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"Записная книжка" Андрея Калиничева

Автор Андрей Калиничев, 17.07.2006 07:54

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Андрей Калиничев

17.07.2006 07:54 Последнее редактирование: 24.07.2006 09:32 от Андрей Калиничев
Кажется, нашел применение для этого инструмента. Буду постить сюда интересные относящиеся к науке публикации, к которым в других местах доступ может оказаться ограничен.

Для блюстителей копирайта: это делается исключительно с образовательными целями, что законом не запрещено.

Андрей Калиничев

17.07.2006 07:57 #1 Последнее редактирование: 24.07.2006 09:26 от Андрей Калиничев
Про Украину. Довольно интересно, хотя и без особых сюрпризов.

Ukraine scientists grow impatient for change

Researchers still waiting for a dividend from the 'orange revolution'.

Ukraine's 'orange revolution' -- a national protest against corruption that overthrew the first results of the country's 2004 election -- raised hopes for political and societal change. But more than a year on, scientists are increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of reform of the country's Soviet-style research system, which they believe is being hampered by Ukraine's aged and anti-European scientific establishment.

The nation, which has a population of 48 million and is Europe's second-largest country in terms of area, has a long tradition in science and hosts an extensive network of academic institutes and research facilities. But, as it did elsewhere in Eastern Europe, science declined dramatically after the collapse of communism in 1991, forcing thousands of researchers to leave the country.

Nothing will change in Ukrainian science as long as the current system exists
When Viktor Yushchenko came into power in January 2005, it was hoped that the pro-West president would encourage a fundamental reform of the science system. But critics say that the promised switch to less a authoritarian system has hardly begun.

The focal point of criticism is the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), which runs 174 institutes and employs around 28,000 researchers. The powerful academy, a relic of the Soviet science complex, dominates Ukrainian science. The average age of the academicians is about 71; the president, Boris Paton, an expert in electric welding and the son of the former president, is 85.

The bulk of the academy's activities relate to mechanics, material sciences and physics -- euphemisms, according to critics, for former military-oriented engineering institutes. And productivity is low. According to the Thomson Scientific (ISI) statistics, academy scientists publish around 1,500 papers a year -- roughly one-third of the output of Britain's University of Manchester alone.

But critics say the academy is not interested in carrying out an independent review of its scientific performance. There are also claims of widespread corruption. For example, an attempt to create closer ties between Ukraine and western European institutions by linking Ukraine to GÉANT, the high-speed European data communication network, was allegedly hindered by academy members demanding bribes. Another complaint is that the academy leaders, fearing competition and loss of influence, are blocking attempts to facilitate Ukraine's participation in research programmes funded by the European Union (EU), by deliberately holding back information and generally failing to cooperate with EU authorities.

"The Academy is not interested in any reform whatsoever," says Aleksei Boyarski, a theoretical physicist at CERN, the European lab for particle physics in Geneva, Switzerland. "Nothing will change in Ukrainian science as long as this system exists."

Ukrainian scientists are eligible for EU research money thanks to a 2002 association agreement with the European Commission's framework programme for research. But so far, only seven out of thousands of EU-funded projects include Ukrainian participants, says Vadym Yashenkov, deputy director of Ukraine's National Information Point for EU research.

According to Yashenkov, this is partly because of the general weakness of Ukrainian science and industry, and the complicated application procedures that put off many scientists.

But participation is also hindered because the academy fails to provide and disseminate relevant documents and information, says Oleh Napov, a science attaché at the Ukrainian mission to the EU in Brussels, Belgium. For example, Napov has submitted a proposal for scientific reform to the Ukrainian research ministry. He says that when he asked the academy to outline its scientific priorities, he received only a list of the names and titles of all current academicians, and a letter stating that the academicians themselves were the academy's priorities.

"Maybe they have not asked us in a proper way," counters Yaroslav Yatskiv, director of the Main Astronomical Observatory in Kiev, and a member of the academy's presidium. The president, Paton, had not responded to queries when Nature went to press.

Yatskiv says he is aware that corruption is a widespread problem within the academy. "It is true, unfortunately, that funding is not based on scientific merit," he says. But he adds that efforts to evaluate and possibly transform the academy are being considered.

Brain drain
Yatskiv has recently proposed the creation of a National Science Foundation that, like its US counterpart, would fund research on the sole basis of excellence judged by peer review. But Paton last year told a presidium meeting that the future role of the academy should be similar to that of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, another relic of the Soviet science complex. "I don't think this is a good idea," says Yatskiv.

Resistance to the academy's backward-looking plans is growing, both inside and outside Ukraine. A 13-strong group of Ukrainian scientists, led by Boyarski, has suggested to the country's science ministry a detailed concept of domestic reform, including rigorous evaluation of all academy institutes, the creation of an international institute of advanced study in Kiev and of a number of centres of excellence supported by the EU.

"Things back home really need to improve substantially," says Alexej Verkhratsky, a Ukrainian-born neurophysiologist at the University of Manchester and a member of Boyarski's group. "If they don't, our best young people will soon have left for good. A considerable number of Ukrainian scientists working abroad (myself included) would come back if things were reorganized."

"We have the same potential, scientifically and politically, as Poland or Hungary to become a genuine part of Europe," adds Oleg Krishtal, deputy director of the academy's Bogomoletz institute of physiology in Kiev. "What we need is proper political stimulus. Clearly, the academy cannot repair itself as long as the old guard is keeping all the key positions."

Christian Patermann, director for biotechnology, agriculture and food at the European commission's directorate general for research in Brussels, led an EU delegation to Ukraine last month. He says that the country's scientific potential in areas such as materials sciences, energy, space and organic farming is impressive and deserves European support. Patermannn is optimistic that the academy will not ultimately stand in the way of reform. "The Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic countries have all managed to reform their academies of science; sooner or later this will also happen in Ukraine."

Quirin Schiermeier
Nature 440, 132-133 (9 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/440132a


Андрей Калиничев

17.07.2006 08:03 #2 Последнее редактирование: 24.07.2006 09:25 от Андрей Калиничев
По идее, такая публикация должна бы капать на мозги суверенному российскому руководству почище, слезных писем академиков.

Arab state pours oil profits into science

Qatar pumps fossil-fuel revenues towards research initiative.

How would you spend the profits from an oil well? That question was on the mind of about 200 Arab scientists who gathered in Doha, Qatar, late last month.

The country's head of state, Emir Hammad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, has devoted a chunk of Qatar's fossil-fuel profits to research, and the region's expatriate scientists were brought together to advise how best to invest it. Get it right, said attendees, and the money could help create an internationally respected science base for the Arab world.

"If it succeeds, it will change the whole region," says Hilal Lashuel, a Yemeni neuro-scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Lausanne. "Arabs will compete for the first time."

Arabs will compete for the first time.
Qatar is already gaining scientists' attention in part because the country has recently transformed its university system. The tiny Gulf state, which has a population of less than 900,000, supports Western standards of living thanks to its substantial oil and gas fields. But those reserves are limited.

Hence Qatar's decision to jump on the knowledge-economy bandwagon and create Education City. The 2,500-acre campus on the outskirts of Doha hosts undergraduate teaching branches of several well-known US universities, such as Texas A&M. By replicating Western academic culture in the Gulf, the country's leaders hope to eventually attract 2,000 students annually to what could become the region's premier teaching facility. Several hundred students are already enrolled.

Education City has been bankrolled by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. This is funded by an endowment from Al-Thani that officials say runs to billions of dollars. With this education centre up and running, the foundation is now turning its attention to applied research and the income-generating technologies that flow from it.

The emir has set aside profits from one of the country's oil wells for the purpose. Combined with a contribution from the foundation's endowment, Qatar will have a dedicated research fund worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

(А в расчете на одного катарского исследователя? АГК)


Qatar's recently launched teaching centre, Education City, is helping to attract researchers from overseas.

That may be small change in international terms, but Arab scientists say that the other components of Qatar's research vision show that the country means business. Foreign labs are being enticed to a science park on the Education City site, for example, by offers of state-of-the-art research facilities and liberal intellectual-property agreements. All the labs have to do is provide the staff. It is a deal that has attracted interest from research institutions such as Imperial College London and Tokyo University.

Tempting talent
Tidu Maini, Imperial's pro-rector, says his university is working with the foundation on plans for a diabetes genome centre. The Gulf region has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world, making it the ideal place to probe the genetics of the disease. Although plans are at an early stage, Maini says research groups could be set up this year at Imperial and the Hamad General Hospital in Qatar. The researchers would eventually move to the new genome centre, which Maini says could open in about three years. He would like every newborn child in Qatar, and their parents, to be genotyped in order to build up a database that could be probed for diabetes studies.

Qatar is importing Western practices as well as personnel. The country's research fund, for example, will be administered by independent peer-review panels. These will be composed of researchers from home and abroad, and modelled on processes followed by organizations such as the US National Institutes of Health. Fathy Saoud, a parasitologist who sits on the Qatar foundation's board of directors, says that grant applications for biomedical, environmental and computing projects will be considered in about a year's time.

At last month's conference, held from 24 to 26 April, expatriate Arab researchers talked about how the Qatar project could boost science investment across the region. Researchers say that if the initiative takes off, it could force neighbouring countries to launch similar projects and ultimately reverse the current exodus of bright students from the region to Europe and the United States.

