"Education, or more specifically, higher education, is the pathway to the empowerment of people and the development of nations. Knowledge generation has replaced ownership of capital assets and labor productivity as the source of growth and prosperity. Innovation is seen as the mantra for development. This realization is so pervasive that nations are scrambling to create institutions and organizations that would facilitate the process of knowledge creation." From the preface of The Road to Academic Excellence, The World Bank, 2011
Description: The positive contribution of tertiary education is increasingly recognized as not limited to middle-income and advanced countries, since it applies equally to low-income economies. Tertiary education can help countries become more globally competitive by developing a skilled, productive, and flexible labor force and by creating, applying, and spreading new ideas and technologies. Research universities are reckoned among the central institutions of the 21st century knowledge economies. This book extends the analysis of the framework presented in The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities (Salmi 2009) and by examining the recent experience of 11 universities in nine countries that have grappled with the challenges of building successful research institutions in difficult circumstances and learning from the lessons of these experiences.
