The Role of Internationalization along the “Path to Excellence”

The Role of Internationalization along the “Path to Excellence” Professor Martin Henson Dean for International Affairs University of Essex UK October 2012 Thank you very much. It is great pleasure to be here today to contribute to the really important agenda of this conference and I would like to thank the organizers for the invitation to speak. It is, of course, no accident that a meeting such as this, has been convened by the National Research University, Higher School of Economics and that so many have taken the trouble to attend. The HSE has developed strongly and extremely quickly since Yevgeny Yasin, Yaroslav Kouzminov and other leading economists founded it in 1992. And its outward-facing, international, collaborative approach is central to its increasing success. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has what it likes to call its “Little Secret” – the secret that lies behind its spectacular success since 1991 – and central to that is what its former President, Paul Chu, described as “Going global, unencumbered by the weight of tradition”. That might well be a slogan for the approach we have taken at my own institution, the University of Essex, too. The University of Essex is situated a little outside London close to the east coast of England. It is an unspoilt area of the country – a largely rural haven – though retaining the benefits of being so close to the capital city. Essex is one of seven universities that were established in the mid-sixties. Michael Beloff’s description of these as the “plate-glass universities” is a rather dismal characterization for a group of universities that has in less than half a century achieved really outstanding results. Our own founding Vice Chancellor, Sir Albert Sloman, provided a detailed analysis of what the new universities of the sixties could achieve, in his BBC Reith Lectures of 1963. Titled “A University in the Making”, Sloman wanted to “… provide an experience of living as well as an opportunity for learning … unhampered by precedents and by established structures.” And that freedom to establish new modes of operation is very likely why three of Beloff’s plate-glass universities, Warwick, York and Essex, were ranked in the top ten in the UK in the Research Assessment Exercise of 2008. At Essex, it is the social sciences and humanities that rank most highly in the UK’s research assessment. If my University was to be unhampered by out-dated modi operandi it would need to find its own set of guiding principles. Those developed in the Reith Lectures and then put into operation during its first fifteen years were summarized by the University’s fourth Vice Chancellor, Sir Ivor Crewe, in celebrating our 40th Anniversary in 2004; he said this: “Sir Albert Sloman’s ambition was to create a university that was international, interdisciplinary, and inclusive, breaking down barriers between nations, disciplines and social hierarchies.” And those precepts have reverberated and modulated in the meantime, leaving an indelible imprint on what we have become today. For example, by 2008, the proportion of non-UK students at Essex had reached about 40% and the proportion of international faculty was over a third. Taken together, these two facts made us one of the top twenty most internationalized university communities in the world. As our fifth Vice Chancellor, it was one of Professor Colin Riordan’s first actions to lead the development of a new Strategic Vision – and internationalization was placed firmly at the heart of that. In so doing, we were not so much changing direction, as recognizing something about ourselves that has always been important. Having it written up in this way, made us much more reflective in thinking through what internationalization means for us, and much more deliberate in the steps we take to pursue a global agenda. In this we are hardly alone. The international dimension has become arguably the most significant priority within higher education sectors across the globe. At present, of course, other major priorities concern the maintenance and preservation of our higher education systems in the face of worrying economic realities and unhelpful political contexts: the need to cope with ever more invasive external pressures that go beyond any reasonable notion of accountability. Outside these imperatives, however, it is hard to identify an area that a university would see as more relevant to its long-term mission, than its place in the world. Globalization has, however, become almost a cliché. It is certainly overestimated. In his book “World 3.0”, Pankaj Ghemawat of the IESE Business School in Spain, assesses that we are at most only semi-globalized. Only 3% of us live and work outside our country of birth. Only 1% of US companies have a foreign presence. Only 20% of Internet traffic crosses national boundaries. Compare this with the regular business of our universities. Compare, for example, that 3% of international workers with the 35% at Essex; and ask yourself if four in five web pages you and your colleagues view, come from within your own country. Universities worldwide are not so much travelling in the wake of broader globalization as leading it from the front. And that is a good place to be. Globalization is, I suppose, a term as likely to induce fears of a dystopian nightmare as hopes of a utopian dream. Utopian ideals are, in any event, pure hubris at best and, at worst, dystopia in disguise; but universities ought at the very least to be able come up with decent models, and should be able to develop reasonable maps to navigate the terrain. So let me, in this spirit, speak about my University’s current approach to Internationalization. I want to concentrate mainly on our approach to collaboration through our International Alliance project, which has created an intimate network of three universities, and with which we are building strong collaborations in research, education, student exchange, and community engagement. But let me begin with the overall space of possibilities. In the diagram, the bottom left-hand corner contains the large essentially anarchic space of individual international academic links. At Essex a very large proportion of our scholarly activity involves international partnerships – in terms of both academic publications and research income; and this activity is spread across almost as many countries as are represented by our academic staff. Such has been