Moving the academic debate on from its current focus on development to a more nuanced sociological perspective, this fresh research is a collaboration between academics in South Korea and Germany that assesses the factors shaping world-class universities as institutional social systems as well as national cultural treasures. The work explores in detail how WCUs have moved to a central position in policy circles, and how these often ambitious government policies on WCUs have been interpreted and adopted by university administrators and individual professors. The authors provide a wealth of empirical data on universities, both world-class and aiming for WCU status, in a range of polities and continents. They compare strategies for developing WCUs in countries of the East and the West, both developing and developed. Nations featured in the statistical purview include nine countries (Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR). The volume goes further than merely taking a snapshot of the current situation, offering detailed and considered strategies and rationales for institutionalizing and developing WCUs, particularly in Asian countries where Confucian cultural influences accord education the highest priority.

This volume sheds light on world-class universities’ challenges, opportunities, roles and strategies in response to the changing landscape of higher education and our society as a whole.

World-class universities, commonly recognized as global research universities or flagship universities, are cornerstone institutions embedded in any academic system and play an important role in developing a nation’s competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. The development of world-class universities is high on the policy agenda of various stakeholders across the globe. In the past few years, an increasing number of nations, regions and higher education institutions in both developed and developing countries have joined the same race for academic excellence and have adopted a range of development strategies and implemented various reforms. From a comparative perspective, How World-Class Universities Affect Global Higher Education intends to provide an in-depth picture of excellence initiatives and relevant policies adopted in various nations and regions, and to reflect opportunities and challenges of developing excellence.

This open access book focuses on the dimensions of the discourse of 'The World Class University', its alleged characteristics, and its policy expressions. It offers a broad overview of the historical background and current trajectory of the world-class-university construct. It also deepens the theoretical discussion, and points a way forward out of present impasses resulting from the pervasive use and abuse of the notion of "world-class" and related terms in the discourse of quality assessment. The book includes approaches and results from fields of inquiry not otherwise prominent in Higher Education studies, including philosophy and media studies, as well as sociology, anthropology, educational theory. The growing impact of global rankings and their strategic use in the restructuring of higher education systems to increase global competitiveness has led to a ‘reputation race’ and the emergence of the global discourse of world class universities. The discourse of world class universities has rapid uptake in East Asian countries, with China recently refining its strategy. This book provides insights into this process and its future development.

This book discusses the situation of Taiwanese universities facing a rapidly changing domestic and global environment. It examines the social structure, drawing on professional perspectives, data-based and systematic analysis. The book fills gaps in the literature of higher education systems in East Asia, of which Taiwan is a representative nation. It provides the readers with great opportunities to understand the historical, political and cultural background of the higher education system in Taiwan and shares Taiwan’s experience of how higher education institutions respond to the new challenges such as an ageing society, the pursuit of equity and inclusion, execution of talent recruitment, and the use of technological innovation. Finally the book discusses the implication of institutional research in university governance.

The modern university started as an innovative model - a research-driven teaching and service model in the 19th century -, but the contemporary university is in a crisis of identity. The major challenge is how to harmonize different missions, e.g., teaching, research, and service. The triple function has become questionable and research now dominates the other two functions in contemporary higher education. This book takes a step towards further academic and policy discussions on the restructuring the triple functions of university and designing the future of the post-massified university.

The pursuit to construct “world-class” universities is an ongoing global obsession across the world, which lays emphasis on the development of competitive higher education and research systems as core national economic approach. The portrayal “world-class” is more contextual rather than absolute, the expression “world-class university” has an irrefutable cachet. There is no solo, clear-cut definition of what organises a world-class university (WCU), but there are few common attributes that majority of the experts point towards. The three attributes stated by Philip Altbach and Jamil Salmi that focus on a high concentration of talent, abundant resources and favourable governance have been widely discussed in writings and practice. Both in developing and developed countries, policymakers and higher education leaders are attempting to identify and outline their desires and plans aimed at achieving global ranking for their university/universities. Despite condemnation of the methodology, the choice of indicators and weightings, and the reliability and quality of data used for comparing performance, the obsession for constructing world-class universities has increased over the period of time. But how much do we really discern or comprehend regarding the ranking systems? What do the rankings really measure? Do rankings measure the quality and help in attaining the broad assignment of higher education? Does the competition as outcome of ranking raise standards? Is the ranking system an apposite instrument to frame higher education policies? This edited volume tries to look at the concept of world-class universities in milieu of different countries of the world and explore their experiences either in existing WCUs or constructing WCU or attempting to create WCU. The country-based chapters show differentiated paths of achievements and their approach towards the concept of WCU.