Henry Rosovsky Quotes

#1. The task of building a great university is never simple.

Henry Rosovsky

#2. I draw a contrast between American shared governance with "the dictatorship of ministries" wherein policy and direction for the university is ordered by bureaucrats who have never taught a class.

Henry Rosovsky

#3. The faculty know what they need to develop and they need to work with an administrator with the authority do get it done. To define everything in terms of these index numbers is ridiculous.

Henry Rosovsky

#4. Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts

Henry Rosovsky

#5. Equally important for the promotion of excellence in the university is an emphasis on shared governance. The faculty needs to be involved directly in the process of running the university and in the setting of priorities.

Henry Rosovsky

#6. Asian colleges would do well to use a broad range of criteria in selecting students and move beyond the unproductive "examination hell. "

Henry Rosovsky

#7. The question of how much English should be used in international research universities is one with which I am extremely familiar. I would even say I am deeply puzzled by this trend. I am not certain what the correct answer should be.

Henry Rosovsky

#8. I have not been able to give a concrete answer to the question of how the nations of Asia can create their own unique liberal arts traditions that are not simply the importation of a Western model. The question is a critical one and the answer must come from Asian universities themselves.

Henry Rosovsky

#9. I suppose the situation varies from field to field. If you're a mathematician, your proficiency in English may not be such a problem. If you're in the humanities or social sciences, there is no doubt that it is a handicap for you.

Henry Rosovsky

#10. The strong point of American research universities is the manner in which trustees, presidents and other senior executives retain a considerable amount of decision-making authority while at the same time maintaining a culture of open exchange and participatory debate.

Henry Rosovsky

#11. The rank of a university is similar to an index number say like the NASDAQ index. I don't understand how you can take an institution like Harvard, Stanford, or Michigan, and represent it by an index number. The concept makes no sense.

Henry Rosovsky

#12. English is not the primary language for universities in China, Korea, and Japan, but they are being evaluated on the basis of publications in English and courses taught in English.

Henry Rosovsky

#13. As academics we have pretty good judgment about the quality of institutions that cannot simply be measured by counting the number of papers published or patents received. Outsiders who swoop in to count beans and make up lists based on statistics have little sense of what excellence is.

Henry Rosovsky