Everyone wants a world-class university. No country feels it can do without one. The problem is that no one knows what a world-class university is, and no one has figured out how to get one. Everyone, however, refers to the concept. A Google search, for example, produces thousands of references, and many institutionsfrom modest academic universities in central Canada to a new college in the Persian Gulfall themselves “world class.” We are in an age of academic hype in which universities of different kinds in diverse countries claim this exalted status-often with little justification.1</p>
<p>Many of those seeking to identify “world classness” do not know what they are talking about. For example, Asiaweek, a respected Hong Kong-based magazine, produced a ranking of Asian universities for several years until its efforts were so widely criticized that it stopped. This article tries the impossibleto define a world-class university, and then to argue that it is just as important to have “national-” or “regional-class” academic institutions as it is to emulate the wealthiest and, in many ways, most elitist universities.</p>
<p>John D. Rockefeller once asked Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University for almost forty years in the late nineteenth century, what it would take to create the equivalent of a world-class university. Eliot responded that it would require $50 million and two hundred years. He was wrong. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the University of Chicago became a world-class institution in two decades for slightly more than $50 milliondonated by Rockefeller himself. The price tag for such an endeavor has ballooned since then, not only because of inflation but also because of the increased complexity and cost of academic institutions today. The competition has also become much fiercer. Now, it might take more than $500 million along with clever leadership and much good luck.</p>
<p>There are not many world-class universities. Higher education is stratified and differentiated. This article focuses only on the tiny pinnacle of institutions seeking to be at the top of national and international systems of higher education. In the United States, the Association of American Universities (AAU), widely seen to be the club of the elite, has sixty member universities (many of which are not world class). Since the establishment of the AAU in the early twentieth century, its membershipout of a total of more than 3,500 academic institutionshas grown only modestly.</p>
<p>Even in the United States, few universities have managed to claw their way to the top. In other countries, the number of top-tier institutions is also limited, even when, as in Germany, the government treats all universities the same in terms of budgets and mission. The most elite universities are located in a handful of countriesin the mid-1980s, the Asian Wall Street Journal listed among the top ten only four not in the United States: Cambridge and Oxford Universities, the University of Paris-Sorbonne, and the University of Tokyo.</p>
<p>It is, of course, the judgment of others that carries a university into the rarified ranks of world-class institutions, and no one has figured out how to conduct an appropriate international evaluation. I do not provide such guidelines here, but this discussion may be a first step toward developing relevant criteria.</p>
<p>The dictionary defines world class as “ranking among the foremost in the world; of an international standard of excellence.” Fair enough, but in higher education, who decides? The following characteristics have by no means been agreed upon by teams of expertsthey are meant simply as benchmarks to provide the basis for debate and analysis.</p>
<p>Excellence in research underpins the idea of world classresearch that is recognized by peers and that pushes back the frontiers of knowledge. Such research can be measured and communicated. But if research is the central element, other aspects of a university are required to make outstanding research possible. Top-quality professors are, of course, central. And to attract and retain the best academic staff, favorable working conditions must be available. These include arrangements for job securitymany countries call it tenureand appropriate salaries and benefits, although academics do not necessarily expect top salaries. The best professors see their work as a "calling"something to which they are committed by intellectual interestnot just a job.</p>
<p>Academic freedom and an atmosphere of intellectual excitement are also central to a world-class university. Professors and students must be free to pursue knowledge wherever it leads and to publish their work freely without fear of sanction by academic or external authorities. Some countries permit unfettered academic freedom in the nonpolitical hard sciences but place restrictions on it in the more sensitive social sciences and humanities. In most countries, academic freedom extends to expression of opinions by members of the academic community on social and political issues as well as within the narrow confines of professional expertise.</p>
<p>The governance of the institution is also important. World-class universities have a significant measure of internal self-governance and an entrenched tradition, often buttressed by statutes, ensuring that the academic community (usually including professors, but sometimes also students) has control over the central elements of academic lifethe admission of students, the curriculum, the criteria for the award of degrees, the selection of new members of the professoriate, and the basic direction of the academic work of the institution.</p>
<p>Adequate facilities for academic work are essentialthe most advanced and creative research and the most innovative teaching rely on access to appropriate libraries and laboratories, as well as to the Internet and other electronic resources. The increasing complexity and expansion of science and scholarship make the cost of providing full access high. Although the Internet has given rise to some cost savings and has eased access to many kinds of knowledge, it is by no means a panacea. The facilities needed go beyond labs and librariesstaff and professors must have adequate offices as well.</p>
<p>In addition, adequate funding must be available to support the university’s research and teaching as well as its other functions, and the support must be consistent and long term. The cost of maintaining a research university continues to grow because of the increasing complexity and expense of scientific research. Universities cannot benefit from many of the productivity increases other enterprises have achieved through automationteaching and learning still generally require professors and students to be in direct contact.</p>
<p>Funding is a special challenge now, because governments in many countries are disinvesting in higher education. Academic institutions are everywhere asked to pay for an increasing part of their budgets through tuition and student fees, funds raised by consulting and selling research-based products, and other revenue-generating activities. The fact is, however, that public support is necessary for research universities everywhere. Only in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Japan, do private research universities of the highest rank exist. And in the United States, such universities benefit from government subsidies in the form of research grants and loans and grants to students. The top private institutions have significant endowments as well.</p>
<p>The American tax system, which provides for tax-free donations to nonprofit institutions such as universities, is a major factor in permitting the growth of world-class private universities. Research universities have the ability to raise significant funds through various means, but no substitute exists for consistent and substantial public financial support. Without it, developing and sustaining world-class universities is impossible.