"It's an idea whose time has come," says Abdelwahab El-Affendi, a political scientist at the University of Westminster in London who attended the Doha meeting. "There are large numbers of Arab expatriate scholars, who are good in their own areas, but their talents are not being used to advance research in the Arab world."

One potentially divisive issue concerns the involvement of the region's research powerhouse: Israel. Delegates at the meeting said that they were keen to collaborate with Israeli colleagues, but that they did not know whether that could happen before peace was reached with the Palestinians. "I don't think that Israelis can be involved at this juncture," says El-Affendi. "We have to wait for a genuine peace process."

Jim Giles
Nature 441, 132-133 (11 May 2006)


Андрей Калиничев

17.07.2006 08:44 #3 Последнее редактирование: 24.07.2006 09:25 от Андрей Калиничев
Hungary's science academy slammed as 'obsolete'

Government and researchers complain of old-fashioned and discriminatory policies.

Hungary's national science academy has been criticized for discriminating against scientists living and working abroad. The academy's attitude is frustrating not just researchers but also the Hungarian government, which is trying to reform the country's research system and attract more high-profile scientists.

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is accused of putting scientists who publish abroad at a disadvantage.
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) in Budapest is Hungary's largest and best-funded public research institution. It awards a title, 'Doctor of Science', that is required by professors or lecturers at most Hungarian universities and academic research institutes. Applicants need a certain number of scientific publications, but Nature has learned that the academy's medical division treats non-Hungarian publications as worth only half as much as those published in Hungary.

"The rules basically exclude foreign researchers from competition with medical scientists in Hungary," says Gábor Vajta, a Hungarian embryologist and cloning expert working at the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Tjele. He says he has no intention of returning to his native country. "But if I did, I would practically have to start from the very beginning."

"It's outrageous," agrees Csaba Szabó, a pharmacologist who, after ten years in the United States and United Kingdom, returned to Hungary last year.

The policy is also against the spirit of Hungary's membership of the European Union, says Georges Bingen, who oversees mobility programmes at the European Commission's Directorate General for Research. "This looks like a severe obstacle to mobility," he says. Last year, the commission set up a mobility charter for researchers in Europe, calling for countries to encourage researchers to work abroad. But the commission has no authority to force a scientific institution to do so.

The Hungarian government, which wants to strengthen Hungarian science, is also concerned. "Some of the academy's rules clearly disadvantage scientists who live and publish abroad," says János Kóka, the Hungarian minister responsible for science.

Kóka says the practice is symptomatic of the academy's old-fashioned attitude. "Its election committees still consist of academicians who were socialized in a totalitarian regime," he says. "They're used to spending tens of millions of euros without producing any results worth mentioning." The HAS spends a large portion of its budget on "inherited merits and obsolete institutions", Kóka says.

They're used to spending tens of millions of euros without producing any results worth mentioning.
Norbert Kroó, the HAS's vice-president in charge of foreign relations, counters that the academy has been reformed since the fall of Hungary's communist government in 1990. Staffing has been cut by 40%, he says, and about 170 new research groups have been selected by peer review. The HAS promotes researchers' mobility across borders and between academia and industry, he adds. He says he wasn't aware of the discriminatory rules, and that he'll ask the medical section to take action: "If these rules really are applied they need to be changed."

"There are two major lobbies within the academy," says Gábor Támas, a neuroscientist at the University of Szeged. "One faction wants changes, the other does not."

Támas says reform is needed urgently. But he warns against dismissing the academy's performance. Some HAS institutes, such as the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Budapest and the Biological Research Center in Szeged, produce some of the best science in the country, he says.

Critics and supporters of the academy should stop blaming each other, says Ernõ Duda, president of both Solvo Biotechnology in Budapest and the Hungarian Biotech-nology Association. He agrees that the academy needs to change, but also that Hungary's overly hierarchical universities must open up. "Until a few years ago I would have said that financing was the biggest obstacle to biotechnology in Hungary," he says. "Now the biggest problem is our obsolete and old-fashioned academic research system."

Quirin Schiermeier
Nature 441, 1034-1035 (29 June 2006)


Андрей Калиничев

17.07.2006 10:20 #4 Последнее редактирование: 24.07.2006 09:24 от Андрей Калиничев
Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation. By Henk F. Moed.
Springer Verlag, Heidelberg 2005. 347 pp., hardcover  55.50. - ISBN 1-4020-3713-9

Book review by Werner Marx
Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung, Stuttgart, Germany

In recent years, research workers and the public have become increasingly conscious of the existence of output and impact rnkings of individuals and research organizations. The media now present information about the most successful researchers, the best universities, or comparisons between the research achievements of different countries or regions. Recognition, career advancement, and research funding are linked to such rankings, and therefore there is now much discussion about the extent to which such evaluations are meaningful and accurate. In this connection, impact data based on the citation indexes published by Thomson Scientific (formerly ISI) are now of rapidly growing importance. The data source for scientific disciplines is the Science Citation Index (SCI), which many researchers and organizations can access through Web of Science (WoS).

The basic assumption is that the importance of a publication for the further development of a scientific discipline can be judged by how often it is cited, and thereby reaches the most successful researchers and research institutions and contributes to their progress. Unfortunately, however, the rapid growth in the dissemination of impact data and their use for evaluation purposes is in stark contrast to the generally poor understanding of the background to this method, and of its capabilities and limitations. Therefore, this book by Henk Moed fills a gap that has existed for a long time. Since the author is an insider, who is well known through his many publications in this field, one has high expectations for this book. Many of the case studies described in it come from the highly-regarded Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at the University of Leiden, where Moed works.

The book is intended for decision-makers in research, for the scientists who are affected by evaluations and the decisions based on them, and for information specialists who generate impact data and/or carry out research in this field. The author begins by describing the ISI citation indexes, which are used as tools for the support of research, and their role in research evaluation. The development of the method of citation analysis, and its application to studies of scientific communication, is described. The author describes the use of quantitative indicators for evaluation, and the roles of the people who are involved in the process (the researchers affected, the scientific adjudicators, and the people who determine research policies). The introduction ends with an unusually detailed overview of the contents of the book, with summaries of, and comments about, the chapters that follow in the main part.

The main part of the book deals with the empirical and theoretical aspects of the method and its use in evaluating research output. Some of the topics treated later in the book (data gathering, extent of coverage, area of validity, accuracy, interpretation) are first introduced in the form of answers to frequently asked questions: How should one gather reliable raw data in the form of lists of publications by individual researchers or research institutions? - How complete is the coverage of the scientific literature? - How can one take account of differences between the citation conventions that apply in different disciplines? - How are the results affected by the existence of a large proportion of papers that do not get cited, or have an importance that is not recognized until much later? - Do review articles and publications about methods get cited more often than others? - How are the results affected by the size and popularity of the various research disciplines? - And lastly, what aims do authors have in mind when they cite publications?

Counting numbers of citations with the help of databases may appear to be a simple process, but in practice there are many pitfalls that must be avoided when gathering and interpreting such data. With that in mind, the following chapters concentrate in detail on the database in the form of the ISI citation indexes. After introducing the terminology, the author discusses the coverage of the literature in the different research disciplines, and how this affects the evaluation. Another topic, which is treated at great length in accordance with its importance, is the susceptibility to mistakes in citations, and the need to take into account the possibility of errors when publications are identified by authors' names and/or addresses. Both these potential sources of error are very important in the practical implementation of the method and in considering the reliability of impact data.

It is also explained how scientific journals as a whole can be evaluated on the basis of their Journal Impact Factors (JIFs). Unfortunately, however, there is hardly any discussion about the widespread misuse of JIFs (instead of citations of the individual papers) when evaluating scientists. The view from outside the boundaries of the natural sciences also deserves to be taken into account, which raises the question of the usefulness and reliability of impact data in the area of the humanities and social sciences, for which there are other citation indexes comparable to the SCI. Two case studies illustrate the differences compared with the natural sciences, and emphasize the need for caution. The question of what conclusions can be drawn from citations leads into the theoretical aspects. On the basis of studies up to now, the author develops concepts for constructing a theory of citations, and considers its implications for the evaluation of research output. Lastly, he discusses the use of impact data as additional and independent indicators alongside the peer review process. On the basis of his own case studies, Moed examines the extent to which evaluations based on impact data correlate with the rankings arrived at by scientific adjudicators. However, bibliometric methods are not only suitable for evaluation, but also for studying the research system as a whole. Therefore, the discussion concentrates on examples concerned with overall scientific productivity, national trends in research output, and international cooperation. In this connection, the question of whether researchers in the USA have advantages with regard to citations is discussed at some length. This raises the question of whether European research activities are comparable with those in the USA, one that is frequently asked in the context of international studies.

The book ends with a discussion of the latest developments, especially in electronic publishing, new databases, and search systems such as Google Scholar and Elsevier's Scopus, and addresses the question of how suitable the impact data obtained from such sources are for evaluating research output. Lastly, the author emphasizes the need for further research into citation analysis. For example, he suggests a study into how the evaluation of research output on the basis of citations could change the behavior of scientists, and also poses the question: has evaluation really resulted in an improvement in the quality of research?

