Education and Accreditation [602931]

Education and Accreditation
565
THE IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON HIGHER EDUCATION

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Eugenia Grecu1
1 Polit ehnica University of Timisoara, Romania

ABSTRACT
In recent decades, the practice established hierarchy of academic achievement. Higher
education gets increasingly more global dimension. More and more s tudents choose to
study abroad. Therefore, given inc reased interest in global classification of universities,
both t he students and the university. Only few European universities rankings can be
found at the top recognized.
Keywords: ranking, universities, competitiveness

INTRODUCTION
The globalization p rocess has modified the economic, political and cultural structures of
the world and it has increased the importance of the internationalization strategy of the
higher education system and of the human capital for the country‟s competitiveness.
Complementa ry to this, an important role has also the recognition of the higher
education diplomas on a national, regional, continental and even global level [2]. After
gaining awareness of the globalization effect on the countries, we can conclude that the
expansion and the focus on the internationalization process of the higher education
system are very important.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE HIGHER
EDUCATION SYSTEM
Today, the contemporaneous university can‟t keep on existing in a limited space.
Therefore, the higher education system was engaged into an internationalization process
[5]. The regionalization and globalization processes forced the higher education system
to create a new educational system that could represent a new phase in the innovat ive
development of the national, continental and global economies [1]. Given these facts, is
mandatory to start to improve the studying programs and to develop a more competitive
higher education system.

THE METHODOLY OF THE GLOBAL RANKING SYSTEMS
In the last decade, a lot of world universities rankings were made public. There is a wide
variety of rankings, but out of these, the most important ones are Times Higher
Education Supplement (THESS) from United Kingdom and Shanghai Jiao Tong
University ( SJTU ) Academic Ranking of World Universities from China [3]. These 2
rankings that are competing one with each other exist for only 8 -9 years, but they started
to become more and more popular.

13th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference SGEM 20 13
Times Higher Education has been known for publishing the annual Times
Higher education –QS World University Rankings, which f irst appeared in November
2004 [12]. On 30 October 2009, Times Higher Education broke with QS and signed an
agreement with Thomson Reuters to provide the data for its annual World Rankings.
Times Higher Education World University Rankings are the most widely recognised
and widely used rankings among international students, new research has found. The
Times Higher Education World University Rankings judge research -led universities
across all their core mi ssions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international
outlook. There are 5 areas with 13 performance indicators: teaching( the learning
environment), research( volume, income and reputation), citations: (research influence),
industry income( in novation), international outlook (staff, students and research).
Another important university ranking is the one made by the Jiao Tong University from
Shanghai [7]. This one is ranking the first 500 universities of the world taking into
account their scien tific performance. The Academic Ranking of World Universities has
only one criterion; the scientific production per capita, but this is the best indicator for
quantifying the intellectual value of a person, of an institution, of a university or of a
profes sor. The Shanghai ranking uses the following indicators for estimating the quality
of the education pursued in a certain school, of the professors and of the research
activities of the universities: the number of the graduates and the professors awarded
with the Nobel Prize or the Fields medal ; the number of the professors considered
highly cited by the Institute for Sustainable Structure (ISI) ; the number of the scientific
articles published in the Nature and Science magazines in a certain period ; the numb er
of articles mentioned in the Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts and Humanities
Citation Index, as they are considered twice more Important than the ones mentioned in
the Science Citation Index Expanded ; an indicator that takes into account the tota l score
obtained in the previous years and it weights it with the number of the academic staff
Overall, both rankings show that the American Universities are took some steps forward
compared to the European ones.
In Europe, there are around 4000 higher ed ucation institutions, with more than 19
million students and 1.5million employees [9]. However, in the last ranking made
public in 2012 -2013 in the THES S top 20 universities, only 5 of them were European
and in the Shanghai one only 2. It‟s also worth ment ioning the fact that no Romanian
university was ranked in any top 500 published by the prestigious rankings.
Because obtaining a Nobel or a Fields award on a short term is less possible, the way in
which the Romanian universities could increase their gradi ng in the Shanghai ranking is
by increasing the number of the article mentioned by ISI, especially in the socio –
humanistic fields and the quality increase of the scientific publications, that could lead
to a better visibility in prestigious magazines like Science, Nature or in the „highly
cited‟ research index.
Another very well -known ranking is "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities".
This is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in
Spain. The Webometrics brings together information from the universities websites.
This top is meant to analyze the complexity of the websites, the number of links that
bring the viewers on these webs ites, the academic materials published on their websites,
as well as the number of the references that these material have in other documents and

