The Rise of Asia’s Universities

President Richard C. Levin, Yale University
February 1, 2010
The Royal Society, London, England

It is a great pleasure to be with you this evening, andan especially great honor to have been asked to deliver the SeventhAnnual Lecture of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

I stand before you this evening as a representative ofthe third oldest university in the United States, little more than 50miles from the two oldest universities in the English-speaking world.Today, the strongest British and American universities – such asOxford, Cambridge and Yale, not to mention Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley,MIT, University College London and Imperial College London – call forthworldwide admiration and respect for their leadership in research andeducation. Sitting atop the global league tables, these institutionsset the standard that others at home and abroad seek to emulate; theydefine the concept of “world-class university.” They excel in theadvancement of human knowledge of nature and culture; they provide thefinest training to the next generation of scholars; and they provideoutstanding undergraduate and professional education for those who willemerge as leaders in all walks of life.

But, as we all know at this, the beginning of the 21stcentury, the East is rising. The rapid economic development of Asiasince the Second World War – starting with Japan, South Korea, andTaiwan, extending to Hong Kong and Singapore, and finally taking holdpowerfully in mainland China and India – has altered the balance ofpower in the global economy and hence in geopolitics. The risingnations of the East all recognize the importance of an educatedworkforce as a means to economic growth and they understand the impactof research in driving innovation and competitiveness. In the 1960s,70s, and 80s, the higher education agenda in Asia’s early developers –Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – was first and foremost to increase thefraction of their populations provided with postsecondary education.Their initial focus was on expanding the number of institutions andtheir enrollments, and impressive results were achieved.

Today, the later and much larger developing nations ofAsia – China and India – have an even more ambitious agenda. Both theseemerging powers seek to expand the capacity of their systems of highereducation, and China has done so dramatically since 1998. But they alsoaspire simultaneously to create a limited number of “world class”universities to take their places among the best. This is an audaciousagenda, but China, in particular, has the will and resources that makeit feasible. This aspiration is shared not only by other nations inAsia but also by certain resource-rich nations in the Middle East.
Consider the following recent developments:

• In the Gulf States, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spentto open branches of top U.S. and European universities such as Cornellin Qatar and the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi.
• This past autumn, the new King Abdullah University of Science andTechnology opened in Saudi Arabia. Its $10 billion endowment exceedsthat of all but five American universities.
• In Singapore, planning is underway to build a new public universityof Technology and Design, and a new American-style liberal arts collegeaffiliated with the National University.
• In China, the nine universities that receive the most supplementalgovernment funding to enhance their global competitiveness recentlyself-identified as the C9 – China’s Ivy League.
• In India, the Education Ministry recently announced its intentionto build 14 new comprehensive universities of “world-class” stature.

This evening I want to discuss the motivations forattempting to build world-class universities, the practical obstaclesthat must be overcome, and the potential consequences of success.Because the circumstances in the Middle East are very different, I willconfine my attention to Asia.

There are other important trends that are changing theglobal landscape of higher education: the rapidly increasing flow ofstudents across borders, the expanding number of satellite campusesbeing established by U.S. and European universities, the emergence offor-profit providers of both on-site and distance education, and theurgent need to strengthen higher education in the world’s poorestnations, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa. I lack the time thisevening to cover this entire terrain, so I shall confine myself toanalyzing the prospects for and the potential consequences ofdeveloping world-class universities in Asia. The broader topic – theglobalization of higher education— is the subject of an excellent newbook by Ben Wildavsky, entitled The Great Brain Race, to be published this spring by the Princeton University Press.

