Institutionalization of World-Class University in Global Competition

Moving the academic debate on from its current focus on development to a more nuanced sociological perspective, this fresh research is a collaboration between academics in South Korea and Germany that assesses the factors shaping world-class universities as institutional social systems as well as national cultural treasures. The work explores in detail how WCUs have moved to a central position in policy circles, and how these often ambitious government policies on WCUs have been interpreted and adopted by university administrators and individual professors.The authors provide a wealth of empirical data on universities, both world-class and aiming for WCU status, in a range of polities and continents. They compare strategies for developing WCUs in countries of the East and the West, both developing and developed. Nations featured in the statistical purview include nine countries (Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR). The volume goes further than merely taking a snapshot of the current situation, offering detailed and considered strategies and rationales for institutionalizing and developing WCUs, particularly in Asian countries where Confucian cultural influences accord education the highest priority.

The global push to establish world class universities is thoughtfully depicted and critiqued in this interesting book. The editors and authors first outline some of the cross-national forces behind the drive to foster WCU. Then they present several case-studies that enable the reader to understand both what is similar and what is different in the respective efforts to launch WCUs in diverse national settings. The researchers who have contributed to this volume are first-rate and have cooperated in a common research design. The outcome is a volume of exceptional high quality that sheds much light on one of the most important trends in contemporary higher education.

William K. Cummings, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

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