Education and Accreditation
567
their quality. The American universities dominate all the rankings concerning the
accessibility and the transp arence on the internet [13].
In the ranking that was made public for the year 2012/2013 by Webometrics, in the first
20 there were only 5 European universities (Cambridge, University College London,
University of Oxford, Imperial Colege London from Great Britain and ETH Zurich
from Swiss) . Concerning the Romanian universities, the best 3 of them reached the
position 601 ( University Babes -Bolyai from Cluj Napoca, University from Bucharest
and University Alexandru Ioan Cuza from Iasi) . Still, we need to take into account the
fact that these rankings don‟t reflect the diversity and the multifunction of these
universities, neither the research activities [13].

THE EUROPEAN ALTERNATIVE FOR THE UNIVERSITIES RANKING
The critics got by the famous rankings are eve ry day more and more. Both the European
Commission and some UE state members started to express their doubt concerning
them. At a European level they are considered to be very subjective and that they don‟t
show very precisely the diverse nature and multi functional aspect of the universities,
neither the integrality of their research activities. The internationalization and the
globalization impose the adoption of a program at an institutional, national, regional and
continental level. In UE there were pla ns to have implemented a European ranking of
the universities (2011).
The German – Dutch -Belgian -French consortium CHERPA was supposed to realize and
test a new alternative system of ranking the universities around the world. In 2009, the
planning of a new system was made, the testing was done in 150 economical and
technical universi ties from all around the world. The CHERPA study was finished in
2011 and it confirmed the fact that both the concept of multidimensional classification
and putting it into prac tice seem to be realistic. Unfortunately, the system was not
recognized as being the best and it didn‟t become popular.
But, at the beginning of this year, the European Commission launched in Dublin the
U-Multirank classification [9]. This classificatio n is meant to be multidimensional and it
qualify the universities by concerning a wide range of performance factors. In this way,
the universities will be ranked for 5 different criterias: the reputation for doing
qualitative research documentation, the quality of teaching and learning, the
international factor, the success in transferring the knowledge (for example the
partnership with the well knows companies, but also with the new ones) and also the
collaboration with regional institutions.
This rankin g aims to offer a more realistic guide that is easier to use in order to
understand what these universities have to offer. It‟s going to be both a modern and
sophisticated one and it will try to ilustrate a global overview of the higher education
activitie s. The prestigious international rankings had until now some tendencies of
putting too much importance on the reputation obtained for academical research.
The U -multirank ranking will be live for the first time in the scolar year 2013 -2014; for
this, tho ugh the program Longlife Learning, the EU will offer a 2million euro funding,
with the possibility of extending it for 2 years (for 2015 -2016). The main objectiv
would be that after this, the ranking to be decided by an independent organization. For

