Young universities show fastest routes to world-class status

Universities searching for the shortest possible route to becoming world-class are looking at the best 'young' universities - those established less than 50 years ago - for lessons on how to 'leapfrog' to the top.

Times Higher Education has just released its 2014 "100 under 50" global ranking of universities making an international research impact despite being under five decades old.

The United Kingdom and United States dominate the ordinary rankings, while eight countries appear in the top new universities table, where reputation accounts for a much lower percentage of the score.

This year the countries include Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Switzerland, The Netherlands and France.

The top spots

South Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology, or Postech, founded from scratch in 1986, tops the table of young world class universities for the third year. It is placed 60 in global rankings.

Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, or EPFL, which separated from the University of Lausanne in 1968, retains second position. It is 37 in the main global rankings.

East Asia has strengthened its dominance of the top 10, according to THE rankings editor Phil Baty, adding that rich government funding streams and "commitment to the knowledge economy" was "paying really serious dividends".

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST, founded in 1971, is in third place (56 in world rankings), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology or HKUST is fourth, and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University is fifth, up from eighth last year.

In the third year that young universities have been ranked, Chinese University of Hong Kong dropped out merely because it turned 51 this year.

An Indian University, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in Assam state, founded in 1994, enters for the first time. The only other developing country that features in the list of 100 is Brazil, with the State University of Campinas, while Australian universities - which originally pushed for a youth criterion in the rankings - has 14 universities in the list of 100.

"You can achieve a lot in a short space of time," said Baty.

Top young universities are "confident in their ability to thrive in a dynamic and diverse higher education sector", he added. "In a sense they see their use as the relative advantage, not a hindrance, in a marketplace that requires agility, flexibility, risk-taking, innovation; they may even have a critical edge against some of the older universities."

The ranking provides a snapshot of nations and institutions that could perhaps in future challenge the domination of the UK and US in main university rankings that even Baty admits have become "boring and predictable". The average age of universities in the main rankings is just over 200 years.

How to do it - Mergers

For many policy-makers, administrators and academics, more interesting than the precise positions is how the young rising stars have become successful and what tips they offer on the fastest routes to globally recognised academic excellence.

Speaking at THE's Young Universities Summit in Miami on 28 April Jamil Salmi, the World Bank's former tertiary education coordinator, identified three main routes. New universities can be set up from scratch, as with some top technology institutions in East Asia, by merging two or more institutions, or by upgrading existing or non-university institutions, as was the case with Switzerland's EPFL.

In recent years China, Russia, France, Denmark and Finland have created new universities through mergers. However, mergers can also create large, unwieldy universities that do not have the agility and flexibility that are a hallmark of some of the world's top young institutions.

"One of the reasons why Latin America is not so well represented in the world university rankings is because many of the prestigious universities in Latin American countries are huge institutions," Salmi said, citing UNAM in Mexico with more than 200,000 students and the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina with more than 100,000.

"Mergers are very difficult because of the clash of cultures," Salmi said.

He noted that university mergers in Russia have not often worked well. "They were imposed by the government; it didn't come because two or three institutions wanted to come together as happened in Denmark. The main criterion was geographic proximity, which makes sense, is logical, but if there is no obvious academic complementarity then it's not very good," Salmi said.

Upgrade or new?

Upgrading existing institutions, particularly science-based polytechnics, does not require expensive new infrastructure and is less costly than creating an institution from scratch. But they face the challenge of "creating a culture of excellence where there was none", Salmi said.

Such institutions often retain the same academics and student profile, yet are expected to become world-class. The key to success in such cases is leadership and governance.

According to Salmi, upgrading and merging can be complicated. "So marginally, I would say creating the university from scratch is potentially easier, [although] it is not a piece of cake."

But it is extremely expensive to start from scratch. According to some reports in Saudi Arabia, KAUST's initial endowment was US$10 billion and even then additional funds were required.

"You have to get the right culture of excellence from the beginning," Salmi said. A university has to develop its research capacity in order to rise in rankings "and that's not very easy", he added.

When it was set up a decade ago, HKUST faced the problem of how to attract students and professors when there were already well-established, highly ranked universities in Hong Kong, such as Hong Kong University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"One of the tricks in their case was to be the first university in Hong Kong to follow a US type of curriculum," said Salmi.

Many top young universities are niche - usually science and technology institutions. The lesson is "you must try not to spread too thin. If you want to achieve critical mass it is important to concentrate on some areas," Salmi said.

Internationalisation

Internationalisation and an international faculty can also be key and helps new universities to tap into international research collaborations. "We are serious about globalisation and being a global hub," said Sung-Mo Kang, president of KAIST in South Korea, including teaching in English, although this is not common in South Korea.

It is not enough to hire students and faculty internationally - they must also be made to feel comfortable, he said.

A number of top young universities in Asia, including HKUST, from the outset brought in experienced researchers from top universities all over the world, young and promising academics from the diaspora or international academics.

This may also be a factor in the rise of some newer Australian universities that have been able to hire foreign academics and even vice-chancellors.

With faculty "from the very beginning you should stick to a very high bar and stick to it at all costs", said Umran S Inan, president of Koc University in Turkey, placed 41 in the top 100 young universities.

While Koc hired academics from the Turkish diaspora, particularly in the US, "causing a reverse brain drain", he admitted that getting top researchers was more difficult.

"When a young graduate is looking for a PhD school he is going to gravitate towards the long-established universities," Inan said. "It is a major problem for young universities. Competition from name brands is fierce."

Freedom

Conference delegates also emphasised the importance of autonomy and freedom for young universities aiming to be world-class.

"Freedom is really important. As you forge your identity you find your distinctiveness," said Baty.

"Completely remove the administration, get out of the way," advised Inan. "Protect the [research] environment that you have just created by allowing unusual things to happen, inconsistent things to happen.

"Look at it as an opportunity to be innovative," he said.