The Great Brain Race, 15 years later with Ben Wildavsky

Hi everyone. I'm Alex Usher and this is the World of Higher Education Podcast.
Sometimes books can be time machines. A few months ago, I started re-reading Ben Wildavsky's excellent 'The Great Brain Race, How Global Universities are Reshaping the World'. First published by Princeton University Press in 2010. And it took me literally to another planet. An optimistic one where higher education and globalization went hand in hand to enrich the lives of students everywhere and which powered universities to new heights of competition and discovery. When the book came out, I remember reading all of this and being somewhat skeptical. But with all of the nonsense of the past decade or so in global higher education, frankly, it all sounds pretty good to me right now.
Ben is, of course, a prolific author, and he's written a great deal on the topic of higher education, most recently, 'The Career Arts: Making the Most of Colleges, Credentials, and Connections'. I could have asked Ben to come on to speak about pretty much any of them, but boy, did I want to talk about The Great Brain Race because it's such a nostalgia sugar high.
And so, on what is roughly the 15th anniversary of its publication, Ben agreed to come on and enlighten us about what seemed new and fresh back in 2010, things like global rankings and lavishly funded branch campuses, and let me ask him annoying questions, about whether and how it's all gone wrong. And I'm very happy that he did.
And so enough for me, let's throw things over to Ben.
Alex Usher: So Ben, 15 years ago, you wrote this book, The Great Brain Race. What was the thesis? What were the trends that you wanted to illustrate?
Ben Wildavsky: Really, I was trying to, take the whole much discussed phenomenon of globalization, which, of course, you know, we, we heard about, a lot, including from, bestsellers like The World is Flat, like Tom Friedman, and take that to the world of higher education, where I just felt there was so much evidence, both that had already developed and that was continuing to develop, that globalization had hit higher ed big time.
So I really was interested partly in simply, it's both sort of descriptive and proscriptive in the sense I wanted to describe this, I thought really remarkable, but somewhat under discussed phenomena where there was just massive mobility of students around the world. And in addition, mobility of faculty. We actually just, David Lodge just, just died last week, who of course had written this wonderful trilogy of academic novels, which actually had a, had a bit of a, had an impact on me because he's, he's just such a wonderful observer. But basically mobility of students, mobility of faculty, mobility of research, and to some extent, mobility of campuses themselves, with the development of branch campuses, and with this phenomena of global university rankings to kind of keep score of all of this. I thought this was really worth basically an overview sort of description, but along with that, I guess I would say the book's thesis is really that much like I'm a, I'm a believer in, in markets and free trade as economically beneficial for the world. And by the same token, I made the argument for what I called free trade in minds as something that has very positive benefits for the world that sometimes faces backlash and arguments that are based on what I called academic mercantilism, the idea that you sort of have to hold on to your share of knowledge and that you should be scared if other people start, graduating more PhDs than you do. And I really tried to argue, knowledge is not a zero sum game, that in fact we should be happy if other people get, more and better education, that's going to be good for the world overall.
Alex Usher: So you start off the book talking about the global war for talent. And I have to, you know, I haven't heard that term in a few years. It's been a, you know, we're in a world of tariffs and concern about immigration. And you, you, you interviewed me about that about a year ago. Are we still in a global war for talent or not?
Ben Wildavsky: I suppose there's two ways of answering that. I don't know that you hear the rhetoric about the war for talent quite as much, but I certainly think if you talk to people in the, global corporate world, they are acutely aware of their need for well trained, people, the need on the consumer side, on the student side, the need to build human capital, and the evidence that that is going to be very important for a person's economic advancement, it seems to me as strong as it's ever been.
So, whether or not you use that rhetoric, war for talent, I don't know, but look, what's happening right now, and we're recording this on the verge of the new Trump administration, the second Trump administration, there's a huge infight going on among the Republicans over these H-1B visas, right, which are these visas for talented university graduates, or we presume they've got some talent because they've been to American universities, foreign students who want to stay on and work. And this has been a longstanding tension within the Republican party, actually. I mean, not to get sidetracked, but you know, when I, I started working, gosh, in 1995 for a magazine called National Journal, in Washington, and with the first article I wrote was about the infighting within the Republican party about free trade, and people like Pat Buchanan were figures on the scene who were much more economic nationalists. That strain of the party has now become much more dominant in the Trump era. However, you still have people like Elon Musk and others who are more in the Silicon Valley, sort of capitalist side of the party, who very much see the benefits of these talented foreign graduates staying in the U. S. and becoming part of our innovation economy. So I guess what I would say is, again, whether or not you use this phrase, war for talent, I think people are certainly acutely aware of the connection between building human capital, you know, through education and experience, and how that really helps the economy.