In summary, this book deals with its subject very competently and clearly. The author has succeeded in bridging the gap between the complex methodological background and the prerequisites for the evaluation of research, a connection that was long overdue in view of the increasing importance of the subject. The book is unique in its topicality, comprehensiveness, and depth. It is to be hoped that it will serve as the basis for decision-makers and researchers to form a balanced and well-informed view of the usefulness of impact data for the evaluation of research, taking full account of the intricate connections that are involved. If there is anything to be criticized, it is the generally rather complicated arrangement of the material, which hinders one's navigation through the work. Some of the chapters could have been arranged in a more logical sequence, which would have made the book clearer in its layout and more convenient to use. However, these minor comments do not detract from the very positive impression of the book, its information content, and its value.


Angewandte Chemie International Edition
Volume 45, Issue 18, Pages 2831-2832

Андрей Калиничев

24.07.2006 09:24 #5 Последнее редактирование: 24.07.2006 09:27 от Андрей Калиничев
Who pays for knowledge?  

C. JOACHIM
CEMES/CNRS, NanoSciences Group, 29 rue Jeanne Marvig, BP 4347, 31055 Toulouse Cedex 4, France

The main purpose of basic research is to produce knowledge. In your Editorial and in the Commentary by A. M. Noll published in the May 2006 issue of Nature Materials, you protest against private companies that are more and more reluctant to pay for it. But who then must pay for knowledge and the people creating it? Who should pay to preserve the produced knowledge? Do we need to regulate how knowledge is distributed?

A. M. Noll argues that the academic environment and the peer-reviewed publishing process do not encourage really risky work and that universities and government laboratories are therefore disqualified from this task. Surely, the tax payer will not be happy to learn that their money is not in good hands and that governments seem unable to encourage their employees to create new knowledge. According to Noll, researchers in a private company have a better sense of mission and a better proximity to the real world, and therefore the public should fund industrial research activities instead. However, putting the two systems of knowledge production, public and private, into such opposition is not the way to answer the underlying fundamental question of who in our society should foot the bill for fundamental research.

First, we must decide whether it is good or not to continue to perform basic research. Although the answer seems straightforward, in many developed countries there are groups of people who are seriously questioning scientific activities, in particular those related to nuclear energy, genetically modified organisms or nanotechnology. Some are even asking to stop science entirely.

Second, assuming a democratic consensus that we need to continue scientific exploration, who will pay for and practise basic research: individual researchers, governments or private companies? The interest of individuals is obvious. It is the freedom of individuals to pursue scientific knowledge as part of their free time, for example to observe the sky, to construct a microscope or to solve a beautiful equation. This type of knowledge production has been common until very recent times. In modern society, however, the two remaining parties to pay for knowledge are the public and companies. The objective of a nation in paying for knowledge is the same as that of a private company: survive and outdo your competitors.

Third, as the president of a nation or chief executive of a private company you can build your own infrastructure for knowledge production: universities, governmental or industrial laboratories. But you can also wait for others to pay for knowledge. The two main reasons for a nation to create universities were the formation of elites through education and the support of brilliant individuals by putting up the necessary funds for their research. After centuries of non-organized knowledge production, this was seen as a key part of the independence of a nation. The main reason for private companies to create industrial research laboratories was to circumvent the costs of knowledge produced by others. In the middle of the twentieth century, and by virtue of the magic of modern communication, this was transformed into an in-house activity akin to sponsorship for the sake of human kind.

Nevertheless, the main body of fundamental scientific research achievements remains free to access, paid for by the public. Why then should a private company continue to pay for it in-house? In an open society, private companies as well as the taxpayer need to find the best place to produce high-quality knowledge at a minimum cost. In some ways, this requires a multinational way of thinking, and nations might hesitate to behave that way. An example is the problem of European research as opposed to European national research. For a private company, knowledge is like any other goods. If a pair of jeans, a bottle of wine or a mobile phone travel thousands of kilometres from their origin to the shop, why not knowledge as well?

Industrial research laboratories are not a relic, they are not neglecting basic research, they are just adapting to the world. They go after knowledge where it is less expensive to produce and therefore cheaper to be transformed into new technologies. Some nations are starting to act the same way, and we are far removed from a certain romantic ideal of creating knowledge for the fun of it. Certainly we do not have to accuse industrial laboratories of that.

Nature Materials 5, 511 (2006)

Андрей Калиничев

Nigeria ready for huge science spend 

(подчеркивания - мои, АГК)

Oil revenues set to establish national research foundation.

The politics of Nigeria's government, known for its corruption and squandering of oil money, could diplomatically be described as hard to predict. But if plans due to be discussed by parliament later this year come to fruition, the nation's research base will undergo a dramatic transformation.

With its coffers boosted by oil exports, Nigeria is considering creating a US$5-billion endowment fund for science and technology -- an investment that would generate a research and development budget on a par with many developed nations, and bigger than those of any of its African rivals.

President Olusegun Obasanjo only gave his backing to the proposal in May, but a final decision could be taken this year, as the president is thought to be keen to push it through before leaving office next spring. "He is determined for this to be one of his legacies," says Folarin Osotimehin, a science policy adviser at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris.

Osotimehin is one of several experts from UNESCO and other organizations that have been working with Nigeria on the plan. The result is a proposal, expected to go before parliament this autumn, to establish a National Science Foundation based on the US organization of the same name.

The foundation would distribute the return on the endowment through peer review of competitive grant schemes, an unusual move for an African nation. Only South Africa uses competition to distribute a significant fraction of its science budget, says Mohamed Hassan, executive director of the Third World Academy of Science in Trieste, Italy, and a member of the board advising Obasanjo.

The foundation would also allow Nigeria to break with African tradition by devoting a large sum of public money to research. South Africa, currently the continent's leading science spender, has an annual budget of around $200 million. A 10% return on the Nigerian endowment would give the country $500 million to spend on science every year.

Whether the ambitious target of $5 billion can actually be reached remains an open question. Foreign experts working on the plan say they are advising Obasanjo to meet the total from government funds. Thanks to Nigeria's extensive oil deposits and current high oil prices, that might be possible. But Osita Ogbu, chief economic adviser to Obasanjo, says that Nigeria will contribute the bulk of the money and approach foreign governments and donor organizations for the rest.

That could prove a challenge, as Nigeria has long been associated with the abuse of state and donor funds. In the Corruption Perception Index, a league table compiled by the Berlin-based lobby group Transparency International, Nigeria is joint sixth from bottom of 159 nations. Oil revenue has been a particular source of controversy, with senior Nigerian government officials repeatedly being accused of siphoning off revenues.

But observers say that Nigeria is changing its ways. In 2004, for example, Obasanjo opened up the country's oil accounts to external scrutiny. The books revealed that money had been stolen in the past, but by pledging to keep the accounts open, the government has shown its commitment to preventing future thefts, says Casey Kelso, regional director for Africa at Transparency International. He adds that more than 50 cases of serious financial crime are being processed. "There have been some hopeful developments," he concludes. "Corruption is being tackled."

For foreign donors to be convinced about the endowment and its proceeds, Nigeria will have to pledge to publish clear and comprehensive fund accounts, and to ensure that the peer review is handled by respected scientists. Kelso says that donors might also want to see restrictions put on the amount that can be taken out of the endowment every year and a cap on individual grants.

Foreign advisers say UNESCO is confident enough about the project to have offered a $200-million loan. The money generated from the endowment is likely to be channelled into areas that Nigeria has already identified as priorities: income-generating fields such agricultural biotechnology, information technology and satellite launch systems. "We have to see a product at the end of the project," says Ogbu. "This will be research geared towards supporting the economy."

Advisers on the project say they will finalize the details over the summer and present the result to parliament in September. Ogbu knows that these final months of Obasanjo's presidency could be the only chance to push through the plan: "It has to be set up before he leaves. Otherwise we could have a president without enthusiasm for science."

Jim Giles
Nature 442, 334(27 July 2006)

Андрей Калиничев

"Russia, according to Forbes magazine, has 36 billionaires and together the assets of those billionaires amount to about 20% or 25% of Russian gross domestic product (GDP). In the United States, 275 billionaires account for less than 7% of the GDP..."

" ... to sketch some points about the energy sector, which is now driving the Russian economy, oil and gas accounts for 20% of GDP, 50% of Russian exports and 50% of the federal budget revenues. It is not the entire economy, but the economy is dominated by the energy sector. The World Bank and OECD estimate that even though the oil price went up 20%, stimulating growth, only about one-third of that growth has come from the oil price. The average GDP annual growth has been about 6.8% over the past four years and about 2.5% has come from the oil price. "

"Foreign investment has been minimal in Russia through the 1990s and the reason is that the Russians did not want it because they did not want to give up control of their assets. So the foreign investment was allowed to come into chocolate factories and the tobacco factories but not into the oil and gas industries. The second point is that Russia is a capital exporter. It is running a $60 billion a year current account surplus and has been exporting capital both legally and illegally at a massive rate throughout the 1990s. So it does not need the foreign investment as capital."

"Oil and gas were the big money earners and they were the big politically visible sectors, whereas retailing and food was not visible at the national level, so regional governors were open to bringing foreigners in. It is in those sectors that we see self-made Russian oligarchs. In oil and gas, they are not self-made; they took over existing industries. The auto sector is interesting because it was protected by tariffs and it had political connections. If you look at all the manufacturing sectors, auto has the smallest drop in production compared to 1990s. It was easy for the auto industry to bargain with the national government and keep foreign cars out of the Russian market. Even foreign investment was not particularly welcomed. So I think the auto industry is different from the other manufacturers, but I do not know how long that will continue."


