Full Description
Over the past half-century, globalization has had a profound impact on postsecondary education. The twin forces of mass higher education and the global knowledge economy have driven an unprecedented transformation. These fundamental changes have pulled in opposite directions: one pushes for wider access and accompanying challenges of quality, the other toward exclusive, "world class" research-oriented universities. In Global Perspectives on Higher Education, renowned higher education scholar Philip G. Altbach offers a wide-ranging perspective on the implications of these key forces and explores how they influence academe everywhere. Altbach begins with a discussion of the global trends that increasingly affect higher education, including the implications of mass enrollments, the logic of mass higher education systems around the world, and specific challenges facing Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
He considers the numerous implications of globalization, including the worldwide use of the English language, university cross-border initiatives, the role of research universities in developing countries, the impact of the West on Asian universities, and the expansion of private higher education. Provocative and wide-ranging, Global Perspectives on Higher Education considers how the international exchange of ideas, students, and scholars has fundamentally altered higher education.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
1. The Emergence and Reality of Contemporary Internationalization
2. Tracking a Global Academic Revolution
3. The Logic of Mass Higher Education
4. The Prospects for the BRICs: The New Academic Superpowers?
5. Internationalization and Global Tension: Lessons from History
6. Globalization and the University: Realities in an Unequal World
7. The Internationalization of Higher Education: Motivations and Realities
8. Higher Education Crosses Borders
9. The Globalization of Rankings
10. The Imperial Tongue: English as the Dominating Academic Language
11. The University as Center and Periphery
12. Research Universities in Developing Countries
13. Twisted Roots: The Western Impact on Asian Higher Education
14. Comparative Perspectives on Private Higher Education
15. Academic Freedom: International Realities and Challenges
16. The Giants Awake: Higher Education Systems in China and India
17. Academic Remuneration and Contracts: Global Trends and Realities
18. Student Political Activism
About the Authors
Index