Asian Ambitions: Expanding Access to Higher Education
In the early stages of postwar Asian development, it was wellunderstood that expanded access to higher education was a requisite forsustained economic growth. A literate, well-trained labor force was akey ingredient in transforming Japan and South Korea over the course ofthe past half century, first from agricultural to manufacturingeconomies and subsequently from low- to high-skill manufacturing. Withsubstantial government investment, the capacity of the tertiaryeducational systems in both countries expanded rapidly. The grossenrollment rate, the ratio of students enrolled in tertiary educationto the size of the age cohort, rose from 9 percent in Japan in 1960 to42 percent by the mid-1990s. In South Korea, the increase was even moredramatic, from 5 percent in 1960 to just over 50 percent in themid-1990s. 1

In this earlier period, China and India lagged farbehind. By the mid-1990s only 5 percent of college-age Chinese attendedcollege, putting China on par with Bangladesh, Botswana, and Swaziland.In India, despite a postwar effort to create first a set of nationalcomprehensive universities and later the elite and very small IndianInstitutes of Technology, the gross enrollment rate stood at 7 percentin the 1990s. 2

Speaking at the 100th anniversary celebration of PekingUniversity in 1998, China’s president, Jiang Zemin, publicly set hiscountry’s sights on greatly expanding its system of higher education,and his administration made it happen – faster than ever before inhuman history. By 2006, China was spending 1.5 percent of its GDP onhigher education, nearly triple the share of GDP it was spending adecade earlier. 3

The results of this investment have been staggering.Over the decade following Jiang Zemin’s declaration, the number ofinstitutions of higher education in China more than doubled, from 1,022to 2,263. 4Meanwhile, the number of Chinese who enroll in college each year hasquintupled—rising from 1 million students in 1997 to more than 5.5million students in 2007. 5

This expansion in capacity is without precedent. Chinahas built the largest higher education sector in the world in merely adecade’s time. 6In fact, the increase in China’s postsecondary enrollment since theturn of the millennium exceeds the total postsecondary enrollment inthe United States. 7

China still has a long way to go to achieve itsaspirations concerning access to higher education. Despite the enormoussurge, China’s gross enrollment rate for tertiary education stands at23 percent, compared to 58 percent in Japan, 59 percent in the UK, and82 percent in the United States. 8Expansion has slowed since 2006, owing to concerns that enrollmentshave outstripped the capacity of faculty to maintain quality in someinstitutions. The student-teacher ratio has roughly doubled over thepast decade. 9But enrollment will continue to rise as more teachers are prepared,because the Chinese leaders are keenly aware of the importance of awell-educated labor force for economic development.

India’s achievement to date has not been nearly soimpressive, but its aspirations are no less ambitious. India is alreadythe world’s largest democracy. In two decades, it will be the mostpopulated country in the planet, and by 2050, if growth can besustained, it could become the second largest economy in the world. Tosustain that growth, India’s Education Minister, Kapil Sibal, aims toincrease his country’s gross enrollment ratio in postsecondaryeducation from 12 to 30 percent by 2020. Sibal’s goal translates to anincrease of 40 million students in Indian universities over the nextdecade – perhaps more than can feasibly be achieved, but even gettinghalf way there would be a remarkable accomplishment.

Asian Ambitions: Building World-Class Universities
Having made tremendous progress in expanding access to highereducation, the leading nations of Asia have now set their sights on aneven more challenging goal: building universities that stand incompetition with the finest in the world. This is a tall order.World-class universities achieve their status by assembling scholarsand scientists who are global leaders in their fields. This takes time.It took centuries for Harvard and Yale to achieve parity with Oxfordand Cambridge, and more than half a century for Stanford and theUniversity of Chicago (both founded in 1892) to achieve world-classreputations. The only Asian university to rank in the top 25 in globalleague tables, the University of Tokyo, was founded in 1877.

Why do China, India, Singapore, and South Korea aspireso openly to elevating some of their universities to this exaltedstatus? For two reasons, I would submit. First, these rapidlydeveloping nations recognize the importance of university-basedscientific research in driving economic growth, especially since theend of the Second World War. Second, world-class universities providethe ideal context for educating graduates for careers in science,industry, government, and civil society who have the intellectualbreadth and critical-thinking skills to solve problems, to innovate,and to lead.

Let me expand on each of these points. Although Chinaand India remain at a stage of development where they are able tocompete effectively by deploying low cost labor in manufacturing, theirsurplus agricultural labor will eventually be absorbed in cities – asit was in Japan and South Korea – and wages will begin to rise. At thisstage, it will become impossible to sustain rapid economic growthwithout innovation, without being early to market with new products andnew services, many of them the fruits of applied research based onunderlying scientific advance.