отсюда: http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/events/bbl/04070901.html

Андрей Калиничев

"Много лет в России было прекрасное крепостное право, представлявшее из себя гармонию между помещиком и крестьянином, а также экологическое равновесие между поместьем и средой.
...
"Крепостные играли в театрах(актриса Прасковья Жемчугова), занимались живописью (художник Григорий Сорока), и архитектурой( архитектор Федор Аргунов). Правительство зорко следило за тем чтобы помещики были для крестьянина отцами родными. Несчастную одинокую помещицу Салтыкову её дворовые люди довели до сумасшествия, и правительство своевременно заколючило больную в места не столь отдаленные. Но это был уникальный случай, который именно поэтому  стал широко известен.

Население увеличивалось, природа расцветала.

Как только Александр 2 дал крестьянам свободу- так сразу как и всегда при появлении свободы, настала экологическая катастрофа."


отсюда: http://atrey.livejournal.com/667413.html?thread=4594965

И в РАН тоже все было прекрасно, полная гармония, пока не дали свободу...

Андрей Калиничев

http://www.smoney.ru/article.shtml?2006/10/02/1436

Smart Money 29 (29)  02 октября 2006

Умные, рассеянные

Российская наука великолепно cохранилась. Осталось ее импортировать


Сергей Гуриев
Михаил Попов



Андрей Окуньков собирается заехать на историческую родину в следующем году. его Главные соавторы родом из Москвы и Петербурга, но сейчас "осели в местах вроде Парижа", говорит математик. Вот и этим летом он не добрался до России, зато съездил в Мадрид, где из рук короля Хуана Карлоса I получил Филдсовскую медаль. Ту самую, от которой так эффектно отказался Григорий Перельман.

Филдсовская медаль -- это что-то вроде Нобелевской премии для математиков, которых изобретатель динамита обделил своим вниманием. Но если для получения Нобелевки, по выражению ее лауреата физика Виталия Гинзбурга, "нужно жить долго", медаль Филдса -- весьма точный показатель текущих заслуг. С 1924 г. ее вручают раз в четыре года на международном математическом конгрессе ученым моложе 40 лет.

НА УЛИЦЕ ЭЙНШТЕЙНА

Со времени распада СССР среди получателей медали Филдса всегда были россияне, работающие за рубежом. В нескольких милях от факультета математики Принстонского университета, где работает Окуньков, находится Институт передовых исследований, где трудится предыдущий обладатель медали Филдса -- Владимир Воеводский. В часе езды -- университет Ратгерс, где читает лекции лауреат 1998 г. Максим Концевич, живущий в Париже.

Нам, привыкшим к превосходству АН СССР в области точных наук, трудно осознать, что ведущих наших математиков теперь легче встретить в Принстоне на улицах Эйнштейна или фон Неймана, чем в Москве на улицах Вавилова или Лебедева. Наши математики и физики активно работают в лучших мировых университетах, тогда как средний возраст кандидатов наук в Российской академии наук (РАН) превысил 50 лет, а докторов -- 60. По оценке экс-министра науки Бориса Салтыкова, за рубежом активно работают от 25 000 до 35 000 ученых, навсегда покинувших Россию, примерно столько же ведут челночный образ жизни, разделяя свое время между Россией и заграницей. "В научном плане они уже уехали -- там у них основные соавторы, оборудование для работы, которого нет в России", -- поясняет Салтыков. Количество исследователей, активно работающих в науке преимущественно на территории России, Салтыков оценивает примерно в 50 000 -- 60 000.

ДВА МИРА, ДВА ШАПИРО

"Мне интересно работать там, где я родился и вырос", -- объясняет свою привязанность к отечественной науке Валентин Горделий. Вот уже 14 лет он ведет двойную жизнь, курсируя между Европой и Россией. Он руководит группой в Институте нейробиологии и биофизики Юлихского исследовательского центра в Германии и возглавляет Центр биофизики и физики надмолекулярных структур МФТИ в Долгопрудном. "Пять лет назад я предполагал, что ситуация в России улучшится, и не ошибся", -- говорит Горделий.

Жизнь на два дома началась для Горделия с того, что он вытащил в Германию аспирантов из Физтеха. Выбил для них повышенную стипендию -- такую, чтобы за несколько лет можно было накопить на однокомнатную в Долгопрудном. И действительно накопили, но только в ценах 2001 г. -- столь резкого удорожания недвижимости Горделий предусмотреть не смог.

"Неизвестно, чем кончатся научные шаттлы, -- размышляет Салтыков. -- Драма отсутствия реформ в том, что часто самым перспективным молодым людям не дают сделать научную карьеру на родине". За последние четыре года бюджет РАН утроился в текущих ценах и удвоился -- в постоянных. "Почувствовали ли это увеличение рядовые научные сотрудники?" -- задает риторический вопрос Салтыков. Несколько тонн биофизического оборудования для центра в Долгопрудном Горделий купил и привез в 2001 г. при поддержке немецких коллег, МФТИ помог с ремонтом помещения. Еще 3,5 т приборов уже упакованы в Юлихе и готовы к отправке. "Я пытался получить гранты от российского Министерства науки, чтобы платить нашим сотрудникам, но тщетно. На Западе при мощнейшей конкуренции среди ученых я получаю все, что мне нужно для работы", -- сравнивает условия биофизик. Сотрудники Центра биофизики живут на гранты, выделяемые Германией.

ПЕРВАЯ СТУПЕНЬ

Если финансирование науки будет расти теми же темпами, что и в предыдущие несколько лет, неизбежно встанет вопрос, где взять молодых, амбициозных и еще не старых специалистов мирового уровня. Наличие обширной диаспоры -- гарантия того, что эти позиции можно будет заполнить возвращающимися учеными действительно мирового класса. Но прежде чем возвращать профессоров, нужно пройти этап совместных научных проектов, убежден экономист Всемирного банка Евгений Кузнецов, автор масштабного исследования "Сети диаспор и международная миграция навыков"*.

По гипотезе Кузнецова, перед тем как приобрести влияние, диаспоры проходят несколько стадий эволюции. На первом этапе приехавшему в другую страну ученому или бизнесмену лучше забыть про то, что он русский или китаец. На втором возникают профессиональные землячества -- прежде всего чтобы поддерживать друг друга в плане карьерного роста. И только на третьем, когда появляется критическая масса успешных индийцев, русских, китайцев, диаспоры обращают взгляд на родину. "Русская научная диаспора завершает первый этап, а индийцы уже на третьем, -- говорит Кузнецов. -- Индийская диаспора серьезно влияет на свою страну, но в 1960-е гг. в США они старались забыть, откуда приехали".

Первые "возвращенцы" с именем, считает Кузнецов, очень полезны для демонстрационного эффекта. Один из показательных примеров -- московская лаборатория молекулярных механизмов старения Евгения Нудлера, профессора биохимии Нью-Йоркского университета, который уехал из России 15 лет назад аспирантом биофака МГУ. Две недели назад он стал одним из 13 лауреатов NIH Director's Pioneer Award -- персонального гранта на пять лет размером $2,5 млн. В России годовой бюджет Нудлера в 2 раза скромнее -- $1 млн на четыре года. Финансирование обеспечил фонд "Династия", основанный Дмитрием Зиминым.

"Фонд пошел мне навстречу, дав денег на проект по старению, который я не смог бы начать в Нью-Йорке. Их условием была работа в Москве, и я с удовольствием согласился", -- говорит Нудлер. Своего помещения у лаборатории пока нет, исследования ведутся на базе нескольких российских институтов. Вообще, в Америке лаборатория работала бы более эффективно, чем в России. "В Москве можно купить любые реактивы и приборы, только на это уходит больше времени и денег, чем в Нью-Йорке", -- отмечает Нудлер.

Для "Династии" проект с Нудлером -- это "эксперимент в преддверии большого проекта по репатриации ученых", объясняет исполнительный директор фонда Елена Чернышкова. В идеале инициативу Зимина должно подхватить государство, но пока идея вернуть ведущих ученых с помощью целевых программ не находит поддержки у чиновников: те советуют подождать, когда исследователи сами потянутся домой. "За это время научная школа может погибнуть безвозвратно", -- тревожится Чернышкова.

РЕСУРС ДИАСПОРЫ

Для Западной Европы, Китая и Индии их научные диаспоры стали мостиком в мировую науку. Уехавшие ученые полезны не только как потенциальные "возвращенцы", но и как источник независимой экспертизы, отсутствующей или пришедшей в упадок дома, как члены попечительских советов, которые могут помочь повысить эффективность отечественных университетов, наконец, как фандрайзеры.

