Fifteen Eighty Four

“Improving”, “getting better”,” making a difference”, all are common refrains when university leaders talk about the goals of their institution. We hear versions of these phrases in conversation with university leaders from around the world, in large states like India and Indonesia and smaller nations like Kazakhstan and Chile, and at institutions across United States. Sometimes the goal is clear and tangible, increasing enrollments or graduation rates. Others are ambitious, the pursuit of academic and financial independence. We are seldom, if ever, told that things are going just fine. Sometimes the goal is modeled on the operations of institutions, typically world-renowned ones like the University of Cambridge, perhaps an Ivy League institution or a large public university in the U.S. such as UCLA or Michigan. These exemplars are places with abundant resources, lots of research activity, admitting only a few of many academically talented and personally accomplished applicants.  Or their aspirations are couched as a higher ranking on one or more of the global scales, making it into the top five hundred, is a common goal even for some of the  15,000 or more institutions who do not provide data to the ranking enterprises.  

Regardless of how these aspirations are formed, the exemplars are far way geographically and financially. They are five or ten time zones to the East or West and separated by years of operation and decades of fundraising. The costs structures are very different with annual undergraduate tuition at Yale of US$67,250 towering over the US$2,400 for a domestic student at the University of Indonesia. The national investments in research and development vary substantially with India spending less than 1% of GDP compared with nearly 3.5 % in the US producing very different profiles of research capability at national universities.

Despite these differences most of the universities and colleges of the world aspire to do ‘good work’ and hope to make the world a better place for their students and for the communities that support them.  Often, they are driven by a deep appreciation for place. As one Indonesian rector put it, “The forest is behind our university, the sea is in front of us. This defines who we are as a university.” In other cases, it is that the institutions are very focused on their students and have aa deep understanding of  their unique needs and strengths. The work of these institutions is inspiring because of the impact they are having on their students, communities and regions, and  because they offer powerful alternative conceptions of institutional excellence. 

Little has been written about the institutions that educate more than 90% of the higher education students in the world, the ones that prepare the vast majority of the world’s engineers, nurses, teachers, technicians and citizens. Many of these institutions, with a fraction of the resources of the rich and famous have defined and pursued their own conceptions of excellence—their own institutional purposes. What they have achieved is remarkable.  

While the cases in Pursing Institutional Purpose profile instances of success, the institutions are not perfect. Pursuing a clearly defined purpose requires difficult, sometimes painful, tradeoffs. Some are grappling with uncertainties in financing and political support. We describe these challenges they faced and how they dealt with them.

The cases come from different parts of the world. Some are mature institutions; some are emerging, and some are start-ups. A few are well known nationally, some pre-eminent in a discipline or distinctive in the region.

Taken together they share some common qualities:

They are clear about who they serve (their students) and the work they are hoping to do in the world (their mission).

There is a distinct and usually observable organizational culture that results in core values and beliefs that are commonly held.

There is a shared narrative – a story or stories that reveal what matters to the community and celebrated.

They are grounded in their community or region, shaped by an understanding of place and national culture. These institutions reveal new understandings about what pursuing excellence can look like, an excellence defined by the compelling work they do for their own students, in their own communities and regions. They are institutions that deserve to be noticed, celebrated and their own unique conceptions of excellence supported by their governments and others who understand the transformational possibilities of higher education.