Universities must rise to the challenges of globalisation

Consider the most recent paper by Professor Ben Martin from the University of Sussex, “What is happening to our universities?”, or the book by Italian professor Federico Bertoni entitled Universitaly: La cultura in scatola.

Listen to the disputes going on between some governments and dissident professors or the moans about the intolerance shown around sensitive topics in or undesirable visitors to American and British universities, which are described by Timothy Garton Ash in his Free Speech: Ten principles for a connected world.

These days, we seem to be hearing multiple complaints about higher education for a variety of reasons.

On the one hand, the bureaucratisation of higher education systems, as well as their drift towards managerialism, is on the rise. On the other hand, higher education institutions are fast becoming places where critical thinking is discouraged because of both the prevalence of different types of intolerance and the intrusion of economic factors.

As a result academic institutions are increasingly being reduced to mere platforms for students to be trained for their future jobs.

Massification and increased mobility

Two factors have transformed the field of higher education in most countries of the world over the past few decades:

• • Massification of the system: globally, tertiary enrolments reached 200 million in 2014, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and most universities have increased significantly in size. One example is the University of Bologna in Italy, where the number of students grew from 15,000 in the 1960s to the current 80,000.
  
  
• • The fall in mobility and interconnection costs has created a globally competitive field for universities.

It is clear that these two factors may have had unintended consequences and may require superior management skills. We need a good understanding of trends and an analysis of solutions that might mitigate the harmful effects the two factors might have.

The management of so many students (and consequently, a large number of academic and non-academic staff) requires tools and prior preparation, as well as a specific managerial culture. Otherwise, the quality of the education offered will decrease over time.

The normal response is towards standardisation and bureaucratisation of activities. This affects both faculty and students, although students are less aware of the changes because they enrol for higher education after experiencing the school system, which is already used to massification.

The increased mobility of people, as well as the multiple ways of interacting, naturally lead to higher requirements for standardisation. In a positive sense, this implies the use of a lingua franca, mutual recognition of activities and the opportunity to share the recognised dominant paradigms.

But it also leads to the annihilation of anything outside the mainstream. We have seen growing intolerance. Stunted economic growth, globalisation, worsening inequalities, migration: all these existing phenomena have lowered our capacity to respect ideas that are different.

Moreover, when dealing with dissent and provocation, we need to consider the broader context in which universities operate. In many cases, the choices made by university managers are dictated by a fear of losing students. Since they provide money in the form of fees, students are seen by most institutions as their main means of survival.

In practice, we observe a ‘role reversal’ in teaching whereby students control higher education institutions because of the way they are funded. This is why we should question the validity of funding systems that are primarily based on private sources of income – they reduce the university-student relationship to a supplier-customer model with the latter always being right.

Values

Since we are dealing with the cultural development and education of young people, some reflections on the properties of more balanced and less market-oriented funding mechanisms are appropriate.

These show us that we need a new approach firmly grounded in values but allowing the flexibility of management needed to mitigate the current drift towards extremist tendencies.

How do you mitigate the negative effects of mass universities and globalisation?

It is certainly not by championing a world that no longer exists, a world that was far more unjust and unequal than the present one. Such a position is very convenient for those who are far removed from the everyday reality of these effects by their wealth and networks.

In contrast, the transformation of the university into a place for the masses should be seen as one of the great achievements of this century. But we need to answer the challenges of massification with differentiation, by searching for distinctive elements in a framework characterised by equality, respect and shared objectives.

Further, since we are not dealing with an industry which is only interested in end product and driven by pure market logic, admission should be based on students’ talent rather than their ability to pay, and any possible adverse selection resulting from the different backgrounds these potential students come from should be mitigated.

The issues and trends affecting universities need to be handled skilfully and patiently.

Mass universities in a globalised world cannot be run along the same lines as other public institutions. This is an important concept to grasp, at least in countries where most procedures are determined according to rules set down for the entire public system and apply equally to large urban areas or smaller towns.

At the same time, creativity and a love of progress and ideas that look heretical live outside the logic of the market. They spring from the values of a community and cannot be sacrificed to uphold the principles of a free market.

To aspire to cater to the masses, to be funded in a balanced manner and ensure that students who are capable and worthy are not excluded despite their inability to pay tuition fees, not to be overly bureaucratic and to be more tolerant of ideas that are not the mainstream, is a great thing.

European universities, which were established long before academic institutions in Brussels were even thought of, should adopt these goals and renew their identity in the highly globalised world of today.

Michele Meoli is assistant professor of corporate finance in the department of economics and technology management at the University of Bergamo, Italy, and deputy director of the CISAlpino Institute for Comparative Studies in Europe or CCSE, a joint research centre of the University of Bergamo and University of Augsburg, where he coordinates the Research Group on Higher Education.

Stefano Paleari is full professor of finance in the faculty of engineering at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He was rector of the University of Bergamo from 2009 to 2015, secretary general of CRUI – the Conference of Italian University Rectors – from 2011 to 2013, and president of CRUI from 2013 to 2015. Since 2013 he has been a board member of the European University Association. He is president of the CCSE, where he directs the Research Group on Higher Education. He has also been scientific director of the International Center for Competitiveness Studies in the Aviation Industry since 2006.