China, Europe and the Netherlands: Opportunity Is Knocking at Our Doors

Apr. 2015 
  057 
WWW.BOAOREVIEW.COM
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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Apr. 2015 
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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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