What is a "world-class" University? Professor Bill Kirby explains why consumers should look further than unreliable university ranking systems for answers: http://hbs.me/2aPvCnC
昨天4:30·
什麼是“世界一流”大學？比爾·柯比教授解釋了為什麼消費者應該進一步看起來比不可靠的大學排名體系答案：http://hbs.me/2aPvCnC
2016年8月11日冷撥PODCAST
為什麼大學排名保持院長夜不能寐
- 11 AUG 2016
- COLD CALL PODCAST
Why College Rankings Keep Deans Awake at Night
Brian Kenny: In September of 2013, President Obama sent shock waves through American higher education by announcing a plan for a federal rating system that would allow parents and students to easily compare colleges. He said he would urge Congress to pass legislation to link student aid to the rating system. The president abandoned the idea after many college presidents complained that there is no simple way to reliably rate and rank institutions of higher learning given their vast differences.
That reality, however, hasn't slowed the rising tide of annual college rankings from all corners of the world, rating schools in every category imaginable. Today we'll hear from Professor Bill Kirby about his case study entitled "World-class" Universities: Rankings and Reputation in Higher Education.
Bill Kirby is a historian who examines contemporary China's business, economic and political development in an international context. In addition to many books and articles, he's written over 40 cases on China. I guess this counts as one of those, Bill. Thanks for joining me.
Bill Kirby: It's great to be here, Brian. Thanks for asking.
Brian Kenny: I found this case to be very, very interesting. I think many of our listeners have probably referred to those rankings at some point either for themselves or for their kids so I think they'll be able to relate to this as well. Put us in the context for this case. The protagonist it sounds like might be China itself?
Kirby: Well since my area is China, it's China in part. But I'm writing a book looking at the future of universities and what country or what national system is going to lead universities in the world of higher education in the 21st century. Is it going to be Europe, whose great institutions really defined what a modern university would be in the 19th century? The United States, which is without question still at the moment the dominant player in research universities? Or is it China, a place into which more resources are going than any other place in the world, and a place with more extraordinary human capital than any other place in the world, and a place (maybe because it's a communist country) that is more obsessed with hierarchy and rankings than any place I've ever been?
Kenny: When people see the case, they'll see that “world-class” is in quotations. Why did you decide to do that?
Kirby: Because no one knows what it is. Everyone wants to be “world-class” (no one has yet gone for the entire solar system), so we're just content to be successful on this planet at the moment. It is since every dean, every provost, every president particularly outside of the United States has an aspiration, in a university more than just a college, an aspiration to be ranked among global leaders. They are taken seriously in every corner of the world. I was giving a lecture couple of years ago in Vienna and the dean of this faculty in Vienna (actually it was the president of the University of Vienna) was there and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings of global universities had just come out and he was really upset. Vienna was number 65. How can this be? I thought to myself how can it be that the president of the University of Vienna cares so much what the Shanghai Jiao Tong University says about his university, but he does. These rankings have come to define what individual institutions do to get ahead.
Kenny: For some schools it maybe an exaggeration to say they live and die by this, but they really do pay close attention to these.
Kirby: They do pay close attention to them. I think for good and bad reasons. There is a lot that we can gain by looking at rankings or looking at kind of movements, broad movements in rankings. We also understand that this system is extraordinarily new. The US News and World Report, which everyone knows in the United States, started its college rankings in 1983 because it was a failing news magazine that needed another business to stay in print. That's why they did it and they suddenly got taken seriously even if it's purely reputational rankings to begin with. Now they have global rankings. The Shanghai Jiao Tong, the Times of London system, the QS systems, these are the three dominant global rankings that everyone takes very seriously in higher education around the world. They are no more than 10 to 15 years old but they have, with enormous speed, gained traction in how people think about universities.
Kenny: This is not an exact science. I alluded to that in the introduction, and every institution is different. Can you dig into the rankings a little bit and talk about what the key elements are that they look at on the global rankings?
Kirby: There are two basic fundamental systems. One is by reputation and one is by output. What output do you measure? Usually today it is primarily research output in a certain number of publications, almost exclusively in the English language and largely in science and engineering and applied science but in social science as well. Sometimes it ranks education to the degree that it can on faculty-student ratios. Some of them take a very specific number of journals and these are the only ones that they take seriously for ranking. Shanghai Jiao Tong is probably in some sense the most objective in that regard. The one thing that none of them rank well, which is something that parents care about enormously, is teaching. Teaching and education, inspiration, mentorship—not a single one of them has a real system for trying to figure out who gets educated. You can have a great research faculty but how do they learn, how do the students learn, how do the students come to know them? This is entirely missing in this system.
