World ranking No 1 university - Harvard University. What makes it so successful? As our local unversities are aiming to develop itself toward world class uiversities, the success story from Harvard University may spring some inspiration for these local unibversities.
Harvard Business School don Prof Daniel Quinn Mills said that Harvard is a major university because of the quality of its faculty.
- The university’s decentralisation policy meant that its president had control of only 7% of the university’s budget.
- Every school manages its own budget and its own path, subject only to supervision from the president and Harvard’s seven-member board of trustees.
- Every school must finance itself. In the short term, decentralisation creates big differences in salaries, facilities, etcetra, between the schools.
- Decentralisation has also allowed Harvard to use varying methods when appointing staff.
- The Arts and Social Science School hires faculty through ad-hoc committees with no special consideration being given to existing staff but the Business School has a policy of promoting from within.
(Source: TheStar, Sunday August 20th 2006)
