will explain what piqued my interest about China this week at work.

In this week’s reading, I was particularly interested in learning about China’s Confucius Institute in Africa, which began in 2000 and has “resulted in an increased number of Chinese government grants for African students in 2012, the establishment of 100 joint research and development projects, and the strengthening of the teaching of the Chinese language in Africa” (American Council on Education, 2015 pp. 47). Reading this, I immediately wondered if this huge investment in higher education in Africa is a way to increase the ROI of China’s economic investment in African countries; according to The Economist, “China has become by far Africa’s biggest trading partner, exchanging about $160 billion-worth of goods a year; more than 1m Chinese, most of them labourers and traders, have moved to the continent in the past decade.”

A report from Peter Kragelund, a Professor of Sociology at Roskilde University in Denmark seems to back up my initial inkling. Kragelund’s paper “sets out to explore the extent to which this collaboration resembles a new type of South- South collaboration in higher education or rather resembles soft power initiatives of the Africa’s ‘traditional’ partners” (Kragelund, 2014, pp. 2). By South-South collaboration, he is referring to political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental collaboration between what are often referred to as “developing countries”, whereas “traditional partners” refers to relationships between developing countries and Western countries, which have historically had colonial or neocolonial undertones. Kragelund states that the history of higher education in Africa “is also the history of external support, academic partnerships and adherence to Western standards that either directly or indirectly have shaped the particular outcome of the present‐day universities in Africa” (Kragelund, 2014, pp. 3).

Kragelund ultimately concludes that the Confucius Institute more closely resembles the “traditional” Western types of partnerships, “i.e. partnerships dictated by the external partner exhibiting highly uneven power relations, and not necessarily in line with the vision and strategy of UNZA [University of Zambia, which he specifically studied]”. (Kragelund, 2014, pp. 15). Like all other countries who are internationalizing in higher education, China is mainly concerned with promoting its own interests. Given its economic investment in Africa, it makes sense that it would also seek to increase its cultural investment through the Confucius Institute.

On the professional front, this week I learned about Schwarzman Scholars, a scholarship program “created to respond to the geopolitical landscape of the 21st Century”, which funds a 1-year Master’s program in Public Policy, Economics and Business, or International Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. This program is brand new — its inaugural class was just selected and will begin classes in August of 2016. According to a recruiter for the program who spoke at Roosevelt House last week, around half of the inaugural class is American, a quarter are Chinese, and a quarter come from other countries. Classes will be held at Schwarzman College, which is a residential college within Tsinghua University.

I am particularly interested in the structure of the program — a new college solely dedicated to this particular program within an established university. Going off of this week’s readings, “to offer formal degree programs in China, a foreign university must establish a joint legal entity with a Chinese partner institution. Such programs must be approved by the Ministry of Education and subsequently operate under the ministry’s supervision” (American Council on Education, 2015 pp. 41). As it stands, independent foreign institutions cannot have nonprofit status and cannot grant degrees, which, I imagine, is why the program is hosted at a U.S.-built residential college within Tsinghua University.

With China playing an increasingly important role in global affairs, it makes sense that the scope and ambition of its higher education internationalization efforts will continue to increase.

 

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W2 Readings: The Importance of “Global Competence for All”

The American Council on Education’s report, “Internationalizing Higher Education Worldwide”, provided a deep dive into the ways in which countries implement their internationalization efforts. Unsurprisingly, a main reason for internationalization is economic: for outgoing students, internationalization helps them gain language skills and cultural competency to prepare them for work in a global economy, whereas incoming students provide a large economic boost to the local community. Additionally, the report also discussed the academic, political, and social/cultural motivations for internationalization, which include increasing international academic rankings, building up “soft power”, and increasing mutual understanding, respectively.

What struck me as most interesting was the report’s assertion that there needs to be “…a fundamental need to shift the focus of internationalization toward the non-mobile majority of students” (Helms, Rumbley, Brajkovic, & Mihut, 2015, pp. 2). I couldn’t agree more. From my (admittedly anecdotal) experience as an undergraduate at UW-Madison, a large public research university, which ranks as one of the top 10 universities and colleges in the U.S. in the number of students who study abroad, the majority of students who studied abroad came from middle class or affluent families. I imagine the main reason for this was the financial burden study abroad can place on low-income (and even many middle class) students and their families. At Hunter College, where I work, there is not a large culture of study abroad, except for in the honors programs like the Macaulay Honors College, which I would speculate is also directly related to affordability issues, rather than a lack of interest.

This needs to be addressed on a national level through increased funding and other initiatives if the United States wants increase its internationalization efforts, which, as Green showed last week, lag behind other countries. I’d like to see the U.S. implement a program like Russia’s Global Education Program (GEP), which “…awards scholarships to graduate-level students for degree study outside Russia, and requires them to work for the Russian government immediately after completing the program” (Helms, Rumbley, Brajkovic, & Mihut, 2015, pp.27). Not only would this help students study abroad who otherwise might not have the option to do so, it would also provide them a job after graduation using the skills they learned while living abroad.

While I am definitely in support of increased government funding for internationalization efforts, I noticed that, at least as it relates to outgoing students, this funding is only reserved for citizens or those with a legal residency status. Given the global refugee crisis — which ballooned to 60 million people in 2014 and likely rose considerably more in 2015 — governments should make it a priority to help undocumented students also be recipients of internationalization efforts. In the U.S., this can be as easy is allowing DREAMers — many of whom have been in this country since they were young children — the ability to apply for federal financial aid to finance their education, both at home and abroad.

The last point I wanted to touch on was that, according to the ACE report, a good proportion of the funding for students (both incoming and outgoing) is dedicated to those pursuing STEM disciplines. While these fields are of course very important, it is also important to encourage students to develop skills in liberal arts disciplines as well. According to a report from the Association of American Colleges & Universities, “74 percent of business and nonprofit leaders say they would recommend a twenty-first century liberal education to a young person they know in order to prepare for long-term professional success in today’s global economy.” Skills like critical thinking, cross-cultural communication, the ability to solve complex problems, and the capacity for continual learning are seen as more important than a specific major. Internationalization efforts should be expanded to include more support for liberal arts disciplines.

It is encouraging to see how much is being done to promote internationalization around the world. I hope we continue to see internationalizations efforts despite Altbach and De Wit’s warning that nationalism and global conflicts might impede this growth.