THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE FROM
THE CHRONICLE
O F H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N
T
55 THE HUMANITIES GO GOOGLE 59 THE GOSPEL OF WELLEDUCATED GUESSING
Rise of the Global Varsity: Five New Tensions Research universities are the most globally connected of all sectors. Knowledge is the free currency of higher education. Global connections; comparisons and rankings; and flows of people, ideas, knowledge, and capital are transforming higher education BY SIMON MARGINSON
S
ome scholars date the beginnings of globalisation from the first move of people out of Africa. Some date it from the spread of world religions— Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Others date it from the imperial European empires, the Napoleonic wars, or the expanded trade and migration in the second half of the Victorian era. But one thing is certain: In the past two decades, the internet and cheap air travel have created such closer integration and convergence that, for the first time, a single world society is within reach—and higher education, ranging beyond the nation-state, is a central driver. The “multiversity”—a university with multiple constituencies and demands that Clark Kerr, the former president of the University of California, identified in the 1960s—has given way to the Global Research University, or GRU. The Global Research University is the multiversity with much more mobility, more cross-national research and learning, and more global systems and rankings. Indeed, in almost every country, research universities are among the most globally connected of all sectors. Knowledge, the free currency of higher education, flows anywhere and everywhere, like quicksilver on a metal table. At the same time, global connections; global comparisons and rankings; and global flows of people, ideas, knowledge, and capital are transforming higher education.
52
EDU TECH July 2010