Higher Education In The High North

This book focuses on how the Northern futures are transformed through regional cooperation in the Barents eduscape: a study of the social, cultural and political aspects of higher education and the exchanges of learning and people in the Euro-Arctic Barents region, especially between Norway and Russia. Cultural exchange through higher education involving actors such as students and institutions is an integral part both of the Bologna process and of the policies currently changing higher education. It is also a process of social and cultural change of which we have limited knowledge. Cultural exchange is learned, implemented and performed by the actors who are involved, from the highest political level to the grassroots and the students themselves. Available knowledge of these macro- and micro-processes of cultural exchange is largely fragmented and distinctly framed in national and/or disciplinary (i.e. pedagogical) contexts. In order to understand the transformative potentials of higher education and cultural exchange, this book focuses on the social, cultural and political aspects of the transformations of the futures in the North. This book shows that educational cooperation between Norway and Russia is possible, but also that the existing practices are extremely vulnerable to changes seen through micro theoretical perspectives. By developing new theories which bind major theories, international political decisions, methodological procedures and contextual descriptions together, this book is a first step in the direction of institutionalizing educational cooperation between the various and different academic societies, cultures and political systems.

This is the first book to analyze the role of the new circumpolar universities in northern development. Since 1960, over twenty new universities have been built in the northern regions of Canada, Russia, the United States, the Nordic countries and Japan. This book analyzes and compares the reasons for their establishment, the impact they have had in providing greater access to advanced education, and the effect they have had on economic, social, cultural and political development of these various northern regions.

The vision of the Nordic council of Ministers for the Nordic region is built on visibility and international engagement. In research and education, the aim is to strengthen international competitiveness and safeguard a leading position in knowledge and welfare. Against this background Oxford Research and the Confederation of Danish Industry has been asked to conduct a feasibility study on how to increase cooperation between the Nordic countries and the U.S. within higher education, research and innovation. The results of the study shows that cooperation is well established but at the same time there is an interest in and potential for even stronger collaboration. A number of recommendations are given for concrete actions to be taken the by Nordic Council of Ministers and other actors interested in increasing the cooperation between the Nordic countries and the U.S.

Higher Education has become a central institution of society, building individual knowledge, skills, agency, and relational social networks at unprecedented depth and scale. Within a generation there has been an extraordinary global expansion of Higher Education, in every region in all but the poorest countries, outstripping economic growth and deriving primarily from familial aspirations for betterment. By focusing on the systems and countries that have already achieved near universal participation, High Participation Systems of Higher Education explores this remarkable transformation. The world enrolment ratio, now rising by 10 per cent every decade, is approaching 40 per cent, mostly in degree-granting institutions, including three quarters of young people in North America and Europe. Higher Education systems in the one in three countries that enrol more than 50 per cent are here classified as 'high participation systems'. Part I of the book measures, maps, and explains the growth of participation, and the implications for society and Higher Education itself. Drawing on a wide range of literature and data, the chapters theorize the changes in governance, institutional diversity, and stratification in Higher Education systems, and the subsequent effects in educational and social equity. The theoretical propositions regarding high-participation Higher Education developed in these chapters are then tested in the country case studies in Part II, presenting a comprehensive enquiry into the nature of the emerging 'high participation society'.