To oversimplify, consider the following puzzle: Japangrew much more rapidly than America from 1950 to 1990, as its surpluslabor was absorbed into industry, and much more slowly than Americathereafter. Now consider whether Japan would have grown so slowly ifMicrosoft, Netscape, Apple, and Google had been Japanese companies. Ithink not. It was innovation based on science that propelled the U.S.to more rapid growth than Japan during the two decades prior to thecrash of 2008. It was Japan’s failure to innovate that caused it to lagbehind.

The emerging Asian nations recognize, very explicitlyin their national policy documents and plans, the link between buildingindigenous research capacity and economic growth in a post-industrialknowledge economy. And they also recognize that university-basedresearch is the most effective driver of scientific discovery andultimately, both directly and indirectly, of economically relevant newtechnologies. Hence derives their aspiration for research universitiescapable of working on the scientific and technological frontier – andnot a moment too soon, in my opinion. At their current pace ofurbanization, China will begin to lose its labor cost advantages inmanufacturing in about two decades, and India will reach the same pointa decade later. This gives both nations enough time to make significantprogress in building the capacity to compete effectively on thefrontier of innovation.

But it takes more than research capacity alone todevelop a nation. It takes well-educated citizens of broad perspectiveand dynamic entrepreneurs capable of independent and original thinking.This is the second factor motivating Asia’s ambition to buildworld-class universities. The leaders of China, in particular, havebeen very explicit in recognizing that two elements are missing intheir universities – multidisciplinary breadth and the cultivation ofcritical thinking. Asian higher education, like its Europeancounterpart but unlike America, has been traditionally highlyspecialized. Students pick a discipline or a profession at age eighteenand study little else. And, unlike the norms in elite European andAmerican universities, pedagogy in China, Japan, and South Korea reliesheavily on rote learning. Traditionally, students are passivelisteners, and they rarely challenge each other or their professors inclasses. Pedagogy focuses on the mastery of content, not on thedevelopment of the capacity for independent and critical thinking. Thetraditional Asian approaches to curriculum and pedagogy may be highlyfunctional for training line engineers and mid-level governmentofficials, but they are perhaps less well suited to educating elitesfor leadership and innovation.

It is curious that while American and Britishpoliticians worry that Asia, and China in particular, is training morescientists and engineers than we are, the Chinese and others in Asiaare worrying that their students lack the independence and creativityto drive the innovation that will be necessary to sustain economicgrowth in the long run. They fear that specialization makes theirgraduates narrow and traditional Asian pedagogy makes themunimaginative. Thus, they aspire to strengthen their top universitiesby revising both curriculum and pedagogy.

Requisites for World-Class Universities: Research
 Havingdiscussed what is motivating the Asian quest for world-classuniversities, let us turn next to what needs to be accomplished. So thefirst question is: what does it take to build universities capable ofworld-class status in research? First and foremost, it requires thecapacity to attract scholars and scientists of the highest quality. Inthe sciences, this means first-class research facilities, adequatefunding to support research, and competitive salaries and benefits.China is making substantial investments on all three fronts. Shanghai’stop universities – Fudan, Shanghai Jiaotong, and Tongji – have eachdeveloped whole new campuses within the past few years, withoutstanding research facilities, located close to industrial partners.Research funding has grown in parallel with the expansion ofenrollment, and Chinese universities now compete much more effectivelyfor faculty talent. In the 1990s, only 10 percent of Chinese whoreceived a Ph.D. in science and engineering in the United Statesreturned home. 10That number is now rising, and, increasingly, China has been able torepatriate mid-career scholars and scientists from tenured positions inthe United States and the United Kingdom, who are attracted by thegreatly improved working conditions and the opportunities toparticipate in China’s rise. India, too, is beginning to have moresuccess in drawing on its diaspora, but it has yet to make the kind ofinvestment that China has made in improving facilities, researchfunding, and extra compensation for faculty of distinction.