Kenny: That's a big gap. Particularly as we think about the student experience. The reputational piece applies directly to consumer point of view, right? If you're looking for a college you want to know that your child is going to be well cared for there, that they're going to have a good experience. The students themselves are thinking about, “I want to go to a place that's nice and comfortable and people are good to me and the food is good.” You've got a lot of rankings out there that are looking at seemingly pretty unimportant things like the taste of the food but maybe to that end consumer that's a really important element.
Kirby: There are two types of consumers in education. There are the students, who tend to know not too much about the product that they're about to acquire or be part of and, much more important, the parents because they're the ones who ultimately get to choose. I remember telling my own children, "You can apply to any college you want. These are the ones I'll pay for."
Kenny: There is some leverage in that.
Kirby: There is a little bit of leverage. Or at least “I'll help pay for." The lack of comparative information helps these rankings gain traction also because it gives you a sense of what are deemed to be the best liberal arts colleges, if you really want to go to a small college. What are the best places if you want to be pre-med or if you're thinking of going to law school or if you simply have no idea what you're doing? What are the places that per capita turn out some of the extraordinary talent? It's very interesting, one would think if you really wanted to go on to a PhD in biology that you might go to a place that's attached to a major medical school. In fact, a higher percentage of individuals go on to doctorates in the life sciences from places like Williams, Carlton, Middlebury—great liberal arts colleges where people get hands-on experience with scientists and with labs and who have a close working relationship with their faculty.
Kenny: Does that show up in the rankings? Does that somehow make itself apparent?
Kirby: No, because usually Williams, Middlebury these places are ranked as liberal arts colleges and they're not in the rankings of universities.
Kenny: Can you game the system? Is there a way to acquire the pieces that you need to elevate yourself in the rankings?
Kirby: Well you would know this better than me, maybe. The very sad thing that I see happening (and these rankings should take this into account and discount these statistics) is selectivity. For US News and World Report, for example, historically one of their criterion has been: how selective is the college? Do you take 20 percent of everybody who applies, do you take 50 percent of everybody who applies, or in the case of Harvard College less than 5% of those who apply? One of the sad things is that it is led many colleges to, how should we put it, “gin up” the number of applicants—getting many more people to apply who would otherwise not have applied so that they appear to be more selective, and including people who are not necessarily qualified or for whom it's simply not the right fit or the right place. I find that really very sad. They're more selective but it adds unnecessarily and almost cruelly to the anxiety of parents and students who are now told, “You need to apply to 10 to 15 places,” which I think is a huge mistake. Ten is more than enough for anybody, but you need to apply to all of these places because all of them are getting in many more applications than quite frankly they need or deserve.
Kenny: Right, so you've taught this case in class before?
Kirby: I've taught it this term to my MBAs and to my undergraduates.
Kenny: I'm curious about what their reaction was, since many of them probably are fresh off using one of these guide books?
Kirby: That's right. I asked them, "How did they choose their own college?" The good news is that their parents and their guidance counselors do pay some attention to these rankings but on the whole students much less so. They pay attention much more to reputation, to geography, and to where X or Y has gone that they know. The students looked at it and they looked very critically at the methodology of the rankings and particularly the MBAs understood how flawed these are or how idiosyncratic they are one by one by one. They serve, I have to say, different purposes. It's not by accident that the British universities tend to fair rather well in the Times of London polls, the American universities overwhelmingly well in the US News and World Report, by contrast probably the most heartless one of all is the Shanghai Jioa Tong ranking. Chinese universities Tsinghua and Beijing University, these are in the top 20, 30 or 40 depending on the rankings in the other rankings, but they are 150th and beyond in the one that is based purely on publication in certain journals.
Kenny: Do you see that shifting over time? If we were to look at the turn of the next century do you think all of a sudden the Chinese Universities would be displacing some of the universities that are commonly at the top of these rankings?