Alex Usher: So to the extent that there is a war for talent, or there was one 15 years ago, it seemed that back then one of the ways people thought, America or any country could win at that was by building what they called world class universities. You know, when our, our mutual friend, Jamil Salmi wrote a book with that title, right. And quite famously, I guess, just before you, your uh book came out. But the record of people actually managing to achieve world class status is pretty small, right? Like, like, you know, obviously there's your Harvard's and here's your Stanford's and there's, there's your Yale's, but those places were built 150 years ago. And they achieved that status at least 50 years ago. You know, who's become a world class university. A few, few in China maybe, National University of Singapore, maybe Paris Saclay through the merger process. Why do you think we haven't seen more of this? Like is achieving world class status simply too hard?
Ben Wildavsky: It's a great question. I think that to some extent the question is whether or not you see, you know, the move toward, trying to create more world class universities, would one expect the outcome after 15 years, and since my book was published, to be sort of, an equal distribution of world class universities around the globe, you know, commensurate with population or economic development or something? I don't think so. I think that it's more of an aspirational it's aspirational, at least the way that I thought about it, is yes, of course, many places, whether it's China or whether it's Germany, you know, with their excellence initiative and others, absolutely saw the imperative to try to create extremely high quality research universities based on the U. S. model, which, of course, as you know, and as you've discussed with other guests and I talk about in my book, was in turn, based on the German model from the Humboldtian Research University in the 19th century, right? So we've had these sort of back and forth, but it seems to me what's what's most important about that is not whether yeah I mean, it's it's it's we've got National University of Singapore and perhaps some Chinese universities, Paris Saclay, you know, sure. But I think that it's really the it's really frankly what Jamil Salmi wrote about in his book which was I think so powerful the fact if one of these places, National University of Singapore, of course was a place that embraced the merit principle at a time when the University of Malaya did not, and went with a much more insular, kind of approach, you know, getting, having quotas for admission for certain ethnic groups, and really not trying to go out onto the world market and compete on a sort of level of what you might call, perhaps this is a little bit I don't want to sound too highfalutin, but a sort of level playing field of excellence or striving for excellence.
So I'm not trying to dodge the question, but I think that it is, as far as I know, in the world of academia, not every institution, there are plenty of places that are just trying to serve the masses, and that's very valuable in its own right. But I do believe at the top level, whether or not you end up in the top 10 or the top 20 or whatever, if you see research excellence as your North Star, it seems to me that's a triumph of the principle, the aspirational principle towards being world class.
Alex Usher: So of course, one of the ways of, you know, I mean, I guess the way people tried to keep score on the world class stuff was uh, rankings and you have a whole chapter on, global rankings. Which I guess at the time I remember thinking, wow, this seems newer to Americans than it does to everybody else, right? Like, you know, America started rankings back in the 1980s, U. S. News and World Report. But it was looking at a very different set of things, right? But I guess, you know, so we've got more and more rankings. Seems like there's an, there's still new rankings every, every couple of months, but do these rankings actually matter? Like, have they become more consequential over time or no? Cause I don't get the sense that they're driving policy the way they used to anymore. And I don't get the sense you know, in your country, in America, that anybody's really tweaked to how far down the table, the second and third tier of American universities have gone, you know, the top tier is still the top tier you know, but you've gone from having, 40 percent of the top 500 being American to maybe 20%, 25%. There's a lot of those second tier institutions that have fallen off the top and yet nothing, right? There's just no reaction to that in the United States. So do you think, why do you think the impact of, of global rankings has been less than expected.
Ben Wildavsky: You know, honestly, I, Alex, I can't say I follow this as closely as I once did. I think I certainly can address, sort of going backwards the on the US side of things, of course, we are famously or infamously, insular about, things like, we're, we're, we're more concerned about, how we perhaps how states stack up against each other, or, the access to students, if we were very concerned, I think, correctly, so about economic access to some of our top institutions. I don't think that we worry so much in this country about how we stack up internationally in university rankings, but that's partly sort of noblesse oblige. You know, We are we are, because we've become such a dominant, global power in higher education, we continue to be despite all of the backlash and protectionism and so forth.
We continue to be the destination for international students and we continue to be the, the home of the great, really, not just one or two, but as someone said, we have a deep bench, as they say in sports, we have not just a few great universities, but we have dozens of extremely high quality universities.