Иногда, чтобы преодолеть отставание от мировой науки, диаспоры приходится специально создавать. В России так обстояло дело с общественными науками, сильно деградировавшими при советской власти. Российская экономическая школа (РЭШ) была создана в 1992 г., и сначала большинство ее выпускников уезжало учиться в лучшие докторантуры в Америке и Европе. Лишь в конце 1990-х на Западе накопилось достаточно русских экономистов, чтобы ученые начали возвращаться в Россию. Сегодня РЭШ входит в сотню лучших факультетов экономики в Европе. Построенный по той же модели Европейский университет в Санкт-Петербурге входит в сотню лучших в Европе по политологии. С проблемой отсутствия диаспоры сталкивается и вновь создаваемая Московская школа управления (МШУ) в Сколкове -- в ведущих бизнес-школах мира по-прежнему работают лишь несколько десятков россиян, и почти все они находятся в начале своей исследовательской карьеры. Поэтому в первые годы своего существования МШУ будет вынуждена полагаться на приглашенных иностранных профессоров.

Другое дело, что чем дальше, тем менее важным будет основное место работы ученого. Безусловно, исследователю необходимы доступ и к оборудованию, и к библиотеке, и к общению с талантливыми коллегами, но уже сейчас физическое местоположение играет все меньшую роль. Как показано в недавней работе Хана Кима, Адера Морзе и Луиджи Зингалеса**, если в 1970-е и 1980-е гг. производительность ученых в области экономики и финансов зависела от того, в каком университете они работали, то в 1990-е гг. эта зависимость исчезла. Дело не в том, что остальные университеты сократили разрыв: он по-прежнему велик и даже немного увеличился за последние 30 лет. Авторы аккуратно доказывают, что имеет место как раз самое очевидное объяснение: современные информационные технологии дают возможность хорошо работать не только в самых лучших вузах. Конечно, экономика не физика, но и в естественных науках очевиден эффект проникновения Интернета. Так что россияне, работающие в лучших западных университетах, смогут проводить все больше и больше времени в России без ущерба для карьеры. Конечно, при условии, что их здесь будут ждать и ценить.

ЧТО ДЕЛАТЬ

Научная диаспора нужна не только для того, чтобы удержаться в лидерах научной гонки. Как показывают примеры Индии и Китая, научная и предпринимательская диаспоры работают рука об руку. Обе крайне важны для развития экспортно ориентированного бизнеса на родине. Для описания взаимодействия между индийской и китайской диаспорами в Силиконовой долине и ростом новых компаний в Индии и Китае Энн-Ли Саксенян*** из Беркли заменила старый термин "утечка мозгов" новым -- "циркуляция мозгов". Без индийской диаспоры в Силиконовой долине не было бы никакого Бангалора. Без китайской диаспоры не было бы феноменального роста иностранных инвестиций и новых отраслей в Китае.

Ждать милостей от диаспоры не стоит, в уехавших нужно видеть партнеров, а не доноров, предупреждает Кузнецов. В своей работе он приводит пример упущенных возможностей: масштабные вливания диаспоры в экономику Армении не привели к заметным результатам, потому что это была помощь, а не инвестиции.

Целый ряд стран предпринимает титанические усилия по обращению утечки мозгов вспять. В Индии, Китае, Израиле, Корее правительство финансирует специальные программы по возвращению ученых из Америки, несмотря на то что вернувшимся приходится платить огромные по местным меркам деньги. В Китае по программе "100 профессоров" вернулась уже тысяча ученых, которым дома платят такую же зарплату, как в Америке. Эти усилия дают результат: азиатские страны сокращают разрыв с Западом по количеству публикаций, цитирований, патентов, в них появляются университеты и бизнес-школы действительно международного уровня.

Кузнецов, впрочем, скептически относится к идее воспроизведения китайского опыта в России. "Вначале хорошо было бы создать несколько незаметных площадок, без лишней рекламы -- чем технократичнее, тем лучше, -- подчеркивает экономист. -- В вузах существуют живучие и очень полезные ассоциации выпускников, работающих на Западе. Через такие локальные сообщества и может возникнуть национальная сеть связей с диаспорой". "В России крупная программа опасна своей коррупционностью, поэтому начать лучше с пилотов, -- соглашается Салтыков. -- В принципе у государства сейчас большие возможности, но мы знаем, как в Академии наук делят деньги".

Между тем площадок -- независимых от казны и Академии наук лабораторий и институтов -- в России становится все больше. И это вселяет надежду в эмигрантов. Окуньков говорит, что с удовольствием бы сотрудничал в России с негосударственной наукой "вроде Независимого московского университета", только лучше финансируемой. Мотив -- ученому не хочется "быть привязанным к единственному ведомству".

Возвращение ученых -- недешевое удовольствие, но оно вполне по карману российскому бюджету. Ежегодные расходы на сотню профессорских стипендий (примерно по $50 000, или 1,33 млн руб., каждая) были бы меньше, чем любой из 17 грантов (от 400 млн до 1 млрд руб.), выданных ведущим российским университетам на "национальные инновационные программы", и на порядок меньше, чем расходы на создание каждого из двух "национальных университетов" (1,5 млрд руб. -- годовой бюджет каждого проекта) или на каждую из двух "бизнес-школ международного уровня". Конечно, эти расходы, которые в основном пойдут на инфраструктуру и оборудование, тоже необходимы, но было бы логично развернуть дополняющую их программу по возврату ученых вместе с тематикой их исследований.

Главное -- перестать делать вид, что мы нужны диаспоре больше, чем она нам. Надо признать, что российские ученые, работающие за рубежом, не просто часть российской науки и общества, а ее гордость. Надо сказать, что Россия их ценит и ждет домой.

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1,5 млрд руб. хватит с лихвой
на 1100 стипендий ведущим ученым,
которые согласятся вернуться в Россию

*Diaspora networks and the international migration of skills:
How countries can draw on their talent abroad / Ed. by Ye. Kuznetsov. World Bank. May. 2006.
** Kim  H., Morse  A., Zingales  L. Are elite universities losing their competitive edge? University of Chicago. 2006. (Mimeo.)
*** Saxenian  A.-L. Brain сirculation: How high-skill immigration makes everyone better off. The Brookings Review. Winter 2002. № 20 (1). Р. 28-31.


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НАША ШКОЛА
За что давали медаль Филдса математикам из России

1994 Ефим Зельманов
За решение ограниченной проблемы Бернсайда.

1998 Максим Концевич
За доказательство гипотезы Уиттена об эквивалентности двух моделей квантовой гравитации и нахождение лучшего инварианта узлов с помощью интеграла Концевича.

2002 Владимир Воеводский
За разработку теории гомотопий для алгебраических многообразий и создание мотивной когомологии.

2006 Андрей Окуньков
За достижения, соединяющие теорию вероятностей, теорию представлений и алгебраическую геометрию.

2006 Григорий Перельман
За вклад в геометрию и достижения в изучении геометрической и аналитической структуры потоков Риччи.

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Андрей Калиничев

14.10.2006 22:08 #10 Последнее редактирование: 19.10.2006 08:02 от Андрей Калиничев
Изменения за 40 лет:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0610/gallery.then.now/frameset.exclude.html

Интересно бы собрать подобную статистику для СССР/России.


Андрей Калиничев

Хуже точно не будет, а может стать и лучше. Проблема только в том, что вращающиеся в РАН деньги и собственность на порядок меньше,  чем у вояк, и начальнические руки до них еще всерьез не скоро дотянутся.

...С начала года действует новая система распределения финансов в Вооруженных силах. По словам заместителя министра обороны по финансам Любови Куделиной, вместо шести уровней распределения финансов теперь осталось три. На практике это означает, что командующий армией по-прежнему может принимать решения о проведении учений (если это допускают выделенные ему лимиты). Только теперь деньги на эти цели будут переведены не ему, а непосредственно в бригаду или полк, где запланированы учения. Командиры лишились не денег, а возможности бесконтрольно ими распоряжаться...
...
Однако по мере роста цен на энергоносители, а с ними и роста ВВП росли военные расходы. Если в 1999 году на армию тратилось 109 миллиардов рублей, то в этом году -- больше 860 миллиардов. И постепенно Кремль начал понимать особенность финансового устройства массовой мобилизационной армии --- она поглощает любые суммы и любые ресурсы без какого-либо положительного результата
...
Генералы ведь не будут открыто говорить, что хотят сохранить свои должности, распоряжаться финансами и недвижимостью. Они будут напирать на то, что сердюковские новшества подрывают основы Вооруженных сил...

http://ej.ru/?a=note&id=8123

Там по ссылке еще много интересного и параллельного.

Андрей Калиничев

Необходимое маленькое пояснение: Нынешний глава Пентагона (министр обороны США) был до этого назначения директором мебельторга президентом Texas A&M University, а еще ранее - директором ЦРУ. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates

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The chronicle of Higher Education - From the issue dated July 4, 2008
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i43/43b00401.htm

CRITICAL MASS
Enlisting Social Scientists
Compiled by EVAN R. GOLDSTEIN

The Minerva Consortium -- named for the Roman goddess of wisdom -- was introduced by Robert M. Gates, secretary of defense, in a speech before the Association of American Universities in April. Quoting the late historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who said after Sputnik's launch, in 1957, that the United States "must return to the acceptance of eggheads and ideas if it is to meet the Russian challenge," Gates declared his interest in establishing a project that would finance social-science research relevant to national security.

Two months later, the Department of Defense has officially begun the new program, inviting universities to apply for grants to study topics like the Chinese military, cultural change in the Islamic world, terrorist ideologies, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein -- research that will be based, according to a Pentagon announcement, on the "vast number of documents and other media" that "came into the possession" of the American military during the war in Iraq.

