John Nye: evaluation

Transcript context

…Let’s say that a country with a fair amount of money, but not necessarily high credibility in every way, and a nondemocratic government — they appoint you to build a university system for them and to create a top world-class university. Say it’s a Gulf nation. Is it even possible that they try to do this? Is the credibility gap too strong? How much money do they need? How would you think about actually trying to do this? Well, I think there’s two factors. One is, are they willing to commit the money to it? And second, are they willing to go through the phase of credibility building? That’s the hardest thing. Many people make the early phase possible, but then they falter at the later one, and that’s the real issue. How credible are you going to be with respect . . . Even something like tenure is something not very well understood. Are you willing to fire people before they get to tenure? And are you willing to guarantee tenure after? How do you do that? How do you do it so it’s credible? Many countries cannot even guarantee that the policies instituted by one ruler will be followed by the next. And this is a very, very big issue. However, you see a lot try. Singapore has done quite a very good job. Hong Kong has done quite a lot. The Gulf is trying now, I’m not quite sure with what success, but there’s surely — the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology has been hiring a lot of top people in the sciences. But I’m not sure how successful they’re being at creating a really vibrant university that will attract the best and the brightest to come there. Russia, I don’t want to talk too much about that because that’s partly what I’m involved in in Russia as well. The Russians have a program to try to provide incentives for their leading universities to hire on the international market and integrate that with their local professors. I would say the Higher School of Economics in Moscow is the most successful university institution in Russia so far at doing that. But it’s still very early in the game, and it’s always a challenge. Let me ask you just a little bit about what I call the John Nye production function. Economics aside, what would be an example of a book that had a great influence over you in your life? Not Doug North.…

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