Ever since my recent trip to Australia, I can’t stop thinking about how rapidly everything in education is becoming global.
One person in one of my sessions at the conference I was attending said his institution is small and regional and therefore doubted that these issues would effect it. Another person quickly responded that if students are to receive a relevant education, the curricula in all subjects will have to be internationally oriented, and study abroad will have to appropriately expand in all institutions. Further, I would add that schools around the world will eventually be recruiting students and raising money in everone’s neighborhood, so no matter your size or location, you will not be able to avoid these industry changing forces.
Our discussion pointed out that the internationalizaton of the world economy will have many institutions considering building campuses abroad, although many are likely to find this approach may not be cost effective for them. Rather they will seek research and project partners with compatible institutions and institutes, they will set up student and faculty exchanges, or find partner institutions, or draw up agreements between specific academic programs. Some will require a semester or two abroad, and others will actually offer joint degree programs. And still others will imagine how they might become a truly transnational, or multinational, institution.
Governments will also change how they fund education and more emphasis will rest on those in the advancement professions of fund raising, alumni cultivation, student recriting, and reputation building. And so the big issues of funding sources and educational entitlement will persist, with different formulas appearing in different places.
Global rankings will provide the same issues on an international scale that many of us have faced on a national scale. Entities outside our profession will establish our quality criteria for us, and this will tend to make those institutions that seek higher rankings all look alike. Those of us with differentiated identities that define unique competitive advantages will have to become quite sophisticated in finding our internationl markets, just as we have previously on a smaller scale.
No doubt about it, this time of “sea change” in education is both frightening and exciting. Experience teaches, however, that the most secure place to be in times like this is to lead that change, correcting quickly when mistakes are made, but pressing ahead nontheless… and learning as we go.
Larry D. Lauer 