So, in that sense, when I say, I'm sort of kidding, obviously, when I say noblesse oblige, but basically, we don't have to worry too much about whether we're somehow losing that sort of top dog status, which I, I do think we care about at the, at the, at the top level, I just think that we're not terribly concerned. We don't have a Ministry of Education. We don't have a sort of funding mechanism, the, the kind that other countries may have used. People like, Ellen Hazelcorn, our friend, you know, is very concerned about inappropriate policy incentives that have revolved around global rankings. That's just never really been a factor in the United States.
In other countries, right now, I don't really have a strong sense of how much they're hanging on to this, but I think there is I think probably reasonably so, both a sort of sporting interest in what's happening with the latest, Times Higher, QS rankings, and where are we. But the idea that there is going to be some sort of a causal effect between what your spending is going to be or in which part of the sector you're going to spend money and what sort of ranking you're going to get as a result and what positive outcome that ranking might lead. I would say people, just as far as I can see, are pretty agnostic about that.
Alex Usher: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. And we're back. You know, Ben, back in 2010, one of the things you were clearly taken with was this, was the rise, still new at that point, of branch campuses, right? Like, I think you spent some time in education city in Doha, you spent some time with John Sexton of New York University in, in Abu Dhabi. And to you, they sort of represented a new stage of globalization. I think that's a, the phrase that you, that you used in the book. How do you think those have turned out? Like, what do you make, for instance, of Texas A& M just cutting and running from from education city recently?
Ben Wildavsky: Well, before I get to Texas A& M, I'll sort of talk just more broadly. I mean, I would say, and I certainly don't want to be defensive, you know, because it's been the world changes. I don't think that I, I presented these not as the sort of next stage of the ideal stage of every university. I viewed it as an experiment, a period of experimentation where they're, and I think I said that pretty clearly, you know, that this was an effort to see, in different circumstances, and frankly, the financial factors were huge, you know, because the fact is, NYU would not be in Abu Dhabi without a ton of money from the Emirates, ditto, ditto all the universities from Georgetown to when it was there, Texas A& M. Georgetown, you know, other places that are in Qatar, there was a ton of money that was put in there, and so I don't think that there was ever really an argument that there was some economic imperative or economic, magnet just that the free market alone was not creating all these incentives.
However, we did have these places that were very well regarded, obviously very well known brands in many, many cases of, not all the branch campuses are well known, but some, and there was a market, the same people who were eager to travel to the United States for degrees because of the, what they felt was the excellence of our research universities and the cache of American degrees. There are people who, including women, particularly, frankly, in the Emirates, who have a much harder time traveling overseas without an escort. It's, or even, even now, there's just, the cultural mores are such that having these opportunities closer to home was very attractive. And, you still see, of course, NYU, although, of course, John Sexton is now emeritus, is, but there, you have, you have NYU in China and Shanghai. You still have NYU in Abu Dhabi. And you know, Education City has lost Texas A& M. I don't think they've lost others that I can, think
Alex Usher: none of the other American ones have left,
Ben Wildavsky: That's correct. But you know, of course, that, to some extent, that's, probably some of that's sui generis. Obviously, Qatar is right in the middle of, both, I mean, with not too much of a detour into geopolitics, but, both, presenting itself as a sort of, as a, as a referee in the, you know, the Israel Hamas war, but also having given huge support to Hamas over the years and having housing all of the, well, lots of people are suffering terribly in both in Israel and in Gaza, a lot of the Hamas leaders living in luxury in Qatar, so I think that in the context of the American politics, I don't know the details of why Texas A& M left, but I think the optics, as they say, are very problematic for a state like that, that you could argue sort of wants to have it both ways, wants to do some really forward looking things in education, which I applaud, but also has, you know, my view had been a problematic actor in other, in other ways, and I think that's the kind of thing that's, it's frankly, it's a surprise that a place like China has, which is, which is also a very problematic state in totally different ways has still maintained, you know, not as many, not as many relationships as they used to, but still pretty good relationships with a lot of American universities.
Alex Usher: Yeah. And I guess those branch campuses were more, they were at least as much an experiment in cultural power as they were in, in educational ones. Right. I mean, that, that's what people were after. They were after a, a halo effect. That's what the, the Emir of Abu Dhabi was, was after certainly.
Ben Wildavsky: I think that's a fair point. And also, I should say, you could, I mean, I know there is uh, my former colleagues at, at, at SUNY, at the State University of New York, has this, this great tracking site that keeps track of the number of branch campuses all around the world. And they're now at different universities, Kevin Kinser and others. And I actually don't know what the numbers are, but I don't think that it's, it's shrunk incredibly. It simply hasn't continued expanding at the same rate that it was.
