Global Inequalities And Higher Education

Examines how higher education has contributed to widening inequalities and might contribute to change. By exploring questions of access, finance and pedagogy, it considers global higher education as a space for understanding the promises and pressures associated with competing demands for economic growth, equity, sustainability and democracy.

This book is the first systematic attempt to examine one of the biggest challenges facing universities and society in the 21st century: how do we create opportunities to allow people from all social backgrounds to benefit from higher education? It examines how policymakers, higher education institutions and civil society organisations are meeting this challenge across the globe. Each chapter focuses on one of 12 countries, including the economically powerful US and Germany, developing nations from Africa and South America and the new higher education 'superpowers' of China and India. Access to Higher Education shows that across these different nations inequalities in higher education participation are common, but their nature differs. It argues for a new, 'nationhood' based approach to understanding why these differences exist.

Examines how higher education has contributed to widening inequalities and might contribute to change. By exploring questions of access, finance and pedagogy, it considers global higher education as a space for understanding the promises and pressures associated with competing demands for economic growth, equity, sustainability and democracy.

Globalisation, Higher Education, the Labour Market and Inequality addresses the global transformation of higher education in relation to changes in the labour market. It focuses on the relative impact of elements of globalisation on social inequality, and provides insights into the ways in which these general forces of change are transformed into specific policies shaped by global forces and the various national values, institutional structures and politics of the specified societies. The book begins with a theoretical conceptualization for a comparative understanding of globalization, higher education, labour markets and inequality. This is followed by a range of mainstream accounts from an international selection of contributors of the ways in which national systems have responded to the forces of globalisation and the increasing demand for higher education graduates – in Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and the UK. Finally, contributors explore more specific concerns such as the transition from higher education to the labour market in China and Sweden, the division of the ‘knowledge’ workers into traditional social groups in the US, and the role and salience of Doctoral programmes in South Africa in developing a knowledge economy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.

This book discusses and analyses global policies and practices aimed at promoting equity in higher education participation and attainment. Although the massification of higher education systems has facilitated the participation of students from deprived backgrounds, socioeconomic inequalities persist in access to the most prestigious institutions and programmes. Privileged students benefit from a number of advantages in the competition for selective and scarce places: access to information, lower aversion to debt, higher expectations, better previous schooling and higher academic achievement. The chapters present a critical analysis of equity policies in different countries – with or without affirmative action policies, within a context of neoliberal policies or within a social democratic model – and the reasons why they have failed to promote equity and fairness, preventing students from achieving their full educational potential. This is an open access book.

This book is open access and discusses the re-imagining of the higher education sector. It exposes problems that relate to the way that universities have become over-managed business enterprises which may not reflect societal, national, or global educational needs. From there, it proposes some solutions, including three innovative programs, that make universities more responsive to needs, as well as reduce their impact on the environment. The central idea of this book is developing the ‘Distributed University,’ which distributes education to where it is needed, reducing local and global inequalities in access, and emphasizing local relevance in place of large centralized campuses, with a low impact on the environment. It emphasizes the distribution of trust in place of managerialism and collaboration in place of competition. By focusing on distributing education online, this book discusses how the higher education sector can be set up to adapt to the changes in the ways we work and learn today, and which will be required to adapt to and take advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This book focuses on higher education in Ethiopia, analysing persisting inequalities and policy responses against the backdrop of the extensive expansion and reform that the system has experienced in recent years. Drawing on empirical data generated through interviews, policy reviews and focus-group discussions, it explicates factors of structural inequality ranging from neoliberal policy orientations to repressive gender culture and geo-political peripherality. In a departure from conventional studies that consider policy a response to social problems, the book takes a critical perspective to show the constitutive role of policy, and explains how the representation of the problem of social inequality undermines equity policy outcomes in Ethiopian higher education. Not only does the book problematise the framing of the problem of inequality in the system, it also outlines strategies for designing transformative equity instruments. In explaining structural factors of inequality and equity provisions, the book productively combines sociological concepts with historical accounts and political economy insights. Given the increased economic optimism associated with higher education in sub-Saharan Africa and the neoliberal ideals underpinning much of the restructuring of the system in the region, this is a timely and important contribution that sheds light on the social justice implications and consequences of such changes. It offers fresh accounts of largely neglected qualitative cases of inequality, making it a valuable read for students and researchers in the areas of Ethiopian education policy studies, international and comparative education, and international development.