the historic levels of international activity, that further internationalisation at Essex is definitely not a matter of increasing the amount of international research and educational engagement, and it has certainly nothing to do with the recruitment of fee-paying international students – it is rather about ensuring that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts – and it is about concentration – that is, it is focused on the quality not the quantity of our international activities. The top-left of my diagram covers multi-lateral, but narrowly focused collaborations. Centred largely on research groups in international consortia, these activities are more formally planned and managed. In the bottom-right corner of the diagram we have bilateral institutional links that are broadly based. That broad base may represent a range of academic areas or a range of activities – for example, research, curricula links, student mobility, and so on. These relationships are formally planned and managed – and we have seen a migration from the left to the right side of the diagram as we have recognised previously unnoticed patterns of activity within the more unplanned activities of individuals and groups. The top-right corner of the diagram represents the most deliberate component of our international strategy – the Alliance. Our thinking here has changed a little over the last few years, but our current objective is to establish very close working relationships with two other universities. These are the University of Konstanz in Germany, a member of the Excellence Initiative, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India, recently judged India’s premiere university. Whether we extend this in the future with another member remains an open question – but we are determined that the network should be real, deep and committed. At present we have around 10 funded research projects active across the network, in almost as many areas. We have established a joint masters programme – with a number of others in progress. There has been a good level of student movement – with, we insist, much higher levels of participation to follow. We want to establish, in time, a distinctive entity that changes us, the member universities, in the process. We are learning a lot from our partners. For example, we have significantly improved our approach to student mobility from studying the outstanding work in this area at the University of Konstanz. In British education, schooling used to be underpinned by what were, somewhat misleadingly, known as the “three R’s” – reading, writing, and arithmetic. Our approach at Essex to international strategy is underpinned and conditioned, rather less economically, by “Eight R’s”. These principles do not set out specific objectives or aims. Rather, they set out overarching values that should condition the collaborations. I’d like to take these Eight R’s one by one. Research-focus International activities are based on shared intellectual interests and academic achievements. Resonance Cooperative activities, whether in research, in teaching or in knowledge transfer, arise and benefit from common interests and complementary expertise. Reciprocity International activities are mutually beneficial to all participants. Relationships The approach favours multilateralism, building relationships horizontally across all intellectual areas, and vertically throughout governance structures. The first R is for Research focus. We agree with Nigel Thrift and others who are involved in deep international institutional alliances – our network should be based on shared intellectual interests and academic achievements. We are a leading research institution, and what attracts both faculty members and students to Essex are those strengths. Research activity is the glue that holds us together and shapes most of what we otherwise do. Shared interests among partners, likewise, should form the substrate upon which Alliance activities are built. The second R is for Resonance. In building a network we could seek partners who substantially mirror our own strengths and interests – creating a larger version of ourselves in the process. Alternatively, we could seek partners who boast strengths in areas we entirely lack – creating a more comprehensive entity – a sort of super university. Neither of these is what we’re looking to do. What, in fact, we want is resonance. That’s to say complementary expertise – whether in research, teaching or in knowledge exchange, that, for all partners, builds and extends our individual strengths and interests. Peter Coclanis, Director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina, has introduced an idea he calls “Intellectual Arbitrage”. In finance, an arbitrage opportunity is based on a difference in value of a commodity when transferred from a market in which it has a lower value to one in which it has higher value. Intellectual arbitrage concerns the value of academic capacity available within one partner organization for another partner which otherwise lacks that capacity. Such capacities might be physical resources – say instrumentation, or laboratories, or natural resources – it might involve access to field sites, or to specialised human resources – the expertise and experience of faculty members. We all operate within the limits of our available resources. Today, more than ever, we feel and bump up against those limits ourselves. In developing Higher Education sectors, for example in Africa, those limits have always been present. But none of us can afford to expand and extend freely – but the arbitrage opportunities arising through resonant collaborations create additional capacity for resonant partners and allow us to take advantage of new opportunities that would not otherwise be available. The third R is for Reciprocity. It is almost an embarrassment to have to underline this: the activities of the network should be mutually beneficial to all participants. It is remarkable that this does not go without saying. In an interesting article entitled “Nine Problems That Hinder Partnerships in Africa” John Holm and Leps Malete, from the University of Botswana, note that Western academics often assume control of joint research projects, manipulating resources (both human and natural), and thus disrupt and exploit the local agenda. At the Jawaharlal Nehru University in India we learnt of even more devious exploitative tactics – where what look like a genuine research collaboration with an