This effort to foster cooperation between the Pentagon and academe has elicited reactions ranging from excitement to deep skepticism to outright opposition.

Setha M. Low, president of the American Anthropological Association and professor of environmental psychology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York: We believe that it is of paramount importance for anthropologists to study the roots of terrorism and other forms of violence, and to seek answers to the urgent questions voiced by many in the United States and other countries since the attacks of September 11. However, we are deeply concerned that funding such research through the Pentagon may pose a potential conflict of interest and undermine the practices of peer review that play such a vital role in maintaining the integrity of research in social-science disciplines. From a practical standpoint, we believe it would be more efficient and more likely to produce authoritative results if Pentagon support for such research was managed through such agencies as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Rigorous, balanced, and objective peer review is the bedrock of successful and productive programs that sponsor academic research. Agencies such as NSF, NIH, and NEH have decades of experience in building an infrastructure of respected peer reviewers. ...


We are concerned that the Department of Defense would turn for assist-ance in developing a selection process to those who are not intimately familiar with the rigorous standards of our discipline. (Open letter from the American Anthropological Association)

Maximilian C. Forte, assistant professor of anthropology, Concordia University: Given the cash-strapped nature of many universities, and the many researchers without funding, one can expect that there will be many "compromises" and many "pragmatic reconsiderations" as even perhaps past opponents of [the Human Terrain System, another Defense program] find their way to submitting a grant proposal. Producing "nuanced" justifications for imperialism will become a subindustry in itself.

Nowhere in the proposed areas of research is there a call for studies of how decades of U.S. foreign intervention, invasions, occupations, and the systematic violations of human rights worldwide might have at least sparked some little militant opposition. ... As a result, the academic merit of projects funded under this scheme is automatically nullified. (Open Anthropology)

David Betz, senior lecturer, King's College London: The amount of money being stumped up is not huge -- it is no Manhattan Project. It's the Defense Department's money being coughed up whereas arguably it should be coming from other agencies. And the appetite of universities for cash is so large (higher education is not cheap to operate, particularly to staff) that a few million is not going to go terribly far. All I'd say is (a) it's a start, (b) other departments should be doing this, the DoD should be commended for actually doing it, and (c) if the funding is carefully targeted on issues which are otherwise extremely difficult to get funding councils to support, then it could make a useful impact. ...

The U.S. and the U.K. have been fought to a standstill in two theaters by global jihadists not because they're better at moving metal than we are but because they're better at the purposeful shaping of the ideas and beliefs of others to warlike effect. That's the cutting edge for insurgency research. (Kings of War)

Candace de Russy, writer and former member of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York: Gates promises that the Minerva projects will hew strictly to "openness and rigid adherence to academic freedom and integrity." But would the controlling powers in the humanities and social sciences -- those, in my view, primarily responsible for the treacherous treatment of military recruiters on campuses -- respond in kind? What confidence can one have -- or should Gates have -- that this leftist monopoly can advance the kind of knowledge this nation needs to confront jihad extremism, ethnic conflict, and the other new, complex threats that he cites? (Phi Beta Cons, National Review Online)

gsed4, blogger: It is important to remember that there is a past and current history of governments' using professional expertise to justify and/or support human-rights abuses. (Global Studies in Education Digest)

Steven R. Corman, professor of communication, Arizona State University at Tempe: My first reaction to the project is "Hooray! What took so long?" This seems to be part of a growing realization in the upper reaches of the Department of Defense about the importance of soft power. ...

So kudos to the DOD for wanting to fund important social-science research on terrorism and other national security matters. But if they want research that will break new ground in a timely manner, they need to kick up the funding levels a few notches. (COMOPS Journal)

Network of Concerned Anthropologists: The United States university system is already highly militarized -- that is, many universities take in a large proportion of their research funding from military sources. This is problematic for four reasons:

a. The fields so supported are distorted by focus on issues of utility to war making. Whole fields of study hypertrophy and others shrink or are never developed. ...

b. These research foci begin to structure what gets taught to students and what research projects students themselves see as the best options for their own work. A brain drain from other research directions occurs.

c. The dependence on single sources of funding with their own agenda tends to reduce intellectual autonomy in ways that go beyond the selection of subject matter for research.

d. The university becomes an instrument rather than a critic of war making, and spaces for critical discussion of militarism within the university shrink. (Statement from the Network of Concerned Anthropologists)

Richard Stern, emeritus professor of literature, University of Chicago: The most level-headed, wise, and modestly self-assured of George W. Bush's appointees, Robert Gates, has proposed a Rooseveltian enrichment of the already de-Rumsfelded Pentagon. ...

There is mention of humanities scholars, none for poets and novelists, a loss. (In Three Days of the Condor, the Robert Redford character works for a small CIA outfit that reads such bizarre material in order to pick up out-of-the-box suggestions for unspecified machinations.) I just finished John Updike's novel Terrorist, one of his many recent books that most critics slammed. But Updike may be the wisest of all American observers, and I trust that Minervans will read -- though it won't be necessary to fund -- him. ...

The Pentagon Minervans shouldn't ignore jokes, irony, sarcasm, cynicism, or wit of any sort. The human enterprise, even in its destructive and diabolic forms, turns just as often on these axes as on the doom-heavy ones Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Petraeus, and McCain apparently prefer. (Open University, The New Republic Online)

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 54, Issue 43, Page B4

Андрей Калиничев

"The Chronicle of Higher Education", From the issue dated January 30, 2009
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i21/21a00104.htm


Physicists Set Plan in Motion to Change Publishing System
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

In what some are calling a peaceful revolution, researchers have mounted a takeover of high-energy-physics publishing. One signature at a time, national research agencies and university libraries have pledged to support a radical new system that would replace expensive subscriptions to leading journals with membership in a nonprofit group. The new organization would then dole out money to journal publishers, while pushing them to distribute all articles free online and to keep their prices in check.

The key: By teaming up, the libraries, which pay the bills, and the researchers, who provide the articles, will exert unprecedented leverage. The strategy might also convince journal editors -- who have been reluctant to give away all of their content for fear of losing money -- that libraries will continue to pay them even in an open-access system.

The group is called Scoap³, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics. Since the project first announced its plan, in 2007, some of the world's leading institutions have expressed willingness to participate and pledged millions of dollars in support if the project comes together.

"For the first time in centuries, researchers are getting back control of the process of scholarly communication," says Salvatore Mele, a project leader for open-access efforts at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory, who is one of the leaders of the group. He and others say they recently reached the halfway point in their pledge drive, and they hope to be up and running in another year. But while European institutions were quick to jump in, building support in the United States is taking longer than they initially hoped.

Under Pressure

Rising journal prices and falling library budgets have long pushed scholarly publishing toward a breaking point. The souring economy could lead more libraries to cancel more journal subscriptions, cutting researchers at those colleges off from published information. Fans of making journal articles free online say that a sustainable model for open-access publishing is key to keeping scholarly communication flowing.

So the time may be right for a grand reshaping of academic publishing, and leaders in physics hope that if their experiment works, other disciplines will follow suit.

Here's the pitch. Libraries would stop paying for subscriptions to journals in high-energy physics. Instead, each library or government agency would pay a set amount every year to the new nonprofit group. Each journal publisher would then apply for a portion of that money, submitting a bid spelling out how much it would cost them to review, edit, and publish their articles that year (building in some profit as well). To win a bid, the journals would commit to publishing their articles free online for anyone to see.

The amount that each library pays would be determined by the group, based on a formula that took into account how many of each institution's researchers published in the journals. Leaders of the project estimate that it would take about $14-million a year to support all the journals in the research area.

Project leaders hope the same familiar journals would continue to appear, and with the same number of articles. But the libraries, by teaming up, would gain unprecedented power in influencing prices and dictating how articles are distributed.

Reluctant Publishers

So far the journal publishers say they are willing to consider such a model, but they are hardly enthusiastic. "We must show some good will," said Christian Caron, an executive editor at the publishing conglomerate Springer Science+Business Media, which oversees a major high-energy-physics journal. "We pledge that we will sit down at the table for negotiations." He described his attitude toward the project as "a very cautious 'Let's see and discuss it.'"

Mr. Caron argued that Springer's journals already allow authors to publish their articles in an open-access format if the scientist pays a fee, and he defended the company's subscription prices. But he said everyone was looking for a business model that would hold up over the long run.

Several factors make high-energy physics an ideal field for this experiment. For one thing, it is a relatively small and tight-knit research area, where almost all major papers appear in just six journals. And the scientists are accustomed to teaming up on big projects and sharing facilities, like the Large Hadron Collider, the $10-billion atom smasher that recently opened at CERN.

High-energy physicists also boast a history of innovation in scholarly communications. It was a researcher at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web back in the 1990s as a way for colleagues to collaborate. (The first Web server sits enshrined under Plexiglas at CERN, just down the hall from Mr. Mele's office.)

And for years, physics researchers have posted rough drafts of their papers in digital archives to quickly share their findings with colleagues. In that sense, they were pioneers of open access.

The popularity of those free drafts, called preprints, raises the question of whether the scientists need old-fashioned journals at all. An estimated 90 percent of findings in high-energy physics appear in digital preprint repositories like arXiv, a major international collection hosted by Cornell University. Some journals in the field even allow authors to post their final, edited papers in the archives free of charge.

