Measuring global common goods in higher education: dimensions and potential indicators

The concept of common good(s) is crucial in understanding higher education and its contributions. However, measuring global common goods in higher education has been largely overlooked. This paper proposes a framework to measure global common goods in higher education that contains five core dimensions (i.e., knowledge creation, people mobility, research collaboration, human well-being, and cultural contribution). The framework is based on mostly objectively quantifiable indicators that have broad applicability worldwide. This attempt would facilitate the understanding of higher education’s quantitative contributions to global common goods and potentially help efforts to increase them.