Who Defines Excellence? An Intercultural Study Of Perceptions Of Excellence And The Effects Of These Interpretations In Global Higher Education

Abstract

This article questions the perception of excellence in three different and geographically distant locations: Buenos Aires (Argentina), Coventry (UK) and Shanghai (China) and inquires about the capacity of educational systems to generalize globally the appreciation of student and university staff work. The main issue on which this article focuses is whether what higher education institutions consider as bad, good or excellent is culturally sensitive, and if so, how to agree on objectives and procedures that are universally applicable. Current environmental conditions in the higher education landscape are pushing towards the development of international links between universities under different forms, such as franchised degrees, joint programs, mutual faculty and student exchanges, etc. As this new reality demands the homogenization of the curricula delivered as well as a compatible process of evaluation across borders, how could we achieve global excellence if what we understand by this term is culturally sensitive?