The Great Brain Race

My friend and colleague Ben Wildavsky is a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation and author of The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World, to be published in May by Princeton University Press. May 12, Ben tells me.

 

Take a minute to read this excellent summary essay Ben recently published in Times Higher Education.

Here is a long excerpt to whet your appetite:

Long known primarily as the world's largest exporter of students, China is now doing much more to build its human capital at home. In addition to expanding the quantity and quality of its own universities, it is forging partnerships with Western universities that operate programmes in China. And it has lured home some academics who left for the West, but who now find appealing opportunities in newly revitalised universities.

Moreover, China is not alone. The yearning to create competitive universities is also vividly on display in Singapore, which seeks to become a world-renowned educational hub and has brought in numerous Western partners, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. South Korea, for its part, is creating what amounts to an academic free-trade zone in a 52,000-acre complex near Incheon International airport, playing host to branch campuses of many Western universities.

Nor is academic globalisation confined to Asia. The lavishly funded King Abdullah University of Science and Technology opened in Saudi Arabia last year, seeking to join the top ranks of world scholarship via alliances with the likes of Imperial College London and Stanford University. KAUST is also taking advantage of the new global talent market, poaching its first president, Choon Fong Shih, from the National University of Singapore.

The book's website is www.greatbrainrace.com. It features a book excerpt, a video interview, links to articles adapted from the book, and several online ordering options. The book has already been endorsed by Judy Woodruff of PBS Newshour, Yale president Richard Levin, Sebastian Mallaby of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline. 

The Great Brain Race tells the story of the transformation of the global academic landscape in recent years. Nearly 3 million students now study outside their home nations; globe-trotting faculty hop from the United States to Singapore to Saudi Arabia; Western universities create branch campuses in the Middle East and Asia; and new or rejuvenated research universities in China, South Korea, Europe, and beyond vie with American giants for the top spots in global education rankings.

 

If you didn't know, Ben was once in charge of the annual U.S. college rankings for a major U.S. magazine. He agrees with me, by the way, that the Air Force Academy is the best all around undergraduate education available. So I guess all this global hubbub is about who is number 2, West Point or Annapolis, right?

 

Final note: Ben did not ask or know about this review. He is a great writer, this is a great topic, and I hope you make an effort to read this great book. To put the topic in context: economic growth is, we now know, fundamentally about ideas and the human capital that adopts and invents them. Globalization is about the evolving network of flowing goods, capital, and ideas. And labor. Growth and globalization cross paths in front of every university. Summed up, a central "battle" for 21st century leadership is the competition for brains. Ben Wildavsky's book could not be more important for America's leaders to understand what is at stake in preserving and expanding our prosperity.

Comments

[TJMcCue]

Wow. Simply wow. Had no idea about all of this global education expansion. What can America do to remain part of it, to share leadership in it, because it certainly appears to be a similar effect that the net has had on culture -- giving everyone a bit more of the power. Eager to read the book and posts. Thanks!

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