But Mr. Mele says journals still play a crucial role in the professional life of scientists, even though readership has declined. "We do not buy journals to read them, we buy journals to support them," he said. "They do something crucial, which is peer review."

Without journals, he asks, how would colleges evaluate the work of scientists to know whom to hire or whom to promote? And how would other scientists know which of the thousands of preprints contain the most important findings?

"What we are really paying for here is for a service of peer review," he said.

Shuttle Diplomacy

Mr. Mele has now become a kind of international traveling salesman for the project, shuttling from library to library and from publisher to publisher. "I've lost count of how many countries I've visited this year," he said.

The project quickly gained a critical mass in Europe, where in many countries Mr. Mele needed only to convince a single government agency or consortium that wields broad purchasing power. So far more than 19 countries have pledged to participate, including Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey, according to project leaders.

Colleges in the United States have been a tougher sell. Mr. Mele held a meeting at the University of California at Berkeley last February to pitch the plan to college librarians from around the country.

The librarians praised the goals of the project, but some asked whether it was sustainable. After all, if the journals make their contents free online, why should college libraries use their shrinking resources to pay for them?

Some librarians at public institutions say they cannot participate even if they want to. "Most states require that public funds allocated for purchasing have to be used to actually purchase something," said Dennis Dillon, associate director for research services at the University of Texas at Austin. That is certainly the case in Texas, he said. "They can't be used to pay for something that everyone already has for free."

Some journal editors are also anxious about whether the project will work.

"We are gravely concerned about the difficulty of reassembling our subscription model were Scoap³ to fail," said Gene D. Sprouse, editor in chief at the American Physical Society, in a written statement. The society publishes one of the major journals in the field, Physical Review D. "The current subscription-based funding model, though far from perfect, has provided adequate and stable funding, in harmony with the arXiv," he said, referring to the popular preprint database.

Paul Ginsparg, a physics professor at Cornell who started arXiv, also expressed skepticism about the new project's viability, echoing concerns about the project's financial model.

He said he hoped that open-access options would become so compelling -- and incorporate new features that are so useful -- that researchers would only want to publish their papers in journals that choose to be completely open. "Such systems are currently under construction," Mr. Ginsparg said, "but some of my colleagues argue that it's useful to have additional mechanisms to force the materials out there -- to hasten the transition to 21st-century scholarly-communications infrastructure."

Despite such skepticism, more than 30 colleges and several library consortia in the United States have pledged to participate.

"We have to find better ways to use the funds from libraries," said Kimberly Douglas, head librarian at the California Institute of Technology, one of the first to sign on. How likely does Ms. Douglas think the project is to succeed? "We'll never know unless we try," she said.

Peter Suber, a research professor of philosophy at Earlham College and a longtime promoter of open access to scholarly publications, praised the project for involving publishers in the discussions and for searching for a compromise.

He said CERN holds a dominant position in the high-energy-physics field that is unusual in academe. "If any institution can make it work, it's CERN," he said. "It really got the stakeholders together, and it got them to agree that this is worth a try."

Even so, the project has already proved more unwieldy than organizers hoped.

"It's taking a good bit of time just to line up the necessary expressions of interest," said Tom Sanville, executive director of OhioLINK, which has pledged support for the project.

In fact, organizers had hoped to have reached their pledge goal by now, but they say they are still months away.

Fans of the project, especially those in Europe, say that Scoap³ or something like it is coming.

"I call it the logical next step, to move beyond the repository and subscription model scheme," said Ralf Schimmer, head of scientific-information provision at the Max Planck Digital Library, in Germany. "Open access is an inevitable, unstoppable, and irreversible development."

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Faculty
Volume 55, Issue 21, Page A1
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i21/21a00104.htm

Андрей Калиничев

"The Chronicle of Higher Education" - Wired Campus, February 23, 2009
Chinese Leader Gives 200,000 E-Books to U. of Cambridge

The donation of 200,000 electronic books by Premier Wen Jiabao of China has made the University of Cambridge's library home to one of the world's largest collections of Chinese monographs.

Mr. Wen's "gift is one of the largest single donations received in the University Library's 650-year history and almost doubles the number of electronic books at its disposal," the university said in a statement.

Officials say that the e-book system used for the donated volumes was developed by Beijing Founder Apabi Technology Ltd. According to the company's Web site, it was established at Peking University in 1986 and is one of China's leading publishers of electronic works. --Aisha Labi

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3629/chinese-leader-gives-200000-e-books-to-u-of-cambridge

Андрей Калиничев

The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 5, 2009

Asia Rising: Countries Funnel Billions Into Universities


By Mara Hvistendahl
Shanghai

Across East Asia, governments are funneling resources into elite universities, financing basic research, and expanding access to vocational and junior colleges, all with the goal of driving economic development.

Hong Kong and Singapore, compact port cities that have lost their traditional importance as logistics and manufacturing centers, are rushing to turn themselves into centers of innovation.

China has invested in a group of select universities that it hopes will become globally renowned hubs of technological and scientific research, while in South Korea, leaders are spending billions of dollars on projects designed to spawn top-notch laboratories and attract foreign universities as partners. And as Taiwan's economy loses ground to China, it is trying to draw top talent through aggressive international recruitment.

Asia's approach to higher education contrasts markedly with that of the United States, where, even before the global recession hit, the percentages of state budgets dedicated to higher education have been in steady decline.

"Out here the government is looking at education as a driver of the country's future, so it isn't last in line," says Rajendra K. Srivastava, provost of Singapore Management University, who spent 25 years at the University of Texas at Austin.

In Texas, he recalls with dismay, "when they were allocating the state budget, education was one of the last things to get approved."

But while the government-led push is quite different from America's decentralized approach, Asian college and government officials say they are taking cues from the United States. Specifically, they hope to replicate America's post-World War II path to growth.

"Asians have studied very carefully the reasons why Western populations are now successful," says Kishore Mahbubani, a dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. "They realize that unless you create good universities and attract the best minds in the world, you can't move into the next phase of development."

All this is against the backdrop of declining American dominance in global research. A 2008 National Science Foundation report found that patents filed by inventors living in the United States had dropped from 55 percent in 1996 to 53 percent in 2005. The foundation attributed the change to an increase in filings by Asian inventors.

The U.S. share of "highly influential" papers published in peer-reviewed journals also fell, from 63 percent in 1992 to 58 percent in 2003--a drop that reflects the rise of China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, the report's authors noted.

"Innovation and its handmaiden, R&D, is driving the global economy," they continued, "and we are seeing more nations recognize this by creating their own version of U.S. research institutions and infrastructure."

The United States continues to lead the world by most measures, including financial support for higher education, top scholarly work, and the production of patents. But Asia is emerging as an increasingly strong competitor.

"It's not so much that the U.S. is on the decline but that the Asian universities are rising," says Gerard A. Postiglione, an expert on Chinese education at the University of Hong Kong. "They're rising along with their economies."

A Shift in Power

Those economies, like their Western counterparts, have foundered in the past year. The South Korean won plunged to an 11-year low in March. Singapore's economy is in a crippling slump, with its Trade and Industry Ministry predicting a contraction of 4 to 6 percent by the end of the year. Hong Kong will probably show a similar drop, and Taiwan has seen a double-digit dip in exports over the previous year. Only China posts continued growth, but the country's future is uncertain, with development likely to augur the death of its manufacturing economy as China prices itself out of the cheap-labor market.

But while many U.S. states slash their higher-education budgets, East Asian countries have faced the crisis by funneling more resources into the future. Certainly the stimulus bill approved by the U.S. Congress this year earmarked millions of dollars for higher education. But that money will run out in the next couple of years.

In contrast, recovery financing in China, South Korea, and Singapore supports basic research and the creation of programs in key fields for innovation. The assumption is that such projects will boost economic growth.

"What we see out here is that if we can get a better educated population it will attract the higher-value industries," says Mr. Srivastava. "We're trying to move up the growth ladder."
Inviting Partners

Whether investment in higher education directly translates into a robust economy, which also depends on factors like tax and trade policies, and an overall culture of innovation, is debatable. But Asia is steaming ahead on faith.

Intent on repositioning its economy around biotechnology and medical sciences, Singapore has invited graduate programs from leading American universities, including the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Duke University, to set up in the tiny city-state, housing them in campuses near state-of-the-art science parks to facilitate the development of spin-off companies.

South Korea hopes do the same with undergraduate institutions. Its Songdo Global University Campus, a new development on Songdo, a man-made island in the Yellow Sea, is designed to entice foreign universities to establish branch campuses, with the goal of enrolling 12,000 students by 2012. The project's developer hopes the universities will interact with the research arms of multinational companies, turning Songdo into a global business hub.

In 2005, Taiwan allocated $1.6-billion for elite universities, aiming to have 10 of Asia's top universities or departments by 2010.

"Every university here is putting a lot of effort into increasing the number of English-language programs," says Angela Fan, deputy dean of international affairs at National Yang-Ming University, in Taipei.

In its bid to become "Asia's world city," Hong Kong is advertising generous research money and relaxing caps on international enrollment. In 2012 its universities will switch from a three-year system inherited from the British to a four-year program with a broader curriculum--a move designed to make them more competitive.