international partner university ends abruptly once that partner has lured away talented students and post-doctoral researchers to their research groups. This is not at all convivial. JNU is of course one of our Alliance partners and we have very strong links with the University of Botswana – considerable work has been required to assure them that mutuality is a core value for us. The fourth R is for Relationships. We certainly agree with Colin Grant when he was at the University of Surrey, that “tight multilateralism” conditions the relationship between partners in our network. But we want to say somewhat more about relationships within the network. We want each bilateral partnership to be broadly based across many disciplines. This maximises the multilateral permutations. However, in addition to this horizontal integration across disciplines, we want to establish vertical integration throughout the governance structures. That’s to say – strong relationships between leaders, senior managers and department heads. Through such multidimensional relationships we aim to create circumstances in which networked institutions understand their weaknesses and threats as much as their strengths and opportunities – by building up trust and understanding between those within universities who are charged with the institutional strategy, management, and of course the financial resources. Given this level of strategic intimacy, taking bold decisions that might otherwise be considered too risky, become real possibilities. Reputation Based on the reputation of collaborating institutions, activities should create a unique profile and establish international visibility. Responsiveness We make use of leading communications technology, allowing rapid and agile approaches to governance and for supporting intellectual collaboration. Responsibility Responsibility for activities is devolved to the faculties, departments, research groups and individuals that can best direct and lead them. Reach Relationships are not exclusive; partners should continue to reach out to work with the wider international community. The fifth R is for Reputation. Built on the reputation of its constituent institutions, and based on resonant activities, the Alliance should itself create a unique profile and establish an international visibility of its own. The sixth R is for Responsiveness. The partners in the network are necessarily geographically distributed. There are limits to how often and how many face-to-face meetings can take place. Infrequent visits require considerable planning and resource, and are justified only when the quantity and nature of the business is commensurate with the effort of setting them up. Moreover, they have to be more overtly managed and approved. And we do not want to fall into the trap described admirably by Nigel Thift, Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick, that lead to networks that: “… provide a sense of international involvement and inclusion without doing much except making dents in the travel budgets of presidents and provosts.” But we can address this with the use of technology. By harnessing the vast array of technology at our disposal, we can ensure rapid and agile communication – not simply for pursuing academic activities, but also for governance. Agile governance could be crucial for supporting and developing worthwhile educational and scholarly activities. The seventh R is for Responsibility. This is, I think, also really crucial and is, again, linked with conviviality: the responsibility for alliance activities should be devolved to the faculties, departments, research groups and individuals that can best direct and lead them. I earlier described the academic activities of the alliance as cutting horizontally across the institutions and the governance activities as slicing vertically through them – the latter is really essential for supporting the former effectively. And ensuring self-determination and control of the agenda at the appropriate level is crucial. The eighth and final R is for Reach. Our international collaborations should never be exclusive, ruling out other international links. Collaborators, members of the Alliance, should continue to reach out to work with the wider international community as they see fit. A closely bound network of institutions like our Alliance will fulfil many objectives – but it is very unlikely to fulfil them all. We must ensure that activities within the Alliance, however convivial in themselves, do not rule out worthwhile activities outside. In terms of strategy, then, these “Eight Rs” are not explicit objectives with precise targets to be met – they are, rather, guiding principles that condition our international strategy – whether that concerns a simple narrowly focused bilateral collaboration, or whether it concerns the building of broadly based activities at the institutional level within the Alliance. In a spirit of conviviality, that’s all we need – the academic, professional and student communities can lead on the substance. In finishing, let me end where I started. When the university was first established, Albert Sloman also said this: “Our first students will still be in positions of influence and responsibility in the first two decades of the 21st century. In those distant days, 40 or 50 years ahead, their grandchildren may be at the University of Essex. They will know nothing of the bustle and bewilderment of the 1960s, nor even of the hopes and ideals which those associated with the University’s foundation cherished … We should like them to feel that in our attempt at creating a new community of learning we had a measure of success.” He was right – many of the university’s students have gone on to lead and influence. And he was probably right that many of our current students, and indeed academic staff, may know very little of our heritage. But their current opportunities, particularly their international opportunities, our global academic perspective, and our convivial approach to such endeavours as the Alliance, can all be traced back to the very beginning; they have been a consistent theme in the intervening years. They are largely what marks my university out as unique and attractive, and they are in great part responsible for our level of success as an institution. And this commitment to internationalization will be, I trust, central to our strategy in future, as we, like you, continue to tread the “Path towards Excellence”. Thank you, very much.