Brain Circulation: The Globalization of Higher Education

Ben Wildavsky, Senior Fellow in Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, recently published an interesting book –  The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World. The book details just how globalization is making for better universities around the world and a competition among them for talent.   This is a story told over and over again in higher education these days and it is impossible to go to any meeting on higher education policy without hearing dire warnings about how Chinese or other universities are going to overtake U.S universities and that talent, creativity (and patents) will be lost in a zero-sum brain drain.  But Wildavsky is not delivering dire warnings.  He maintains that free trade among intellectual talent is good for everyone, including the U.S.  In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month, he noted:

This intense scholarly competition and exchange—call it free trade in minds—is shaking up the academy. But the anxiety it creates on college campuses and beyond has led to periodic outbursts of academic protectionism. In India, for example, foreign universities are barred from setting up branch campuses, a policy that is only lately being revisited in a contentious bill before India’s parliament. Restricting mobility in the opposite direction, the director of one elite Indian technology institute banned his students from taking overseas internships. Malaysia has placed a 5% cap on the number of foreign undergrads at the nation’s public universities.

And later:

An even bigger problem is what might be called psychological protectionism: the sentiment that if foreign nations are getting ahead academically, we in the West must be falling behind. Ian Gow, the founding president of Nottingham University’s Ningbo campus in China, has cautioned that China’s partnerships with British universities are a one-way street, intended to vacuum up Western science and technology strengths that China is desperate to gain: “British institutions must stop viewing this aggressively ambitious country through rose-tinted spectacles.”

This apprehensive response to the globalization of universities is misguided. It amounts to modern-day mercantilism, the outmoded idea that in order to prosper a nation must grab the maximum share of a finite amount of global capital. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No doubt the new global brain race will be intensely competitive. But competition is as healthy on campuses as it is everywhere else. More world-class universities and better-educated people in countries like China and India are good for the West, not bad. After all, increasing knowledge is not a zero-sum game. It is a public good that can be used by everyone. The free flow of people and ideas made possible by a global academic culture fosters inventive thinking and prosperity for East and West alike.

Wildavsky’ s point is a good one and it echoes what NAFSA: Association of International Educators  reported on last year inA Visa and Immigration Policy for the Brain Circulation Era: Adjusting to What Happened in the World While We Were Busy Making Other Plans.

…the United States has been slow to appreciate and adjust to a paradigm shift in global mobility that has fundamentally altered patterns of travel and work around the world. America can no longer assume that it is the preferred destination for people who seek to improve their lives outside their home countries. Talented students and skilled workers have many options around the world – they will go to the places that welcome them and offer the best opportunities. The United States’ challenge is to participate in the global community in a way that lifts up Americans to compete in a global workforce while also being open, accessible, and attractive to the world’s best talent and future leaders.

Accepting that we are living in an era of increasing global brain circulation has real policy consequences for U.S. development strategy as it offers a way in which to deliver meaningful foreign assistance.  Namely, USAID should increase attention on building capacity of higher education institutions in the developing world, particularly in Africa and the poorer states in the Middle East and North Africa.  This is not to say that the U.S. Government should work to establish a new American university in every country.  Some, like the American University of Cairo, are outstanding.  But in most countries very good universities already exist and with just a bit of sustained help those institutions can thrive.  Supporting the development of universities works best for all involved via university-to-university partnerships.  I have written before about the partnerships established by Higher Education for Development that work with USAID to create links as part of joint development initiatives.   HED serves as a model for how the U.S. can build capacity in universities overseas and also establish sustainable partnerships that would allow for easier mobility of students and faculty.

I can imagine a time not too far away in which it wouldn’t be unusual for an American student to get different degrees in different countries.  Maybe like this: a dual diploma as an undergraduate (let’s say through my university’s program with Turkey, so they would simultaneously earn SUNY and Turkish undergraduate degrees) a master’s degree from the Makerere University in Uganda, a professional degree from the University of Cape Town and a mid-career fellowship at Earth University in Costa Rica.  Now that would really be a world-class education.  To make it work will require taking language instruction seriously (so Americans students can fully participate in international partnerships), supporting study abroad with increased funding (for students who couldn’t otherwise afford it) and looking beyond the usual few countries that U.S. universities flock to. It will also take giving up what Wildavsky calls the mercantilist approach of merely seeking to capture and retain the best brains.   That beggar-thy-neighbor approach simply won’t work for universities.