Beyond the material conditions required to attractfaculty, building a national capacity for first-class research can begreatly facilitated by an efficient and effective system of allocatingresearch funding. The underlying principles for creating such a systemwere brilliantly articulated in a 1946 report entitled Science: The Endless Frontier,by Vannevar Bush, the Science Adviser to President Truman. The reportacknowledges that the discoveries in basic science are ultimately thebasis for developments in industrial technology, but it notes that theeconomic gains from advances in basic science often do not accrue fordecades and often yield results in applications that were entirelyunanticipated at the time of the scientific breakthrough. When theproperties of coherent light were first identified in the late 1950s,no one imagined that lasers would become useful in eye surgery decadeslater. Because the full economic benefit of a breakthrough in purescience can rarely be captured by the original inventor, privateenterprises will typically have insufficient incentive to make manysocially productive investments. Government must take the lead.
Bush’s 1946 report established the framework for a national system ofsupport for scientific research founded in three principles, whichstill govern today. First, the federal government bears the primaryresponsibility for funding basic science. Second, universities—ratherthan government-run laboratories, non-teaching research institutions,or private industry – are the primary institutions responsible forcarrying out this government-funded research. Third, although thegovernment determines the total amount of funding available indifferent fields of science, specific projects and programs are notassessed on political or commercial grounds, but through an intenselycompetitive process of peer review in which independent experts judgeproposals on their scientific merit alone.

This system has been an extraordinary success, and fora number of reasons. It has the benefit of exposing postgraduatescientists-in-training—even those who do not end up pursuing academiccareers in the long run—to the most cutting edge techniques and areasof research. It allows undergraduates to witness meaningful sciencefirst-hand, rather than merely reading about the last decade’smilestones in a textbook. And it means the best research getsfunded—not the research proposed by the most senior members of adepartment’s faculty, or by those who are politically well-connected.

This has not been the typical scheme for facilitatingresearch in the East. Historically, most scientific research in EastAsia has taken place apart from universities – in research institutesand government laboratories. And in Japan, South Korea and China,funding has primarily been directed toward applied research anddevelopment, with a very small share of total R&D funding devotedto basic science. In China, for instance, only about 5 percent ofR&D spending is aimed at basic research, compared to 10 to 30percent in most OECD countries. 11 Expressed as a share of GDP, the U.S. spends seven times as much on basic research as China. 12Moreover, the use of peer review for grant funding in East Asia isinconsistent at best, completely absent at worst. Japan hashistorically placed the bulk of its research resources in the hands ofits most senior investigators. Despite acknowledging several years agothat a greater share of research funding should be subject to peerreview, only 14 percent of the government's spending onnon-defense-related research in 2008 was subject to competitive review,compared to 73 percent in the United States. 13, 14

On the other hand, there is no doubt Asian governmentshave made increasing research and development a priority in recentyears. R&D spending in China has increased rapidly over the lasttwo decades, rising from 0.6 percent of the country’s GDP in 1995 to1.3 percent of GDP in 2005. 15That is still significantly below the advanced OECD countries, but itis likely to keep climbing. The Chinese government has set a goal ofincreasing R&D intensity to 2 percent of GDP by 2010 and 2.5percent of GDP by 2020. 16And there is some evidence of the payoff from increased researchfunding. To give one benchmark, from 1995 to 2005, Chinese scholarsmore than quadrupled the number of articles they published in leadingscientific and engineering journals. Only the U.S., the U.K., Germanyand Japan account for more publications. 17

Requisites for World-Class Universities: Education
Having described what it takes to build world-class capacity inresearch, let us now turn our attention to what is required totransform education. As I mentioned earlier, Asia’s aspiration is todevelop graduates of elite universities who have a broad,multidisciplinary perspective on the world and who have the capacity toinnovate. This has led officials in China, Singapore, and South Korea,in particular, to look closely at America’s leading universities, whichdiffer from Asian norms in both the structure of the curriculum and thepractice of pedagogy.

