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Global and national prominent universities: internationalization, competitiveness and the role of the State

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Abstracts

This article provides a characterization of the internationalization of “global” European universities and discusses the role of the State in promoting greater internationalization and competitiveness levels of prominent national universities. The analysis supports previous arguments stating that global ranking of universities is strongly based on research, but reveals that the internationalization of research universities’ student population is also arranged to enhance research capacity. This finding is further reinforced by a positive association between the internationalization of the academic staff and the internationalization of the student population in one of those universities, being this association particularly strong with the doctoral student population. Finally, based on the analysis of two prominent national universities with different global competitiveness levels, we discuss the role of the State as a central supporter of these universities internationalization and global competitiveness arguing that public funding and support is critical if countries want to have national prominent universities competing at global level.

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Notes

  1. Altbach “The Costs and Benefits of World-Class Universities”, International Higher Education, Autumn 2003 http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/News33/text003.htm [Accessed on the 30th of July of 2008].

  2. As a matter of fact, It has been suggested that some elements of the French elites have been leaving the French system looking for more attractive academic positions abroad (see Postel-Vinay 2002).

  3. Ministère Éducation Nationale Enseignement Supérieur É Recherche, “Les dossiers Enseignement Supérieur Recherche et Technologie-Les étudiants étrangers en France”, report 153, June 2004: http://media.education.gouv.fr/file/56/5/2565.pdf [Accessed on the 7th January 2009].

  4. Information taken from: www.ethistory.ethz.ch [accessed several times between the 10th of July and the 1st of August].

  5. ETH Zurich information at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich [accessed several times between the 15th of July and the 30th of July].

  6. Departing from the exploratory work and analysis of Rumbley et al. (2008), we compared the academic salaries of German, French and Portuguese assistant professors. The results indicate that a German assistant professor would earn around 180 Euros more than a Portuguese Assistant professor, but a French Assistant professor would earn around 100 Euros less than a Portuguese assistant professor per month at entry-level. If Purchasing Power Parity was used to take into account standards of living then a Portuguese assistant professor would earn more than 800 Euros per month than a French assistant professor and around 550 Euros more per month than a German assistant professor. Data for the Portuguese assistant professor salary was obtained from official sources (DGAEP 2008) and Purchasing Power Parity from the World bank website (as did Rumbley et al. 2008): http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/ICPEXT/0,,menuPK:1973757~pagePK:62002243~piPK:62002387~theSitePK:270065,00.html [Accessed on the 6th January 2009].

  7. Source: IST “Orçamento do IST 2004”, IST administrative services. ETH Zurich “ETH Zurich Annual report for 2004”: http://www.ethz.ch/about/bginfos/annualreports/2004_eth_statistics_en.pdf [accessed on the 30th July 2008].

  8. For an analysis of the role of the State in the internationalization of Swiss universities and the Swiss academic research see Horváth et al. 2000.

  9. Source: Resolução do Conselho de Ministros no. 132/2006. Diário da República, 1ª Série, no. 198, 13th of October 2006.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Emma Uprichard for her valuable comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Center for the Advancement of Higher Education, Tohoku University, Kawauchi 41, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8576, Japan

    Hugo Horta

  2. Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia – CIES, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa – ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal

    Hugo Horta

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Horta, H. Global and national prominent universities: internationalization, competitiveness and the role of the State. High Educ 58, 387–405 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9201-5

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