Brave New World of Worldwide Higher Education March 29, 2011by
John
This superb textbook by Ben Wildavsky warrants attention. For educators, it's the equivalent of Friedman's World Is Flat and carries much the same message: Higher education is no longer confined by national boundaries, much less campus walls. At least at its upper echelons, it's now an international industry, serving an international market, populated by globe-trotting people. From a U.S. standpoint, that's both good and bad. Although we are successfully exporting something we've long been good at--and importing students and faculty, too--the universities of a dozen other lands (including India, China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, etc) are in hot pursuit and beginning to catch up. Ponder the implications. Meanwhile, read this terrific and ultimately heartening analysis.
The Great Brain Race:
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In The Great Brain Race, former U.S. News & World Report education editor Ben Wildavsky presents the first popular account of how international competition for the brightest minds is transforming the world of higher education--and why this revolution should be welcomed, not feared. Every year, nearly three million international students study outside of their home countries, a forty percent increase since 1999. Newly created or expanded universities in China, India, and Saudi Arabia are competing with the likes of Harvard and Oxford for faculty, students, and research preeminence.
Satellite campuses of Western universities are springing up from Abu Dhabi and Singapore to South Africa. Wildavsky shows that as international universities strive to become world-class, the new global education marketplace is providing more opportunities to more people than ever before.
Drawing on extensive reporting in China, India, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, Wildavsky chronicles the unprecedented international mobility of students and faculty, the rapid spread of branch campuses, the growth of for-profit universities, and the remarkable international expansion of college rankings. Some university and government officials see the rise of worldwide academic competition as a threat, going so far as to limit student mobility or thwart cross-border university expansion.
But Wildavsky argues that this scholarly marketplace is creating a new global meritocracy, one in which the spread of knowledge benefits everyone--both educationally and economically.
"In The Great Brain Race, Ben Wildavsky...provides an informative, early-days assessment of a new phenomenon: 'free trade in minds.' Acknowledging missteps and problems, he claims, with a bow to author Thomas Friedman, that an increasingly flat academic world will bring unprecedented economic, social, and political benefits, innovative research, and spread meritocratic values to emerging nations." -Glenn C. Altschuler
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