Asian leaders are increasingly attracted to theAmerican model of undergraduate curriculum, which typically providesstudents with two years to explore a variety of subjects beforechoosing a single subject on which to concentrate during their finaltwo years. There are two principal rationales for this approach. First,significant exposure to multiple disciplines gives students alternativeperspectives on the world, which both allows them to function moreeffectively in their chosen field and better prepares them to encounternew and unexpected problems. The second rationale is that students arein a better position to choose a specialization at age twenty than atage eighteen. I would not press these arguments too far in this forum,since it has not been my experience that the graduates of Oxford andCambridge are too narrow by virtue of having specialized at ageeighteen. But I have no doubt about the virtues of the American model.At its best, it produces strong results by effectively broadening theperspective of graduates.

That world-class universities must cultivateindependent, critical thinking is a much less controversial point. Intoday’s knowledge economy, no less than in the nineteenth century whenthe philosophy of liberal education was articulated by Cardinal Newman,it is not subject-specific knowledge, but the ability to assimilate newinformation and solve problems is the most important characteristic ofa well-educated person. The Yale Report of 1828, a document withenormous influence on American undergraduate education, distinguishedbetween the “discipline” and the “furniture” of the mind. Mastering aspecific body of knowledge – acquiring the “furniture” – is of littlepermanent value in a rapidly changing world. Students who aspire to beleaders in business, or medicine, or law, or government, or in theacademy need the “discipline” of mind – the ability to adapt toconstantly changing circumstances, confront new facts, and findcreative ways to solve problems.

The cultivation of such habits requires a pedagogy thatencourages students to be more than passive recipients of information;rather, they must learn to think for themselves, and learn to structurean argument and defend it, or modify it in the face of new informationor valid criticism. The Oxford-Cambridge tutorial is perhaps theparadigm of such pedagogy. But the tutorial system is almostunthinkably labor-intensive in an Asian, let alone an American,context. The American substitute has been the interactive seminar,where students are encouraged to take and defend positions in smallgroups, and to challenge rather than blindly accept, the instructor’spoint of view. Even where numbers dictate reliance on large lecturecourses, small discussion sections serve as a complement to thelectures. Examinations in top U.S. universities rarely call for arecitation of facts; they call upon students to solve problems theyhave not encountered before, or to analyze two sides of an argument andstate their own position.

In Asia’s quest to build world-class universities,there has already been dramatic movement in the direction of developingan American-style curriculum. Peking University introduced YuanpeiHonors College in 2001, a pilot program that immerses a select group ofthe most gifted Chinese students in a liberal arts environment. Thesestudents live together and sample a wide variety of subjects for twoyears before choosing a major field of study. Yonsei University inSouth Korea has opened a liberal arts college with a similar curriculumon its campus, and the National University of Singapore has created aUniversity Scholars program in which students do extensive work outsidetheir disciplinary or professional specialization.

For the past six years, the presidents, vicepresidents, and party secretaries of China’s top universities, thosesingled out for special support by the government, have met annuallywith Yale faculty and administrators in a weeklong workshop to learnabout the practices of American institutions and share their ownexperiences with the reform of curriculum, faculty recruitment, andpedagogy. Although I do not claim a direct causal linkage, theirprogress toward curricular reform has been astonishing. At FudanUniversity, all students now take a common, multidisciplinarycurriculum during their first year before proceeding with the study oftheir chosen discipline or profession. At Nanjing University, studentsare no longer required to choose a subject when they apply foradmission; they may instead choose among more than 60 general educationcourses in their first year before deciding on a specialization.
Changing pedagogy is much more difficult than changing curriculum. Ittakes increased resources to offer classes with smaller enrollments,but it also requires the faculty to adopt new methods. This is a hugechallenge in China, Japan, and South Korea, where traditional Asianpedagogy prevails. It is much less of a concern in India and Singapore,where the legacy of British influence has created a professorate muchmore comfortable with engaging students interactively. The Chinese, inparticular, are eager to tackle this challenge, but they recognize thatthe key to changing pedagogy is the growing representation in theprofessorate of those who have studied abroad and been exposed tomethods of instruction that do not rely on rote learning. Increasingexchange opportunities, whereby Asian students study in the West andWestern students spend time in Asian universities, will also help toaccelerate the transformation.

