In the era of global rankings, many governments want to make sure that their top universities are actually operating at the cutting edge of intellectual and scientific development. A major concern ...has therefore been to identify the most effective method for inducing substantial and rapid progress in a country’s top universities. In order to accelerate the process of improving their top universities, several governments have launched so-called “excellence initiatives”, consisting of large injections of additional funding to boost their university sector. This article assesses the impact of these initiatives on the universities involved and on the rest of the tertiary education system. While the first section analyzes the main features of excellence initiatives, the second part examines their results as well as their limitations.
Since the late 2000s, a growing number of African universities have put the international dimension at the heart of their strategic agenda. Flagship and national universities have created offices for ...deputy vice chancellors or directors, directorates, and centres for internationalization and strategic partnerships, and moved from a narrow focus on student mobility programs to research partnerships with universities in industrial countries as a way of building their capacity and improving their position on the global stage.
In the era of global rankings, many governments want to make sure that their top universities are actually operating at the cutting edge of intellectual and scientific development. A major concern ...has therefore been to identify the most effective method for inducing substantial and rapid progress in a country's top universities. In order to accelerate the process of improving their top universities, several governments have launched so-called "excellence initiatives", consisting of large injections of additional funding to boost their university sector. This article assesses the impact of these initiatives on the universities involved and on the rest of the tertiary education system. While the first section analyzes the main features of excellence initiatives, the second part examines their results as well as their limitations. (HoF/text adopted).
Launching a new tertiary education institution that aspires to attain the highest possible standards is a noble but extremely difficult enterprise. There are many commonly observable errors. The ...decision to build a world-class university must always be examined within the proper context to ensure full alignment with the national tertiary education strategy and to avoid distortions in resource-allocation patterns within the sector.
In the past decade, however, accountability has become a major concern in most parts of the world. Governments, parliaments, and society at large are increasingly asking universities to justify the ...use of public resources and account more thoroughly for their teaching and research results. The universal push for increased accountability has made the role of university leaders much more demanding. The successful evolution of higher education institutions will hinge on finding an appropriate balance between credible accountability practices and favorable autonomy conditions.
Traditional, mortgage-type student loan schemes are vulnerable by design, as illustrated by the problems faced by the Chilean and Colombian agencies in recent years. Without an income-contingent ...provision, times of economic crisis are bound to create difficulties, as unemployment rises and incomes stagnate. This article documents the challenges encountered in these two Latin American nations and draws a few lessons that could help strengthen existing student loan systems.
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