13th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference SGEM 20 13
the mo ment, the European Commission nominated an independent consortium to work
on this ranking.
The ones who will lead this initiative are: the Higher Education Center in Germany and
the Higher Education Center for Political Studies in the Netherlands [9]. The y will
collaborate with partners like the Scientifical and Technological Center for Studies
belonging to the Leiden University, the scientifical publisher Elsevier; the Bertelsmann,
the software company Folge 3, but also with partners that are already pres ent in the
national ranking and other organizations , with the purpose of offering more accurate
data.
The U-Multirank ranking is meant to be a tool for both the prospective students and for
the other stakeholders from the educational field, but also the economical social one and
the universities that want to improve their performance. There is a chance that the
U-Multirank system will offer a chance to the Romanian Universities too. For several
Romanian universities and other persons involved in thi s system is very frustrating the
fact that no Romanian university made it to the top 500 of the best universities in the
world made public in the famous rankings.
These rankings are considered a landmark, an absolute point of reference in evaluating
these higher education institutions after certain criteria previously established. But in
fact, this is a fake problem. The prestigious rankings shouldn‟t be considered absolutely
pertinent. For example, the rankings organized in the last 8 -9 years (THES S, Shan ghai)
were made on subjective criteria; therefore they shouldn‟t discourage or harm the image
of certain institutions that have a track record of their performance (as is the case of
some Romanian universities that have more than one century).
Taking into account the fact that the Thomson (ISI) reference counts a lot, the interest to
accredit the national publications in the Thomson indexing systems an d other
international databases ( by focussing on good European ranking of universities , in
which it will b e involved the Elsevier Scientific Publishing, I think it would be useful to
a shift of interest and thus indexing and not just for the Thompson ISI). Only after a
latent period when in all the domains and at all the university levels, and when Romania
would have magazines and scientific papers worldwide known (Thomson ISI), it would
be interesting to think about the prestigious rankings. Otherwise, it would mean that the
Romanian universities would enter in a competition where they would have no chance
and it would emphasize its undeserved weaknesses.
The conditions for a university to be in the top are in the first place related to its strong
research resources, qualitative publications and only after this its professors [11].

THE EXPERIENCE THAT ROMANIA HAS WITH THE UNIVERSITY
RANKINGS
In the last years, more and more countries tried to establish their own national rankings
concerning the universities [4]. Therefore, to keep the line with these trends, Romania
started to analyze the option of creating a national ranking targeting the higher
education institutions. The new law of the national education brought a series of new
things to the Romanian higher education system. Out of these, the most important ones
are related to the universities and the educat ional programs ranking

Education and Accreditation
569
This ranking leverages some of the criteria used by the most prestigious rankings and it
took into account the research activities, the articles with the ISI references, the foreign
students. The scope declared was to reinforce the i mage of the Romanian educational
system. In the same time, the university ranking designs the image of the potential of
the Romanian universities and is meant to be a signal addressed to the socio -economic
environment.
The purpose of this action was on a side to certify the mission that each university can
work for, but also to become a landmark that the universities should use as a reference
point in order to accomplish its role in the society. Nevertheless, the university ranking
was meant to distinguis h the performance of the universities, while using objective
criteria. The changes targeted the resources and the power distribution from the
universities towards the valuable people.
For the first time, due to the new law of the education, that the Govern ment made
changes concerning the maxim capacity for schooling per each stu dying program
(Government Decision 966/2011 which provides for each program of study enrollment
capacity limit ), according to The Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher
Educ ation (ARACIS ) evaluation [6]. Overpassing this maximum capacity of schooling
is considered a crime and it can lead to dramatic sanctions according to the article 138
from the Law of the Education [8]. The ministry decided to strictly control the violation
of the maximum capacity for schooling in the universities.
A lot of universities experienced the phenomenon of horizontal expansion, developing a
lot of new specializations, without performing well in all these fields. Therefore, the
ranking of the educa tional studies and of the universities meant a very important tool for
scaling the higher education system. The ranking of the educational programs made in
2011 was one of the first tries of running such an action from the beginning until the
end.
This ra nking was not made once forever . Verifying and reporting the data will be a
continuous activity. The result became a subject for the public attention and a real
interest. The purpose of this activity was helping universities to improve themselves and
their value. The ranking of the universities was not important in itself, but as an
instrument which served the very universities and helped center their activities better. In
Romania the resources were spread and the universities, whether they were able to do it
or not, engaged in various activities they could not finish.
This meant no funds for those who were left at the end of the list. This is why the effort
to classify them leads to a classification of the resources according to their capacity of
every ins titution to pay its duty to society. Basically, the ranking of the Romanian
universities produced a different financing according to performance. Off the record,
we already knew that except for the old, famous universities, many other private or
public un iversities are not competitive at all. A well -known fact was highlighted: many
Romanian universities, most of all private, are not competent.
The ranking led to a series of protests and accusations towards the ministry. Many of
them r egarded the lack of t ransparency of the evaluation, the fact that the criteria were
not known before it took place, they were mentioned during the evaluation after many
requests.
Through the ranking in 2011 all private universities were placed in the last category