Alex Usher: So I guess a similar area at the time were global for profit universities. These were still quite new at the time. You know, back then the, the dominant player I think was Laureate. You know, there've been new entrance and, and, you know, there's been lots of movement in that market over the last period of time, but I was struck by one sentence in your book and let me just read it to you.
"The multinational for profit firm could turn out to be the vehicle best suited for providing broad scale access to practical higher education, benefiting students who might otherwise have had far fewer opportunities." You think that statement still stands in 2025?
Ben Wildavsky: Great question. You know, and in a funny way, what it comes to mind is, I think certainly what, what is true across sectors is that there is a huge interest in what's called experiential learning. You know, the idea that practical post secondary education, which does not mean it's, it's not still something beyond vocational training, it's still something beyond secondary education, but there's huge interest, and this is actually the topic of, I'm now working on for a new book, there's huge interest in trying to find ways of getting people the kind of education that is career oriented, but that's, that's advanced and that's beyond the secondary level. And that's actually happening, it's certainly happening in the, in the public sector the mainstream sector, if you like. Not just among the laureates of the world, the sort of the for profit universities that I was focusing on in that, in that statement. So, and perhaps you could argue that this has been discovered and that, people, I, I do think that despite the backlash we see against some kinds of higher ed in the United States, I think globally, you know, there's still a huge interest in trying to expand opportunities for education, you know, after, after secondary school, the OECD is still measuring, you know, educational attainment by different countries and people get concerned if they feel they're too, falling too far behind.
Whether it just has to be the, I don't know that the, the for profit sector has unique advantages. I do see that in just the little slices of this world that I see, things like pathway programs, which are often for international students to get some exposure to a Western university, either in the western country or in their home country, those are still quite popular and they're still something that for profits like, Kaplan, which actually I do some consulting work with and others are very, are very involved with because they are particularly effective at helping recruit students, helping give them the preparation they need, and it becomes sort of a win win because the students want entree into these universities, the universities want to fill their seats, and that's a place where I think for profits certainly are continuing to work.
I'm a little less familiar with what's happening in Latin America, but I was particularly struck at the time I did the book was that there were places like, Brazil is the one that comes to mind where there was what sounds like a very noble idea of, oh, free public education at these elite universities, and people in the States are always saying, oh, gosh, why don't we have free public education? But of course, what it turns out is you look into it, the, the, the young people who go to these free public universities are often from wealthy families who were able to go to very expensive secondary schools. And so it almost became, it was sort of like, yeah, free, but it turns out to be free for the wealthy. So what was striking to me was that the, some people consider the problematic or concerning for profits, they were actually serving the middle and lower middle class by creating these very practical programs and things like nursing and computers and so forth. But again, I, I'm just have not kept up exactly with what they're doing. I think there's still a presence, but I think that's been discovered more by the mainstream as well.
Alex Usher: Yeah, I mean, I think what the part of what's happened, I think, is that the vocationalization of higher education is actually happening at the master's level, or at least at the post baccalaureate level. And so you get, you do get a lot of these private, the global ones that that's the market they're heading for. It's that master's, it's a practical degree, like you said, but it is, it's post bachelor's. So there's, there's something global about it and there's something vocational about it, but it might not be access the way we tend to think about that term. When I reread your book like I had a smile on my face the whole time because I just thought, oh my God, this is such a an optimistic book and you don't read many optimistic books either about globalization or higher education anymore. Like, I'm not sure anybody's written a book that optimistic, you know, maybe since, maybe since you, right, maybe you were the last one. Let me ask you, do you think you were overoptimistic or was there something specific bad on our timeline that, you know, that kind of queered the future? Is it as easy as just saying Xi Jinping plus Donald Trump plus Vladimir Putin made it all go bad? Like, what, what happened?
Ben Wildavsky: Well, I love, I love that shorthand as a, in terms of where we are today, but I actually, I don't think that that really is a, is, is necessarily an accurate overview of where we are. And I will say I wear, I wear the optimist badge proudly. I don't think that I was excessively optimistic. I, of course, I could, you know, again, not without being defensive, I could point to all kinds of caveats and, shades of gray in the book where I tried to sort of suggest this is a work in progress. And frankly, our, another mutual friend, Phil Altbach, who is sort of really the dean of, of global higher ed scholars, wonderful guy, he was very, he made it very clear to me well, he was very, he was kind enough to give a blurb to my book, but he made it very clear to me that he thought I was way too optimistic and he is, he is perhaps, let's just say, perhaps a little bit more of a jaundiced view of some of these things.
