The business and politics of education

Newsweek recently published a list of the top 100 universities around the world. Except for the carefully calibrated, awfully boring and de rigueur top eight entries; the list makes one wonder whether there are any elephants actually missing from this stampede of ivory tower heavyweights.

It was the kind of roll-call that pops the eyes of a self-declared savant. Bizarrely, no Korean university made it to the list. From the law of cause and effect, one would expect some of the world`s firsts - which the Samsungs, Hyundais and LGs boast about - to originate from a local university.

There are enough breakthroughs announced by a local Yonhap News brief to guarantee two or three Tech Analysis slots per week in The Korea Herald.

So, what`s missing? Local researchers are generally eager to discuss their technical prowess, shrewd enough to withhold vital information, and have the maturity to avoid publicity overkill.

Maybe, they lack translational qualities that are so important to the world of academic networking and recognition.

However, this doesn`t explain the omission of the English-savvy Indian Institutes of Technologies. Or for that matter, Israel`s famed Weizmann Institute of Science.

If these can be omitted, even a well-executed publicity blitz by local institutions wouldn`t help much. A Newsweek poll for online readers, placed besides the list, managed to throw up more questions.

The polls elicited clicks to this question: "Which country will have the best engineers in 10 years?" India came top with 33 percent of the vote, ahead of the United States with 23 percent. Hi-tech Japan was not featured.

If readers have high regard for Indian engineers, the global reference guides of academia certainly do not have the same level of deference for the institutions that produce them. This could be a rare occasion when online polls are closer to the truth, backed by previous gushing in the U.S. media - including Newsweek - over the technical prowess of Indian scientists.

Newsweek evaluated the schools based on "measures used in well-known rankings published by Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Times of London Higher Education Survey."

Another criteria used were "the number of highly-cited researchers in various academic fields, the number of articles published in Nature and Science, and the number of articles listed in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities indices."

In 2003, Korean researchers in fact published 18,787 papers in international science magazines registered with the "Science Citation Index" compared to 5,379 in 1995.

This constitutes a steep learning curve, but rankers from the Times and Shanghai Jiaotong presumably found them wanting.

It was the other criteria used that threw up a clue to how the rankings were weighted. It read "the percentage of international faculty, percentage of international students," and the "ratio of faculty to students."

It seems diversity in intakes can magically boost the quality of an institution. This is a highly arguable proposition, unless all admissions were based on merit, and funding was available to the budget-challenged meritorious. Not really possible.

Social diversity in places like Malaysia may in fact end up producing classrooms, which, according to Asia Times writer Ioannis Gatsiounis, often "punishes rather than rewards creative thinking." Local politicians and Western beacons of public diplomacy too have vested interests in seeing which children succeed.

Public diplomacy is practiced by institutions such as the British Council which, provides grants like the Chevening to foreigners embarking on a Masters program in the United Kingdom. The selection criteria is generally dictated by the home country and British trade interests.

In China, only communist party vetted students may be granted the Chevening, and any student who might potentially disrupt intergovernmental ties, are scrupulously blacklisted, even when political components are needed in arts-related researches.

There are regimes, however, that tolerate neither intelligent discourses nor tabloid sensations.

In 1994, press exposes over graft in an arms-linked deal roused the fury of then Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. British firms in Malaysia were swiftly brought to their knees; some were reduced to groveling with full page ads. British universities were worried that government-funded Malaysian students - who contributed significantly to overall campus populations then - would be pulled out.

When one realizes the role played by public diplomacy, university admission criteria and the funding granted, education emerges as nothing more than a component of trade.

The windfall generated through foreign students, foreign campuses and governments, are a mega-billion dollar industry. Take a stroll through Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and you might chance upon shoplot colleges displaying the crest of established universities, some of whom are on Newsweek`s list.

Are Koreans still sulking over the omission of their vaunted institutes? They should ask how their institutes can lag far behind the National University of Singapore (36) and the Nanyang Technological University (71).

Even Singaporean politicians regularly bemoan the lack of originality among local students. This shortfall is made up by an ever-growing rank of expat professors and foreign students who fill that creativity gap.

How did Nanyang Technological University, known to dispense diplomas since it was established in 1981, get ranked ahead of the University of Vienna (founded 1365) and the University of Sheffield (1828)? Vienna was producing historical figures even before Sigmund Freud was conceived.

Have you heard of a native soccer player, engineer, writer or musician who had passed through the portals of both institutions to attain global fame?

If education isn`t a matter of business, politics and skewed publicity, what is?

In the meantime, Korea may need to improve the marketing of its academic achievements, rather than just accumulate research-based achievements. Publicity is king, even in academics.

(maavak@heraldm.com)



By Mathew Maavak