Different Roads to a Shared Goal

In The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities, Jamil Salmi (2009) explores what nations and institutions need to do to create "globally competitive universities". He finds that these universities are characterized by a concentration of talent, abundant resources and favourable governance arrangements. In The Road to Academic Excellence: The Making of World-Class Research Universities, Phillip Altbach and Jamil Salmi (2011) provide a set of individual cases. In his concluding chapter Salmi expands on the necessary characteristics. He points to internationallization strategies as a means of accelerating development, and the importance of the broader "tertiary education ecosystem", in which would-be worldclass universities are located.