Page 76 - Crisis in Higher Education

50 • Crisis in Higher Education

2. Environment: This is 20% of the evaluation, and it is measured by
female participation both as students and faculty, diversity, data
quality, a supportive policy environment, and how well the univer-
sity system meets the needs of a competitive economy. The United
States ranked first, followed closely by several countries.
3. Connectivity: This is 20% of the evaluation, and it is measured by
the proportion of international students, joint research with faculty
from other countries, open-access articles on the Web, and knowl-
edge transfer and joint research with industry. The United States
ranked 14th in connectivity, falling behind in collaboration with
international researchers. This lag may be explained by the fact that
the United States is a research leader in many areas of science, tech-
nology, engineering, and business, and it may not see collaboration
as beneficial.
4. Output: This is 40% of the evaluation, and it is measured by sev-
eral items that assess research output, enrollment and graduates as
a percent of the population, and the unemployment rate for gradu-
ates. Most of these items are adjusted for population size. However,
the total number of research articles published by higher education
institutions, which is one quarter of the 40%, is not per capita. This
helps to explain why the United States achieves first place in the
Output area by a wide margin. The United Kingdom, which is sec-
ond, trails by more than 30%. 7

The Universitas 21 study goes further and adjusts its ranking for the
stage of economic development of each country using GDP per capita.
This provided an expected value for each variable, given a nation’s level
of income, which effectively reduces the ranking of countries like the
United States (16th place) and elevating countries like China (5th place)
and India (15th place). In this overall adjusted ranking, the United
States is also behind the United Kingdom (1st place), Serbia (2nd place),
Finland (6th place), South Africa (7th place), Portugal (8th place), and
New Zealand (9th place). 7

3.1.2 Instructional Quality

When drilling down on quality, students have one overwhelming com-
plaint: this or that faculty member is a poor teacher. The problem is often,
although not always, associated with inexperienced faculty. After all,