The Fall of America’s Universities

Since 2004, the world’s top 200 universities have been ranked annually by the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings. Recently, Asian universities have been making significant gains on the U.S., long considered to have the world’s best universities.

In 2008, the U.S. had 37 universities in the top 100 and 58 in the top 200. In 2009, that dropped to 32 and 54, respectively, although 12 of the top 16 universities in the world are still in the U.S. Between 2008 and 2009, Japan went from 10 universities in the top 200 to 11, Hong Kong went from 4 to 5, South Korea went from 3 to 4, and mainland China maintained its position with 6.

Having visited nearly half of these Asian universities and having seen their extensive expenditure on research facilities, I am not surprised when I read about Asian nations making enormous investments in their universities. Asian nations are investing to produce massive numbers of innovative people who can contribute significantly to economic growth.

I am surprised, however, when I read about funding reductions for U.S. universities, particularly public ones. For example, the University of California, long regarded as the nation’s leading public university, recently suffered a US$813 million reduction in state financing. Disinvestment is also happening to universities in Michigan, Washington, Arizona, and many other states.

Budgets are being cut from state-supported universities primarily because states are facing budget shortfalls of historic proportions. However, short-sighted state politics like this will lead to long-term consequences. For example, state budget cuts force universities to raise tuition, cap enrollment, and cut academic programs. These changes result in a smaller number of graduates, which in turn results in a shrinking skilled workforce.

The U.S. needs a growing, skilled workforce, not a shrinking one, to continue to compete in the global economy. Foreign students have for decades made up an important part of that skilled workforce, staying in the U.S. and helping to fuel the nation’s innovative and economic growth by working in such technology incubators as California’s Silicon Valley and the Route 128 area in Massachusetts. In the 2008-2009 academic year, 671,616 foreign students were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. China supplied by far the biggest number of them with 98,510 students.

The effect of foreign students on the U.S. scientific community is crucial. Today, 55 percent of PhD engineering students are foreign born, along with 45 percent of graduate physicists working in the U.S. More than 30 percent of U.S. Nobel Prize winners in medicine and physiology between 1901 and 2005, for instance, were foreign born.

Currently, the U.S. has the best universities in the world. They attract the best students from around the world. However, when U.S. universities decline in quality and lose their elite status because of budget cuts, bright students from around the world will seek universities in other nations.

The goal of Asian nations is to create world-class universities that surpass U.S. universities. They have “every prospect of success,” argued Yale University President Richard C. Levin in a recent lecture, titled “The Rise of Asia’s Universities.” Levin also stated that rising Asian nations “all recognize the importance of an educated workforce as a means to economic growth and the impact of research in driving innovation and competitiveness.”

It should be noted, of course, that too many of Asia’s universities continue to have the same problems as their primary and secondary schools in that they rely heavily on rote learning, with negative effects on critical thinking and innovation. Singapore, for instance, has invested millions of dollars in seeking to foster innovation with little effect. But Asian educators are seeking solutions to the problems of innovation and creativity.

Speaking at the inaugural Asian Roundtable of Presidents of Universities of Education, Xu Jialu, director of the College of Chinese Language and Culture at Beijing Normal University, said that China needs to produce massive numbers of innovative people if it is to continue its robust economic growth. He added, “In Chinese education, the development of a creative mindset and abilities among students is urgently needed.”

In the current issue of “Foreign Policy”, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel predicts that China’s GDP will reach $123 trillion by 2040 partially because of “the enormous investment China is making in education.” He also predicts that the U.S.’s share of global GDP will be roughly one third that of China’s.

Without increased investment, the U.S. will no longer have the best universities in the world, will no longer be the world’s innovation leader, and will no longer have the world’s largest economy. It’s time for the U.S. to increase, not reduce, university funding. As the American patriot, inventor, and philosopher Benjamin Franklin put it, “An investment in knowledge pays the best dividends.”
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Bill Costello, M.Ed., is a U.S.-based education columnist, blogger, and author of “Awaken Your Birdbrain: Using Creativity to Get What You Want”. He can be reached at www.makingmindsmatter.com.