Using research he gathered for his award-winning book, "The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World," Wildavsky discussed how globalization in higher education offers marked benefits.
Unprecedented academic mobility, the emergence of global college rankings and a race to create world-class universities everywhere are the hallmarks of globalized education. Each of these components presents their own threats, Wildavsky said.
Academic mobility not only means that more students and professors are traveling to universities worldwide but also that new global networks of research have been growing and that campuses themselves have become more mobile, Wildavsky said. Qatar, for example, has attracted branches of American institutions such as Texas A&M University, Georgetown University and Northwestern University, as well as branches of several British and French universities.
This mobility provokes anxiety, especially in the developing world. Individuals fear that these changes will result in a "brain drain," in which the brightest students will permanently leave developing countries to study and work elsewhere, Wildavsky said. Meanwhile, well-established universities in wealthy countries worry that they will face a "crowding out" of their country's students by international students.
Neither of these concerns should exist, according to Wildavsky, given that the mobility of international students allows for "brain circulation and exchange" and that university programs can expand.
"The bottom line is that mobility is empowering," Wildavsky said. "As we bring down barriers, a world of academic mobility lets people get ahead based on what they know, not on who they are or where they come from. It creates a meritocracy and a free trade in minds."
Global college rankings have become increasingly common in the globalized education market, he said. Although these rankings have been controversial and some are flawed, Wildavsky said they are both inevitable and useful in that they spur competition between universities to provide a "common academic currency."
Wildavsky said rankings serve as a "democratic instrument" by encouraging "transparency and accountability" in higher education. Global university rankings have pushed universities in many countries to develop world-class institutions as a pathway to innovation and growth within their own countries, Wildavsky said. In order to do this, these countries have begun pouring funds into schools, recruiting the best minds from within their borders and forming partnerships with American universities such as Duke University and Yale University.
The anxiety that U.S. universities will "lose their edge" is misplaced, according to Wildavsky. The progression of institutions in other countries does not signify that the U.S. has become less successful, and the U.S. should instead embrace the global higher education movement.
"We must understand that knowledge is not a zero-sum game," Wildavsky said. "It is not finite, but rather it can spread and grow. More graduates from other universities is something that's good for us, not bad for us."
Dartmouth can take advantage of these changes in higher education, Wildavsky said. While the College is already participating in the global marketplace by incorporating international students and faculty, administrators can use global education to their advantage in other ways, such as making connections with universities to take the liberal arts education abroad and considering new media and online resources for teaching.
"If Dartmouth can figure this out and get it right, they will be participating in globalization in a meaningful way, not just in platitudes," Wildavsky said.
Antonio Tillis, co-chair of the "Global Dartmouth" strategic planning working group and chair of the African and African-American studies department, said the committee selected Wildavsky to speak in order to elucidate "what it means to be part of global education" and rethink Dartmouth's relationship to globalism.
Royce Yap '15 said he attended the lecture to help generate ideas for a project in his Economics 25 class, which collaborates with the strategic planning committee to develop ways to improve Dartmouth's global presence.
"It was interesting to get a fresh pair of eyes on this topic," Yap said. "The global trends that he spoke about will help us identify global trends to contribute to the ideas that we will propose to the Dartmouth administration."
