How to become a world-class university? From the financial perspective

Author(s):

Tian Ming Sheu

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 04 B, Higher Education: Structures, Policies and Transformations

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-28

16:00-17:30

Room:

HG, HS 30

Chair:

Mariana Gaio Alves

Contribution

Rankings of higher education institutions are becoming a global phenomenon. Many countries have invested billions of dollars to make their own universities so-called “world-class universities.” Take China as an example, the Ministry of Education has decided to invest US$263 million each year to Peking University and Tsinghua University in the hope that they will become world-class universities in 20 years. This paper takes the top 10 private and public world-class universities in the US, according to the ranking from “Academic Ranking of World University” of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and “World University Rankings” of the Times Higher Education Supplement, as the benchmarks to investigate how much money is being generated in these world-class universities? Where do the revenues of these world-class universities come from? How do these universities spend their expenditure?

Method

The financial data of these US world-class universities has been collected from The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System in the US Department of Education. Data for public and private universities in the US are collected from the Digest of Education Statistics for comparison with those world-class universities.

Expected Outcomes

This paper found that top 10 private and public world-class universities in the US are very rich in their revenues. The collective account of these top 10 private universities is US$34 billions, a quarter of all investment of the private universities in the US. The combined revenue for public world-class universities is US$20 billion, 11% of all investment of the public universities in the US. Half of the revenue of these US world-class public universities comes from State government, whereas half of the revenue of top private universities is from investment income. However, both private and public world-class universities depend very much on the grants and contracts from the Federal government, 15% and 23% of total revenue came from the Federal government respectively. The percentage of research expenditure in these world-class universities is double those 4-year universities in the US, which shows their research strength.

References

IPEDS (2005). Evaluate data and statistics 2004-2005. Retrieved June 4, 2008 from http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ NCES (2007). Digest of education statistics 2006. Retrieved August 14, 2008, from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/ Sanyal, B. C. & Martin, M. (2006). Financing higher education: International perspectives. In Higher education in the world 2006 (pp. 3-19), New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2005). Academic ranking of world universities – 2005. Retrieved June 1, 2008, from http://www.arwu.org/rank/2005/ARWU2005Main.htm The Times Higher Education Supplement (2005). The world’s top 200 Universities 2005. Retrieved June 1, 2008, from http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2005/

Author Information

Tian Ming Sheu

National Taiwan Normal University

Dept of Education and Graduate Institute of Educational Policy and Administration

Taipei City

215

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