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WWII. Mr. Tsipras has cited the 1953 Lon-
don Debt Agreement
as a precedent for debt
relief – the agreement cut Germany’s debt
from the Treaty of Versailles by 50%, and the
repayment was only due over a 30-year span
when West Germany ran a trade surplus.
However, the only leverage Greece has
is the threat to leave the euro, which Prime
Minister Tsipras has already ruled out. As
such, it is not going to be easy for Greece to
gain material concessions from the “troika”
of creditors – the European Commission,
the ECB and the IMF – that hold €240 bil-
lion of Greek debt. Wouldn’t it be ironic if
Prime Minister Tsipras were to negotiate for
negative interest rates on the €240 billion of
debt?
Syriza’s agitation and Greek voters’ re-
jection of austerity once again highlight the
structural instability of a currency union
among countries with very different and per-
haps incompatible characteristics. The Euro-
phile elites can
only keep the status quo for
so long before disillusioned populaces force
structural changes.
The aforementioned developments clearly
demonstrate that, more than six years after
the onset of the Great Financial Crisis, the
global macro environment remains anything
but normal. One after another, the erstwhile
bubbles have imploded (U.S. housing, the so-
called commodity super-cycle and the shale
and other high-cost oil investment boom).
Yet at the same time, there is a bubble brew-
ing in the world’s
monetary base, as major
economies, with the exception of the Euro-
zone until the latest QE plan announced in
January, have all been busy printing money
in an effort to create a wealth effect and prop
up the economy.
For investors and policymakers with a
long-term planning horizon, the daunting
question is how this monetary base bubble
can be deflated without incurring collateral
damages in the years to come. The Federal
Reserve will shortly attempt to start the nor-
malization process by nudging up the Fed
Funds rate that, for
all intents and purposes,
has been zero for years. But even this baby
step is likely to be met with much market
angst, and the Fed may still wind up pushing
out this decision, as inflation expectations
of late have been trending lower. The road
to normalization is going to be a long and
bumpy ride.
Jimmy C. Chang
Chief Equity Strategist, Rockefeller & Co.
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Public Policy
058
Apr. 2015
T
he use of the word “world class” by universities
to describe themselves has almost become
meaningless, debased by inappropriate over us-
age. This made me contemplate how to define a world-
class university. Undoubtedly a world-class university
needs to be a global university; if it isn’t global, I find
it difficult to see how it could crown itself world class.
Globalization is heard
everywhere and is often pre-
sented as a mixture of opportunity and threat. One of
the main difficulties is that it means different things to
different people and that it is difficult to get a clear defi-
nition. I prefer the definition made by Martin Carnoy:
Everything is becoming organized around a much
more compressed view of space and time.
This definition allows you to take any variable eco-
nomic, political, social, cultural and analyse its status
in 2015 by considering how it operates now in much
shorter time frames and within a much more com-
pressed geography – everything is nearer, meaning
everything goes further quicker.
In 2003 I wrote an article for the
Times Higher
in
which I gave some definitions of a global university.
In this article I revisit that and it is interesting how
some variables are almost unchanged and others have
moved on.
Almost the first thing a vice-chancellor will say when
asked if they lead a global university is that must be the
case as they have multiple
international collaborations
between academic staff. However, such collaborations
are the day-to-day life of almost any university today.
There will literally be tens of thousands of universities
worldwide that have such international collaborations
– every one of those cannot be a “global” university.
So what are the extra factors that will define a “global”
0409
What Defines a
Global University
in 2015?
By
Sir Eric Thomas
A world-class university needs to be a global university, but defining a
global university can be difficult. A sound starting point consists of clear
brand recognition,
global research, international curriculum, international
students and staff, impacting global issues, interactions with global business
and attracting visitors from all over the world.
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university? I suggest the following:
A clear brand with international recognition
In the UK, the word brand is pejorative for some of
our colleagues. However, for better or worse, if some-
one mentions the name of a UK university, a picture
of that university immediately forms in my head. That
picture may well be a memory I have of the university
but it will also contain my reception of it –
a mixture of
knowledge, surmise and conclusions from how it pre-
sents itself. If that’s not a brand then give me another
word for it.
There are very few universities whose brand is
known throughout the world by ordinary people and
thus such holistic brand penetration cannot be the
defining criteria of “global”. However, the brand of
your university should be easily recognized by your
peer group nationally, by your national policy makers
as well as by the international higher education sector.
Perhaps most importantly, there
should be a number of
disciplines in your university that have global recogni-
tion in their peer group. When a distinguished member
of the peer group is asked where the best work is being
done in the discipline globally, your university should
be identified.
Comprehensive excellence in research, teaching,
academic staff, facilities, leadership and governance
I will discuss research, teaching and staff later. How-
ever, excellence in these three areas is not enough. A
Sir Eric Thomas
Vice-Chancellor, University of Bristol
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