There are many important questions to ask about the widespread push toward world-class status for universities around the world. Why is 'world-class' the standard to which a nation should aspire to build at least a subset of its tertiary education system? Might many countries be better served by...

For middle-income and developing countries as well as some industrial nations a major challenge for building and sustaining successful research universities is determining the mechanisms that allow those universities to participate effectively in the global knowledge network on an equal basis...