Prospects for Success
 Aswe can see, developing world-class universities in Asia will take morethan money and determination. To create world-class capacity inresearch, resources must not only be abundant, they must also beallocated on the basis of scholarly and scientific merit, rather thanon the basis of seniority or political influence. To create world-classcapacity in education, the curriculum must be broadened and pedagogytransformed. These are all problems that can be solved with sufficientleadership and political will.

Another requisite for success is focus. Not everyuniversity can or needs be world-class. The experiences of the U.S.,the U.K., and Germany are instructive. In the U.S. and U.K., the highereducation is a differentiated system of many types of institutions, ofwhich the comprehensive research university is merely one. And withinthe set of comprehensive universities, government support for researchis allocated chiefly on the basis of merit, which allows someinstitutions to prosper while others lag. In the U.S., fundraisingreinforces this tendency to differentiation. Success breeds success,and, for the most part, the strongest institutions attract the mostphilanthropy. In Germany, by contrast, government policy hasdeliberately constrained institutions from achieving distinction. Byopening enrollment, allowing the student-faculty ratio to riseeverywhere, isolating the most eminent researchers in separateinstitutes, but otherwise distributing resources on the basis of equityrather than merit, the German government has destroyed the worldwidedistinction its best universities once held. Only recently has Germanydecided to focus resources on three universities in particular in orderto make them more globally competitive.

Japan and South Korea have learned this lesson. Bothhave flagship national universities that are well supported: theUniversity of Tokyo and Seoul National University. And in Japan atleast two other public universities, Kyoto and Osaka, are not farbehind Tokyo and well above the rest. China has this message, too. In1998, it identified seven universities for disproportionate investment:Peking, Tsinghua, Fudan, Shanghai Jiaotong, Nanjing, Zhejiang, andXi’an Jiaotong. And even within that set, the government has drawndistinctions, concentrating national resources on Peking and TsinghuaUniversities in an effort to propel them into the worldwide top twenty.The Shanghai-based institutions – Fudan and Jiaotong – are makingnearly comparable investments, thanks to generous supplemental fundingfrom the Shanghai government.

India is the anomalous case. In the 1950s and 60s, itfocused resources on establishing five Indian Institutes of Technology.These, and the ten more added in the past two decades, are outstandinginstitutions for educating engineers, but they have not been globallycompetitive in research. And India has made no systematic effort toraise the status of any of its fourteen comprehensive nationaluniversities, which are severely underfunded.
The currentMinister of Education is determined to create world-class comprehensiveuniversities. But the egalitarian forces that dominate India’s robustdemocracy threaten to constrain the prospects for excellence, byspreading funding too thin and allowing considerations of socialjustice to trump meritocracy in selecting students and faculty. Twoyears ago, the government announced that it would create thirty newworld-class universities, one for each of India’s states, clearly anunrealistic ambition. The number was subsequently reduced to fourteen,one for each state that does not yet have a comprehensive university,but even this target seems excessive, compared with China’s focus onseven, and special focus on two within the seven.

Given the extraordinary achievements of Indian scholarsthroughout the diaspora, the human resources for building world-classuniversities at home are surely present. But it remains to be seenwhether India can tolerate the large discrepancies in facultycompensation that would be necessary to attract leading scholars fromaround the world. Consequently, an alternative and potentially morepromising strategy being pursued by the government is to allow theestablishment of foreign universities and to create conditions underwhich private universities – foreign or domestic – can flourish.

In one respect, however, India has a powerful advantageover China, at least for now. The freedom of faculty to pursue theirintellectual interests wherever they may lead, and the freedom ofstudents and faculty alike to express and thus test their mostheretical and unconventional thoughts – these freedoms are anindispensible feature of a truly world-class comprehensive university.It may be possible to achieve world-class stature in the sciences whileconstraining freedom of expression in politics, the social sciences,and the humanities. Some of the Soviet Academies achieved such staturein mathematics and physics during the Cold War. But no comprehensiveuniversity has done so in modern times.

