The World-Class University: Concept and Policy Initiatives
In the 2000s, many countries joined the global race to build a world-class university (WCU) in the knowledge society. These initiatives have been institutionalized in many countries including European and Latin-American countries as well in Asia. However,
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The World-Class University: Concept and Policy Initiatives Jung Cheol Shin
2.1 What Is World-Class University? 2.1.1 Conceptual Approach Does world-class university mean top-ranked universities or does it mean the university that contributes to humankind globally? There have been pioneering efforts in the attempt to define the term world-class university. For example, Altbach (2009) proposed excellence in research, academic freedom, flexible governance, adequate facilities, and adequate funding as characteristics of a world-class university. Salmi (2009) discussed three core elements of a world-class university: a high concentration of talented professors and students, enough financial support for teaching and research, and a favorable and flexible governance structure. Mohrman et al. (2008) also proposed eight elements of a world-class university. In their Emerging Global Model, core elements are global mission, research intensity, new roles for professors, diversified funding, worldwide recruitment, increasing complexity, new relationships with government and industry, and global collaboration. These efforts define a world-class university from a conceptual perspective. In the business sector, we use the term global rather than world-class to describe a company. A global company is one running a business globally and targeting global customers and whose production systems are often globally linked. A similar approach can be applied to defining a world-class university. The worldclass university globally attracts talented students and faculty, the knowledge they produce is globally influential, they educate global leaders, they serve global
J.C. Shin () Department of Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of (South Korea) e-mail: [email protected] J.C. Shin and B.M. Kehm (eds.), Institutionalization of World-Class University in Global Competition, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 6, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4975-7 2, © Springer ScienceCBusiness Media Dordrecht 2013
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human as well as national development, and finally these activities are globally recognized by academics and people in general. From this perspective, a worldclass university is defined by the three primary components of global competiveness, value orientation for humanity, and the organization’s primary goal of teaching and research. First, global competitiveness is conceptualized in terms of attracting talented human resources and funding support and excellence in the quality of teaching and research: • • • •
Competitiveness in attracting talented professors and students Competitiveness in attracting funding for education and research Competitiveness in research productivity Competitiveness in student learning outcomes
Second, a world-class university has a human value orientation that goes beyond the university and its country although the value orientation of a world-class university is rarely discussed in academic circles. Unfortunately, most top-
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