13th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference SGEM 20 13
received a larger amount according to their value. Immediately one of these universities
(“Dimitrie Cantemir ” Christian University from Bucharest ) challenged the top and had
prevailed in court . The public universities which belonged to the first category received
larger budgets; those belonging to the last one got a small amount. One of the
universities (“Stefan cel Mare” University from Suceava) , initially underprivileged by
this ranking, won the lawsuit against the Ministry of Education and the classifying 2012
rank was cancelled. Finally, this ranking left nothing behind except for the initial
impact. Regarding the international standards, for a Romanian university to reach the
top 100 universities in the world, eight of its students should end up teaching there.
Between 1990 -1991, 13,8 students should end up being teachers, after 16 years the
number almost doubled to 25,7/1 between 2006 -2007, nowadays many top Romanian
universities have an average of 20 teachers who graduated there [10].
A top university used to have in the past years 22 students/1professor. A private one
from the bottom of the chart ( “Spiru Haret” University from Bucharest -which managed
to become the 3rd university in the world according to the number of students) had
312.000 students and 922 pr ofessors, meaning an average of 300 students/1professor. At
the universities in top 500 the amount of money spent for each student is 30.000
dollars/year whilst they are 10 times less in our country.

CONCLUSIONS
The European higher education system, but also the Romanian one, are generating new
information, are creative and they can bring new criteria and innovatory aspects in the
international higher education system.
The Romanian Universities need to focus more in reshaping their activities, especially
in research and in organizing and spreading their materials on the internet.
The organizations existing in the Romanian Higher education system could become
global partners in the internalization process and they can contribute in an equal quota
to enhanc ing the effect of this phenomenon.
The university rankings don‟t represent an absolute measure of evaluating the
performance, but rather one that can be perfected. Therefore, they shouldn‟t be look at
as the absolute truth, but as something relative.

REFERENCES
[1] Aronowitz, S. The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and
Creating True Higher Learning. Bost on: Bacon Press, USA , pp.3 -9, 2000
[2] Burbules, N.C. & Torres, C.A. Globalization and Education. Critical Perspectives.
London: Routledge University Press., Great Britain, pp.2 -8, 2000
[3] Grecu E. Generalizing the Fees in Higher Education, Quality Management in Higher
Education, Proceedings of The 6th International Seminar Quality Management in
Higher Education – QMHE2010, Tulcea, Romania, Book II, pp 475 -479, 2010
[4] Păunescu M. The Public Management in Romania, Publisher Polirom, Bucharest,
Romania, pp 63 -72, 2008

Education and Accreditation
571
[5] Vaira M. Globalization and higher education organizational change: A framework
for analysis, Higher Education , Volume 48, Issue 4, Kluwer Academic P ublishers,
Norwell, MA, USA, pp. 483-510, 2004
[6] *** http://www.aracis.ro, Accesed on 2013 -04-28
[7] *** http://www.arwu.org/ Accesed on 2013 -03-22
[8] ***http://www.edu.ro, Accesed on 2013 -04-06
[9] ***http://epp.eurostat.eu, Accesed on 2013 -03-08
[10]***http ://www.insse.ro, Accesed on 2013 -03-14
[11]***http://www.topuniversities.com/qs -world -university -rankings , Accesed on
2013 -03-14
[12]***http://www.timeshighereducation. co.uk/world -university -rankings, Accesed on
2013 -04-11
[13] *** http://www.webometrics.info/ , Accesed on 2013 -04-09