There is one other potential obstacle to success inChina, which is currently the subject of intense discussion: the uniqueway in which university leadership responsibilities are divided betweeneach institution’s President and its Communist Party Secretary, whoserves as Chair of the University Council. Often the two leaders worktogether very effectively as a team. But there are concerns that thestructure of decision-making limits a President’s ability to achievehis or her academic goals, since the appointment of senioradministrators – vice presidents and deans – is in the hands of theUniversity Council, chaired by the Party Secretary, rather than thePresident. The issue of university governance is currently under reviewby China’s Ministry of Education.

Conclusion: A Positive-Sum Game
The rise of Asia’s universities is a natural manifestation of the moregeneral phenomenon of globalization. As barriers to the flow of people,goods, and information have come down, and as the economic developmentprocess proceeds, the nations of Asia have increasing access to thehuman, physical, and informational resources needed to createinstitutions at the highest level of excellence. If the emergingnations of Asia concentrate their growing resources on a handful ofinstitutions, tap a worldwide pool of talent, and embrace freedom ofexpression and freedom of inquiry, they have every prospect of successin building world-class universities. It will not happen overnight; itwill take decades. But it may happen faster than ever before.

How should we in the West regard this prospect – as athreat or as an opportunity? I would argue forcefully that competitionin education, like the phenomenon of globalization itself, is apositive sum game.
Consider the following example. One of our mostdistinguished geneticists at Yale and members of his team now splittheir time between laboratories in New Haven and Fudan University inShanghai. Another distinguished Yale professor, a plant biologist, hasa similar arrangement at Peking University. In both cases, the Chineseprovide abundant space and research staff to support the efforts ofYale scientists, while collaboration with the Yale scientists upgradesthe skills of young Chinese professors and graduate students. Bothsides benefit.

The same argument can be made about the flow ofstudents and the exchange of ideas. As globalization has underscoredthe importance of cross-cultural experience, the frequency of studentexchanges has multiplied. As Asia’s universities improve, so do theexperiences of students who participate in exchange programs. Everyonebenefits from the exchange of ideas, just as everyone benefits from thefree exchange of goods and services.

Finally, increasing the quality of education around theworld translates into better-informed and more productive citizens. Thefate of the planet depends on our ability to collaborate across bordersto solve society’s most pressing problems – the persistence of poverty,the prevalence of disease, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, theshortage of water, and the danger of global warming. Having bettereducated citizens and leaders can only help.

1 UNESCO, 1975 Statistical Yearbook (Paris: UNESCO, 1976), p. 107; and World Bank EdStats,

2 Ibid.

3 Tables 2-1 and 20-37, National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 2008, and Tables 2-9 and 18-37, National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 1997

4 Table 20-3, National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 2009

5 Table 20-6, National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 1999, and Table 20-2, China Statistical Yearbook 2008

6Zhao Litao and Sheng Sixin, “China’s ‘Great Leap’ in Higher Education,”Background Brief No. 394, East Asian Institute, National University ofSingapore, 24 July 2008, p. i

7 UNESCO Institute for Statistics,

8 UNESCO, 2009 Global Education Digest, p. 128-137

9Wu Bin and Zheng Yongnian, “Expansion of Higher Education in China:Challenges and Implications,” China Policy Institute, University ofNottingham, February 2008, p. 11

10 National Science Foundation, Asia’s Rising Science and Technology Strength: Comparative Indicators for Asia, the European Union, and the United States, 2007, p. 7

11 OECD, Main Science and Technology Indicators, 2009, p. 25, 29

12 National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, p. 4-41

13 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, White Paper on Science and Technology 2009, p. 116-117, 200; and National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 2010, p. 4-22 to 4-27

14For the purposes of this comparison, I consider federal researchfunding appropriated to the National Science Foundation, the Departmentof Energy and the National Institutes of Health as being subject tocompetitive review.

15 OECD, Main Science and Technology Indicators, 2009, p. 25

16 OECD, Reviews of Innovation Policy: China, 2008, p. 111

17 National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, p. 5-38