…at least as far as thinking through the implications of globalization on education. And I’m not talking just about the trivial matter of attracting more students to study at their universities.
About a week ago, the Australian government released a forward-looking White Paper called Australia in the Asian Century which charted a set of strategies to improve Australia’s chances of benefiting from the continuing Asian economic boom. Some of those strategies were education-related; one was to get ten Australian universities into the world’s top 100 universities by 2025, but another (as outlined in a speech) by Schools’ Minister Peter Garrett) was a $100 million pledge to require all schools to teach at least one Asian language and put more Asian content in the social studies and history curriculum.
(Yeah, that Peter Garrett. Having the lead singer of Midnight Oil as your Schools Minister is awesome. God help us if we ever tried something like that. Best case scenario: Stompin’ Tom at Transport. Worst-case: Chad Kroeger at Heritage.)
OK, the top ten pledge is a little goofy. Australia’s tenth-best university is probably at the level of Dalhousie or U Manitoba. Getting to the top 100 would mean matching the output of the U of A, more or less. Short of doubling their budgets, there’s no way to close that gap in twelve years.
But those schools pledges – they’re ultra-cool. They are ambitious, involve the whole population, and they actually deal with a real issue in internationalization – namely, being able to speak to potential customers in their own language. There’s not one government in Canada – provincial or federal (assuming it had the power, of course) – that would make a commitment that bold. Basically, we’re too lazy and self-centered to make the effort.
We have this twee notion that everyone likes us because we’re shy, demurring and not American when the truth is that nobody cares who we are or what we do because we’re shy, demurring, and not American. We don’t think foreign languages are useful (hell, we can barely be bothered to learn the two we already have) in part because business doesn’t think they’re useful. When’s the last time you saw an ad requiring applicants to speak an Asian language?
Australia’s tactics may not work (the reaction where I was in Jakarta last week was somewhat dismissive), but at least they understand that building working relationships in Asia requires actual language skills and cultural awareness and that there’s an advantage to giving kids an early start on that. We still think that sticking Maple Leafs on our backpacks will do the trick. This is why in the long run, we will lose the internationalization game – unless we start taking lessons from Australia.
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Australian vs Canadian universities:
There are currently 6 Australian universities amongst the top 100 in the THE World University Rankings (http://www.australianuniversities.com.au/rankings/) with Melbourne at 28 and AUN at 37.
Canada had 9 in top 200 (2010 data http://www.globecampus.ca/in-the-news/article/canadian-universities-ranked-among-worlds-best/)
U of T placed 17th overall, followed closely by University of British Columbia at 30th and McGill University at 35th. Other Canadian universities to rank were McMaster (93rd), Alberta (127nd), Victoria (130th), Université de Montréal (138th), Dalhousie (193rd) and Simon Fraser (199th).
Actually there are 8 Aus uni’s in the top 200 and RISING . For Canada to have only 9 with 50% more people indicates the gap that is starting to occur. As far as Indonesia is concerned ..who cares – yes they are a rising people with a rising GDP but with an archipelago of many islands and with a few hundred million people they will stay static instead of rise in spite of predictions, it is only common sense if you analyse it. With a goal of being in the top 10 economies in the world AND with only 20 million people now, to have a path to tread is to go down that path and if not successful to at least go DOWN the path. To be dismissive is stupid!
Totally agree that Canada needs to step up in terms of internationalization.
Not sure that it’s an impossible task to have 10 in the top 100 in twelve years though. Especially with their focus on internationalization. I agree that budgets would need to increase but I think that might be happening. Also, I think that the APRU – Association of Pacific Rim Universities might be one of the driving forces around internationalization. I’m glad one of our universities is a member (UBC).
Anyhow, I think that the 10 in 100 is a great goal to mobilize people.
I’d love to see Canada, specifically higher education in Canada, react to issues of internationalization, multilingualism, Tuning, etc. But where to start?
I agree.
Internationalization is not the goal, but instead should be a by-product of the goal of being a world-renowned higher education institution. The world’s leading universities – Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, LSE, Stanford, MIT, etc. – don’t really need to focus on internationalization. It just happens naturally as a result of their ability to select from the very best students and researchers in the world. And that comes from their global institutional reputations.
Then again, I think it is difficult to label an entire university. Every university has its strong and weak departments. I wish world university rankings were available on a department/faculty level, which would be much more useful to people who make choices about where to work or learn..
Those universities that focus on internationalization as a goal are missing the point. As Australia is rightly demonstrating, the aim for excellence will help draw world attention – and applications – to them..And, yes, because most Canadian universities are not highly ranked in the THE Top 200, they must do more than just slap a maple leaf on their efforts to convince the world of their strength.