Kirby: I do. I think without question there will be one or two Chinese universities soon in the top 20, and in most of these rankings in another 10 to 15 years, two in the top 10, if the level of resources and if the kind of policies that I see being enacted in Chinese universities allow for this to happen. The biggest challenge though is not money, that's a huge challenge anywhere. It's not talent. A place like China has extraordinary talent in every dimension. It's governance. Who makes the decision of what you invest in for research? Who hires the faculty? How do you bring in the best students? How do you make sure that the faculty and students interact and that the faculty actually teach the students once they're there? How do you give the faculty the academic freedom and the intellectual freedom? What the Germans called in the 19th century “lehrfreiheit,” the freedom to teach, and for the students “lernefreheit,” the freedom to learn. This is at the moment what is sadly constrained at least in the humanities and social sciences in China on any matter political.
The other thing I will say if you look at European universities and particularly at German universities, which really led the world until the beginning of the twentieth century, they're trying to lead again. They are re-inventing themselves again. These rankings have come as a kind of shock to that system and so they have initiated what is called an “excellence initiative” in which enormous amounts of money are going to fund truly innovative efforts of teaching and learning across the major German universities. The French are trying to do the same. The European universities are not standing still, they're growing very strong.
The place that I worry about the most, mostly because I'm here, is the United States. I worry less about places like Harvard and Yale and the big private universities. I worry that we too will begin to decline if the great public systems of this country decline. One of the things that I talk about in another case, a case on the University of California, Berkeley—this is arguably the greatest public university in the United States, perhaps in the world, but it has suffered enormously in terms of budgetary and other pressures over the last decade and