And China is doing everything at once. The country has attracted attention for its success in jump-starting its top universities through a plan known as the 985 Project. But the country's policy makers are equally focused on improving access and overhauling vocational education. Plans include expanding access to higher education on a scale comparable only with postwar America. "They're developing a strategy of walking on two legs," says Qiang Zha, an expert on Chinese higher education at York University, in Toronto.

A Shifting Power Dynamic

The effectiveness of these campaigns varies, but few dispute that East Asia's higher-education push has produced some notable results. With the exception of Taiwan, all the East Asian upstarts now have universities in the top 100 on the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings (although they rank much lower on the more research-focused "Academic Ranking of World Universities," by Shanghai Jiao Tong University).

One measure of Asia's impact is its effect on countries that traditionally dominate global higher education. In 2006 experts at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development prepared a report for the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based research group, praising South Korea for near-universal high-school education and noting the rise of China and India. The report stressed, "There is no way for Europe to stop these rapidly developing countries from producing wave after wave of highly skilled graduates."

Ma Wanhua, a professor at Peking University Graduate School of Education, spent last year on a fellowship in Germany, where she says she was frequently approached with questions about Chinese policy. "Many European countries are starting to think about the 985 Project as they try to build up their own research universities," she says.

The power dynamic is shifting within the region as well, with China making the biggest waves. Analysts say Japan unveiled its Centers of Excellence program, which entails generous grants to select institutions, in response to China's reforms.

Michael Spence, vice chancellor of the University of Sydney, recently said he fears losing Chinese students--which at his institution make up 40 percent of international students--not to universities in the West but to China's own.

Regional development is not a zero-sum game. Discoveries published in international journals are available to all researchers, and strong Asian universities can be a boon for Western academics seeking collaborators. Better training also means more qualified candidates for U.S. graduate programs.

But while it is impossible to know how many Chinese students now choose China over, say, Australia, it is clear that more now elect to stay close to home. Unesco's "2009 Global Education Digest" found 42 percent of mobile students in East Asia and the Pacific remained within the region in 2007--up from 36 percent in 1999.

No Choice but to Change

Concern over Asia's rise is hardly new. "The idea that the U.S. is falling behind Asia in education is an old one," says Ann White, director of the Institute of International Education, in Hong Kong. "I remember hearing it when I was in university 25 years ago."

Hysteria about the loss of U.S. dominance dates to the 1950s, when pundits sounded alarms about the rise of Soviet universities. Five decades later, Ms. White says, the evidence doesn't bear out the claim that the United States is being eclipsed, pointing out that inquiries at her office from students in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Macau who want to study in the States are at an all-time high.

But others note that even if the United States remains the gold standard for now, Asia already outpaces the States in some important areas. As American administrators fret over a "dropout crisis," Asian countries report graduation rates in the 90th percentile.

Many of those graduates are in fields of strategic importance, like science and engineering. The long-term vision across the continent is of producing students who can contribute to indigenous research.

Asia has few alternatives, policy makers say. Small countries like South Korea may be fine for the next two decades, but beyond that the outlook is grim unless they can spur innovation, says Hee Yhon Song, a longtime economic planner for the Korean government who is spearheading the Songdo Global University Campus project.

"We need to improve the quality of Korean universities fast enough to preserve the technology gap between Korea and China and India," says Mr. Song. "The Chinese tiger is growing fast. If we are too slow, the Korean horse will be attacked."

Demographics are another pressure. Birth rates have plummeted across Asia in the past few decades. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Macau have the lowest birth rates in the world, and South Korea is not far behind.

With the number of graduating high-school seniors dwindling, these countries have to look abroad merely to keep enrollment steady.

Hong Kong has steadily raised its cap on international and mainland-Chinese students at public universities, from 2 percent of the total student body in 1993 to 20 percent today. The famously cramped territory has also marked two swaths of land for the establishment of private universities. The new institutions, which won't be subject to caps, may take students that have been locked out of other universities.

The shrinking number of native-born students is behind Taiwan's internationalization as well. More foreign students will not be enough to save some universities, however; in 2006, the Ministry of Education stipulated that institutions that receive low scores in periodic evaluations will be shut down.

But educators and administrators across Asia talk about the enrollment bind as a positive thing. A sense of urgency persuades leaders to preserve resources for education when policy decisions get tough, says Mr. Song. "If they understand that it's a survival strategy, they allocate the money."

The United States, by contrast, often appears slow to act, in the eyes of Asian administrators.

"The United States has been dominant for so long that it tends to take its position for granted," says Jongryn Mo, dean of Underwood International College at Yonsei University, in Seoul. "I am not sure if it understands the challenges arising as the rest of the world catches up."

U.S. Example, Asia Autocracy

It helps that several East Asian powers are governed by technocrats who are adept at making sense of economic forecasts. These leaders were educated at American universities, where they saw how the higher-education system worked firsthand. Now they hope to replicate it.

In China, policy makers looked closely at the California system's master plan before coming up with their two-pronged approach of simultaneously developing mass and elite institutions, says Mr. Zha, the Chinese higher-education expert in Toronto.

Others say infusions of cash to elite universities in Korea, Taiwan, and China are a nod to America's hierarchy of universities.

"The Korean system is very much the U.S. system," says Nam Pyo Suh, president of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, explaining that the country's private universities outnumber its public institutions, and only a small number of those are allowed to excel.

But the abrupt creation of an elite group of universities in South Korea, China, and Taiwan has yielded resentment at institutions excluded from the financial trough.

"We were given a lot of money," says Ms. Ma, referring to Peking University, "and people say, 'What have you done with it?'"

And while Asia's rise may be cut on a U.S. model, the continent's strong commitment to education grows out of a very different style of governance.

Autocratic governments like China and Singapore have the luxury of planning two or three decades in advance. China, which routinely maps out targets to 2050, is expected to unveil a long-term plan for higher education soon--a document that would be unthinkable in the United States. Such countries also have an easier time pushing through unpopular measures, such as mandates that universities offer a set portion of courses in English, which tend not to sit well with faculty members who didn't study overseas.

"In Asia, there's a belief that you need strong government intervention to create good universities," says Mr. Mahbubani, of the National University of Singapore. "In the U.S. there is an assumption that the government does not need to intervene because society will somehow work things out."

Some Asian observers now hold up the global economic crisis as proof that government intervention is necessary. A financial mix that includes substantial endowment money, for example, is feasible only when an economy is in full swing. U.S. universities, Mr. Mahbubani points out, are suffering: "I don't know how they're going to cope in hard times."

An Asian Model?

Beyond a financial and policy commitment, however, it is difficult to discern a larger pattern in Asia's education push. At the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education meeting in Beijing this past spring, some representatives hinted at developing an Asian answer to the Bologna Process, the European effort to adopt uniform degree standards. But most agreed such a process is still far off.

"Asia has always put a lot of emphasis on education for economic development," said Anthony Cheung, president of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, as he prepared to host a group of Asian university presidents in May. "Now we need to see whether there are any commonalities in our approaches."

At the national level, those approaches have their detractors. Professors in South Korea complain that students study hard in high school--and then abruptly stop.

"They speed up and up until they pass the gate of the university," says Shin-wha Lee, professor of international relations at Korea University. "They don't read Tolstoy, they don't read about democracy, they don't read Marx."

Asia's high graduation rates may simply reflect a lack of academic rigor. In Korea degree attainment is such a sure bet that in the early 1980s the country briefly instituted a "graduation quota" that, before popular protest forced the government to drop it, required universities to fail a specific number of students.

And some say China's push has happened too fast. In the past 10 years, universities were cut loose from central-government financing and encouraged to balance their books. But tuition remains tightly controlled by the government, a gap that forced many universities to take out high-interest loans from local banks. Today many are in debt.

China's student-faculty ratio has skyrocketed, meanwhile. Even with millions of young people vying for scarce jobs, employers complain about the quality of recent graduates.

"China has moved from an elite system to a mass one in five or six years," says Mr. Zha. "In other countries it took 15 or 20 years to accomplish that jump."

In a report released this May that contrasted in tone with its earlier warning about the rise of Asia, the OECD said China needed to raise its spending on higher education to ensure quality. Similarly, in 2003, the consulting firm McKinsey emphasized that quantity is not everything, estimating that only 10 percent of China's 1.6 million engineers are qualified to work in multinational companies.

Cooperating Across Borders

But in the long run, financing across the region seems secure. The East Asian countries are moving closer, meanwhile, by cooperating on research and dual-degree programs. In crafting a fourth public university, Singapore has settled on two collaborators that reflect the city-state's dual orientation, courting an unnamed Chinese university along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And Taiwan is debating whether to admit students from China, a potentially historic move for two countries that still have no diplomatic ties.

Hong Kong's leading universities, meanwhile, are building branch campuses across the border with mainland China in Shenzhen, in an area once dominated by low-end manufacturing. The goal is to take advantage of Chinese-government funds for basic research, says Thomas Wu, director of academic links at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"The government is trying to redo southern China as an area of technology transfer," he explains, adding that his university's Shenzhen program will enroll up to 200 mainland Ph.D. students. "If that succeeds, then increasingly we will have a role as a center of applied research."

Like administrators and policy makers across Asia, he connects his predictions to the economy. "What's very interesting," he adds, "is how the Chinese economy recovers."