The Challenge of Establishing World Class Universities

There are many important questions to
\n ask about the widespread push toward world-class status for
\n universities around the world. Why is
\n 'world-class' the standard to which a nation
\n should aspire to build at least a subset of its tertiary
\n education system? Might many countries be better served by
\n developing the most locally relevant system possible,
\n without concern for its relative merits in a global
\n comparison? Is the definition of "world-class"
\n synonymous with "elite Western" and therefore
\n inherently biased against the cultural traditions of
\n tertiary education in non-Western countries? Are only
\n research universities…