GLOBAL: From brain drain to brain growth

The former education editor of US News &World Report has researched how international competition for the brightest minds is transforming the world of higher education.

In his new book, The Great Brain Race: How global universities are reshaping the world, Ben Wildavsky concludes that this revolution should be welcomed, not feared.

He notes that nearly three million students study each year outside their home countries - a 40% increase since 1999.

The book aims to chronicle and analyse the growing globalisation of higher education in all its dimensions: the recruitment of students and staff; the swift spread of branch campuses; the creation of world-class universities; the rise of online and for-profit institutions; and the growth in college rankings.

There is no single reason for this "far-reaching phenomenon", he says, but a "constellation". These include the quest to build knowledge based economies leading governments to improve their education systems; the idea that a well-educated person must be exposed to ideas and people across national boundaries; the enormous student demand for foreign degrees and the financial benefits to Western universities from higher fees charged to overseas students.

Taken together, these developments reflect the rise of a new kind of free trade: free trade in minds, says Wildavsky. "The academic mobility made possible by our increasingly borderless academic world will, like other kinds of free trade, bring widespread economic benefits, along with valuable intellectual ferment and tremendous opportunities for individuals."

But the expansion of higher education has been accompanied by "myriad missteps and problems".

He cites satellite campuses that have fallen short of expectations or been closed; quality problems; and the controversies over free speech, women and gay rights, and recognition of Israel that had erupted when, for example, Berkeley, Stanford and New York University had created campuses or forged academic partnerships in the Persian Gulf.

These growing pains are inevitable, he says, adding that a bigger obstacle is the "academic protectionism" by some governments and universities to the growth of cross-border higher education.

China and India are notorious for the bureaucratic barriers they erect to foreign universities wishing to open new campuses or create new partnerships. Others try to exclude foreign students and attempt to keep domestic ones at home.

In Malaysia, there is a 5% cap on the number of foreign undergraduates who can attend the country's public universities while the president of one Indian institute of technology responded to the huge demand for his high-flying students by banning them from taking foreign internships.

An even larger barrier to the flourishing of global higher education is psychological, says the author. "It can be seen in the widespread notion that a nation whose education system is on the rise poses a threat to its economic competitors.

"This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in the case of the West's fear about the rise of China and other Asian nations."

Western countries worry about other nations' efforts to upgrade their teaching and research capacities and fear they may lose out when others move ahead.

"But the globalisation of higher education should be embraced, not feared. The worldwide competition for human talent, the race to produce innovative research, the push to extend campuses to multiple countries, and the rush to produce knowledgeable and creative graduates who can strengthen increasingly knowledge-based economies - all of these trends are hugely beneficial to the entire world...Intellectual gains by one country often benefit others."

As the world's academic landscape is reshaped, traditional patterns of mobility, knowledge transmission and economic growth are already being upended, he points out. Several decades ago, there was concern about the brain drain from developing countries to the West.

Recently the term has been replaced by "brain circulation" or "brain gain" as many who had left India or China began to return home to seize opportunities in newly booming economies.

Wildavsky suggests we move on to talk of "brain growth" as students and researchers travel back and forth around the globe.

He thinks the net benefits of global competition in university education will be significant although there will be winners and losers.

"There is no reason to believe that gains for one academic player will inevitably mean losses for all the others. Indeed, academic free trade may be more important than any other kind."

He urges nations around the world to lower barriers, both practical and psychological, to truly global higher education.

Wildavsky has drawn on extensive research, including more than 100 interviews in India, the Middle East, Western Europe, the US and China. He is a senior fellow in research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, and is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

* The Great Brain Race: How global universities are reshaping the world by Ben Wildavsky, Princeton University Press $26.95/£18.95
greatbrainrace.com