more and longer than that. If it declines as it possibly may in a significant way, then places like Harvard will decline too. We compete with them for the same graduate students. For the same faculty. We're part of a highly competitive environment in this country, globally now as well. If such a great system declines it hurts all of us. When one thinks of these rankings, we should pay as national policy much greater attention than we do to the state of our great public universities.
布萊恩·肯尼：在2013年九月，美國總統奧巴馬通過美國高等教育宣布了聯邦政府的評價系統，使家長和學生比較容易高校計劃發送衝擊波。他說，他將敦促國會通過立法，以學生資助鏈接到評級體系。總統放棄了想法後，許多大學校長抱怨說，有沒有簡單的方法可靠率，並給予他們的巨大差異高等教育排名的機構。
這一現實，但是，並沒有從每個類別的想像世界的各個角落，等級學校每年放慢大學排行榜的漲潮。今天我們就從比爾·柯比教授聽到題為“世界一流”大學他的案例研究：高等教育排名和聲譽。
比爾·柯比是誰考察當代中國的商業，經濟和政治發展在國際範圍內歷史學家。此外還有許多書籍和文章，他寫了40多糾紛案對中國。我想這算作其中之一，比爾。感謝您加入我。
比爾科比：很高興來到這裡，布萊恩。謝謝你的邀請。
布萊恩肯尼：我發現這種情況是非常，非常有趣。我想，我們很多聽眾可能已經提到在某些時候無論是為自己或自己的孩子的排名，所以我認為他們將能夠涉及到這一點。把我們對這種情況下的背景。這聽起來像的主角可能是中國本身？
科比：嗯，因為我的地區是中國，這是中國一部分。但我寫了一本書在看大學的未來，哪個國家或國家什麼系統要引領高等教育世界大學在21世紀。這是否是歐洲，其偉大的機構真正定義現代大學是在19世紀什麼？在美國，這是毫無疑問仍處於時刻研究型大學主導者？或者是中國，在其中更多的資源會比世界上任何其他地方的地方，與更多非凡的人力資本比世界上任何其他地方的地方，一個地方（也許是因為它是一個共產主義國家）是更痴迷等級和排名比任何地方我去過？
肯尼：當人們看到的情況下，他們會看到“世界級”是語錄。你為什麼決定這樣做呢？
科比：因為沒有人知道它是什麼。每個人都想成為“世界一流”（還沒有人走了整個太陽系），所以我們只是內容是成功的在這個星球上的時刻。這是因為每一個院長，教務長每天，每一位總統特別在美國以外的國家都有一個願望，在一所大學不僅僅是一個大學本科以上，一個渴望全球領導者之間進行排名。他們認真對待世界的每一個角落。我給在維也納的演講幾年前，這教職工在維也納院長（實際上這是維也納大學的校長），在那裡和全球性大學，上海交通大學的排名剛剛出來，他是真的很心煩。維也納是65號，怎麼會這樣？我心想怎麼能是維也納大學校長在乎那麼多什麼上海交通大學說，有關他的大學，但他確實。這些排名都來界定什麼個別機構做才能獲得成功。
肯尼：對於某些學校可能是一個誇張地說，他們的生活和這個死去，但他們真的做到密切關注這些。
科比：他們密切關注他們。我認為好的和壞的理由。有很多，我們可以通過查看排名或看樣的動作，在廣闊的排名變動的收益。我們也明白，這個系統顯得格外新鮮。美國新聞與世界報導，人人都在美國的人都知道，開始了它的大學排行榜在1983年，因為它是一個失敗的新聞雜誌，需要其他業務留在打印。這就是為什麼他們做到了，他們突然得到了重視，即使純粹聲譽排名開始。現在，他們有全球排名。上海交大，倫敦時報體系，QS體系，這些都是大家非常重視高等教育在世界各地三大主導全球排名。他們是不超過10歲到15歲，但他們已經與巨大的速度，獲得了人們如何看待大學牽引。
肯尼：這不是一門精確的科學。我提到，在引進，和每一個機構是不同的。你能挖掘到的排名約一點點，議論什麼的關鍵因素是，他們看對全球排名？
柯比：有兩種基本的根本制度。一種是口碑，一個是輸出。你衡量的產出？通常，它是今天在一定數量的出版物主要研究成果，幾乎只在英語語言主要是在科學與工程和應用科學，但在社會科學中也是如此。有時它躋身教育的程度，它可以對教師與學生比例。他們中有些人採取期刊的一個非常具體的數字，這些都是他們認真對待的排名唯一的。上海交大可能是在一定意義上在這方面的最客觀的。有一件事，他們沒有好的排名，這是家長關心極大，是教什麼的。教學和教育，啟發，指導，他們不是一個單一有試圖找出誰得到教育的一個真正的系統。你可以有一個偉大的研究教師，但他們是如何學習，如何做學生的學習，怎麼辦學生來認識他們嗎？這是完全丟失，在這個系統中。
肯尼：這是一個很大的差距。特別是我們思考的學生的經驗。該聲譽件直接適用於消費者的角度，對不對？如果你正在尋找一個大學，你想知道你的孩子會受到很好的照顧那裡，他們將有一個很好的經驗。他們都在思考，學生們：“我想去那是漂亮，舒適，大家都對我很好，食物很好的地方。”你有很多排名在那裡的是正在尋找看似漂亮不重要的事情喜歡的食物的味道，但也許到最終消費者，這是一個非常重要的因素。