I don't think I'm a, Pollyanna about this. I don't think that every single development, has been wonderful. I think that the nature, in a way, I'll go back to this analogy with free trade. In some sense, if you wrote I'm not, I'm not going to compare myself to, to Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill, but if you could talk about the principles, if you're setting forth the principles, let's say, of free trade, and of the far reaching economic benefits, and if, I don't know if I would go so far as to say the historical inevitability, but let's say that this is the way, looking back, in the case of free trade over some centuries, we've seen the world develop in a certain direction.
There will be setbacks, there will be arguments, there will be, again, going back to the, I'm sorry to go back to the Trump administration, but there have been, all kinds of what I can consider very, not very well informed and not very well supported claims about tariffs and the, the need for protection of U. S. industry and so forth, and frankly, the Democrats have done some of the same. None of that, that's all part of the reality. If, I'm a former journalist, if you're following the news, it's part of the reality and you have to see what happens. But none of that takes away from the fundamental principles that free trade is going to be economically beneficial for many, many people. That there will be some winners and losers, that's part of how these kinds of economic developments work, but that I'm pretty confident that to the extent I was optimistic that, you know, if you look at, I think when I, when I wrote the book, there were about 3 million students traveling around the world and using the measure of a sub study for a year or more overseas, I believe in, I give a speech, I just quickly looked at it before getting on the interview, in 2019 it was around 6 million. So it had doubled. The OECD had projected a figure of 8 million by 2025. I don't know exactly how close we are, but we're certainly in the ballpark. So, simply in sheer numbers, this sort of, I would say just the inevitability that people are getting more educated, Claudia Golden, you know, the Nobel Prize winning economist, talked about the 20th century as the human capital century. I think that that is continuing both domestically in places like the United States and Canada, and also globally. So it just seems to me, yes, you can cite a million different setbacks, and this or that country, you know, we've had these sort of waves, but whether it's in the UK, or in Canada, or in Australia, or sometimes in the United States, backlash against international students, all kinds of ill advised policies that will create some kind of a setback. But it seems to me that if you look at the big picture, sort of historically, we're going to continue to see people trying to get ahead. And what I sort of argued in the book is people want to be able to get ahead based on what they know and what they can learn, not on where they're from and how much money they have.
And I think that, yes, in the first, waves of internationalization, of course, a lot of wealthier students are the ones who are getting to take advantage of those opportunities. But I think ultimately, this argument for sort of a meritocratic world where you can improve yourself and take advantage of opportunities with as few barriers as possible, I think that that is not only idealism, but I think that that's increasingly, incrementally becoming the reality for more people.
Alex Usher: So the arc of higher education is long, but it bends towards globalization?
Ben Wildavsky: I would say so, yes.
Alex Usher: Okay. How do we make it bend faster? Like, if we come back here in 15 years, like what, like, what, what do you think will have changed that might have sped us up a little bit on this or, or will anything do it? I mean, what's your sense of, of how things will evolve over the next few years.
Ben Wildavsky: To somee extent, it partly depends on just things like global economic growth. I think that if, if the global economy continues, you know, with maybe with some fits and starts, it continues, if the world becomes a wealthier place, people continue to understand, human capital is king, that education and economic development are intrinsically connected, then I think that people are going to continue to seek out opportunities, you know, in their own countries, we're going to have broader, I hope we'll have, continue to see more access to education, more completion of education, more access to education across race and class, regardless of whatever legal like we've had this obviously big fights in the U. S. over affirmative action, but whatever happens on that front, I think people are going to continue craving more education and more opportunity. I think the same is going to be true on the global front. So the question is what can you do to get out of the way? And I think that's going to be the problem as to how do you can prevent, inappropriate restrictions on international students there's the whole question of what kind of funding regime is available, but there I'm, I'm sort of agnostic because there's there's pretty inexpensive mass access universities that give people opportunities, and there's super expensive elite universities, and I think we probably need more folks.
Alex Usher: Ben Waldowski, thanks so much for joining us.
Ben Wildavsky: Thanks so much for having me. It was a great conversation
Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, and you, the reader, viewer, or listener, for joining us. If you have any questions or comments about today's episode, please don't hesitate to get in touch at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Don't forget to join our YouTube channel. Sign up. Never miss an episode of the World of Higher Education.
Join us next week when our guest will be Duncan Ross. He's the former Chief Data Officer at the Times Higher Education, and he'll be talking with us about the world of global university rankings. Bye for now.