The Future is Fast Arriving for Global Higher Education
Observing while on travel to Bucharest and Luxembourg the near-concurrent release of three respected global rankings of elite universities this week. Seeing the USA from afar is always an interesting exercise, but this week I find myself using a more globally-focused lens to analyze the data than seems to be the case for institutions inside America. As they have ever since such rankings were first created, North American universities dominate all three lists, but notable this time is the sheer number of non-U.K. European and Asian schools on the list. Also notable in comparing year-to-year is the way the rest are steadily climbing the rankings.No surprise, really, that the Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
Worldwide, these academic rankings have generated a tsunami of headlines and news releases, celebratory and otherwise. But although American universities dominate all three, publication of the rankings has caused barely a ripple in this country.
What the lists reveal is what we have been arguing for two or three years: that tomorrow's independent and international school graduates will matriculate to a vastly more heterogenous mix of universities that in the past, and that a great many of these schools will be outside the U.S.-Canada-U.K. collection. Ignore this trend at your peril.