柯比：有兩種類型的消費者的教育。有學生，誰往往不知道太多關於他們即將收購或者是一部分，更重要的產品，家長，因為他們是那些誰最終得到選擇。我記得告訴我自己的孩子，“你可以應用到任何你想要的大學。這些都是我會賠償。”
肯尼：有在有些槓桿作用。
科比：有槓桿的一點點。或者至少是“我會幫助支付。”缺乏對比資料幫助這些排名獲得牽引力也因為它給你的東西被認為是最好的文理學院，如果你真的想要去一個小感大學。有什麼，如果你想預-MED或者如果你考慮去法學院最好的地方，或者你根本不知道你在做什麼？什麼是人均轉出一些地方過人的天賦？這是非常有趣的，人們會認為，如果你真的想要去到生物學，你可能會去到附加到一個重大的醫學學校的地方博士學位。事實上，個人的比例較高去到博士學位從像威廉姆斯，卡爾頓地區生命科學，明德偉大文科院校裡的人獲得動手與科學家和實驗室與經驗，誰與他們的教師緊密的合作關係。
肯尼：這是否在排名中顯示？這是否以某種方式使自己明顯？
科比：不，因為通常威廉姆斯，明德這些地方都列為文科院校，他們還沒有在大學的排名。
肯尼：你可以通過遊戲系統？是否有收購，你需要提升自己的排名件的方法嗎？
科比：嗯，你會知道這比我好，也許。我看到的情況（而這些排名應該考慮到這一點和折扣這些統計數據）非常可悲的是選擇性。對於美國新聞與世界報導，例如，歷史上他們的標準之一是：如何選擇是大學？你是不是把大家誰適用的20％，你願意接受大家誰申請，還是在哈佛學院那些誰申請的不超過5％的情況下的50％？其中一個傷心的事情是，它是導致許多大中專院校，我們應該如何把它，“蠱惑”的申請，讓更多的人申請誰否則將不會申請，讓他們顯得更具有選擇性的數量，和包括人誰不一定是合格的，或對他們來說根本就不是合適人選或合適的地方。我覺得真的很傷心。他們更多的選擇性，但不必要的，幾乎殘酷地增加了家長和學生的焦慮，現在誰被告知，“你需要申請10到15的地方，”我認為這是一個巨大的錯誤。十是綽綽有餘任何人多了，但你需要應用到所有這些地方，因為所有的人都得到很多更多的應用程序比他們需要或者應該很坦率地說。
肯尼：對，所以你以前教這種情況下，在課堂上？
科比：我教它這個詞對我的MBA和本科生我的。
肯尼：我很好奇他們的反應是什麼，因為其中很多使用這些指南的書籍之一可能是新鮮的了嗎？
科比：這是正確的。我問他們，“他們是怎麼選擇適合自己的大學？”好消息是，他們的父母和他們的輔導員做付出一些關注這些排名，但整體上的學生要少得多。他們關注更多的信譽，地域，到X或Y已經他們知道。學生看了一下，他們顯得很審慎的排名方法，尤其是MBA們明白他們如何有缺陷的這些或如何特質是一個接一個接一個。他們服務，我不得不說，不同的目的。這不是偶然的，英國的大學傾向於公平相當不錯倫敦時報的民意調查中，美國大學壓倒性以及在美國新聞與世界報導，相反可能是所有的最無情的一個是上海Jioa塘排名。中國高校清華大學和北京大學，這些都是前20名，30或40取決於在其他排名的排名，但他們在這純粹是基於某些期刊出版一150和超越。
肯尼：你看到換擋隨著時間的推移？如果我們要尋找下一個世紀之交，你認為突然的中國大學將取代一些，在這些排名的頂部通常是大學的？
科比：我做的。我認為，毫無疑問會有一個或兩個中國大學很快在排名前20位，並且在大多數這些排名再過10到15年，兩人在排名前10位，如果資源水平，如果什麼樣的政策，我看到正在制定在中國的大學允許這種情況發生。最大的挑戰雖然是不要錢的，這是一個巨大的挑戰任何地方。這不是天賦。像中國這樣的地方在每一個層面過人的天賦。它的治理。誰使你投資什麼研究決定？誰聘用教師？如何在最優秀的學生帶來了什麼？你如何確保教師和學生交流和教師實際教學生，一旦他們在那裡？你如何給教師的學術自由和思想自由？什麼叫在19世紀，德國“lehrfreiheit，”自由教，並為學生“lernefreheit，”自由學習。這是此刻是什麼在中國人文和社會科學，至少制約黯然政治上的任何事項。
其他的事情，如果你看一下歐洲的大學，特別是在德國的大學，真正引領世界直到二十世紀之初，他們正試圖再次領先，我會說。他們又重新發明自己。這些排名都來作為一種衝擊到該系統，所以他們已經開始了所謂的“卓越計劃”，其中的巨額資金將要資助教學的真正創新的努力和整個德國主要的大學學習。法國正在試圖做同樣的。歐洲大學都沒有坐以待斃，他們正在成長非常強勁。
我擔心最多的，主要是因為我在這裡的地方，就是美國。我少擔心像哈佛和耶魯大學和大私立大學的地方。我擔心，我們也將開始，如果這個國家衰落的大公共系統下降。其中之一，我在另一起案件談事情，在加州大學的情況下，伯克利 - 這可以說是美國最大的公立大學，也許在世界，但它在預算和其他方面遭受巨大在過去十年中，比多和更長的壓力。如果拒絕，因為它可能會在顯著的方式，然後像哈佛的地方就會下降了。我們與他們競爭相同的研究生。出於同樣的教師。我們在這個國家的激烈競爭環境的一部分，現在全球也。如果這樣一個偉大的系統拒絕它傷害了我們所有人。當一個人認為這些排名的，比我們做的我們偉大的公立大學的狀態，我們要為國家政策的更大關注。
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