Excellence Initiatives to Establish World-Class Universities: Evaluation of Recent Experiences

Jamil Salmi, Ph. D., coordinator of the World Bank's tertiary education program (NW, Washington, D.C., United States), member of the International Advisory Panel, National Research University -Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation. Email: jsalmi@tertiaryeducation.org Address: The World Bank Institute, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20433, United States.Isak Froumin, Ped.D., Professor, Director of Research and Development at the Education Institute, National Research University - Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation. Email: ifroumin@hse.ru This is an analysis of excellence initiatives to boost the university sector implemented in the past fifteen years in different countries of the world. The authors describe the key features of such initiatives and the major factors of their success, which are: a) high proportion of talented professors and students in universities; b) abundant resources allowing for a diverse educational environment and for advanced research; c) effective management which encourages strategic planning, innovations and flexible approach and thus enables universities to make decisions and to allocate resources with no additional costs. The excellence accelerators are specified. The paper studies various options of excellence initiative development and implementation, pointing to pros and cons of each of them.Using international experience and assessing the recent reforms in Russian tertiary education, the authors come to the conclusion that projects designed to make Russian universities more competitive should have the following objectives: active development of multidisciplinary centers of excellence and postgraduate programs in major universities; targeted funding to support promising young researchers; internationalization of education; reformation of the management system. The essential prerequisites for excellence initiatives should be consistent funding and an infrastructure comparable to that of globally competitive universities.It is emphasized that excellence initiatives designed to support research universities still leave open the need for systemic reforms in education, which are supposed to enhance the effects of excellence initiatives.