The need for change in the education system is obvious and overwhelming. But each stakeholder group has its own ideas about why the system is broken and how to fix it. Competing priorities, political inertia and diminishing budgets maintain the dysfunctional status quo. This essential text examines the underlying causes behind the key challenges…

Globalization presents Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries with opportunities for economic growth and transformation, as many of these nations face economic challenges such as the need for a diversified knowledge-based economy because of the finite resource of hydrocarbons. This requires the development of human capital providing workers with…

In recent years, higher education institutions have been encouraged to engage more strongly with their local communities, and address their historically weak links with their surrounding populations. In the latter part of the twentieth century, a number of community universities were established in the South of Brazil, characterised by democratic…

The aim of this paper is to map this place of economics in the field of study of Comparative and International Education. Interrelationship between economy and education is concerned, two broad lines of enquiry lie within the scope of Comparative and International Education: economy as shaping force of education systems and the effect of education…

The landscapes of higher education have been changing rapidly, with enormous growths in participation rates in many countries across the world, and major developments and changes within institutions. But the languages that we need to conceptualise and understand these changes have not been keeping pace. The central argument in this book is that…

Despite the improvements in the access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT) around the world, there is evidence which suggest that a persistent digital divide between and within countries. ICT increases the flexibility of delivery of education so that learners can access knowledge anytime and from anywhere. It can influence…

Although the idea of the world-class university is not a new one, it has become increasingly commonplace in public policies around the globe, also gaining traction in states outside the global "core". Kazakhstan, the only Central Asian member of the European Higher Education Area, is no exception as it too aspires to have a world-class…

For several decades, Singapore has experienced a high rate of outbound degree mobility with around 1 in 10 higher education students currently studying outside the country according to UNESCO figures. Singapore's successful economic development strategy, which has seen it become a key Asian hub for knowledge-intensive industries for…

Education for sustainable business development is an important institution of the integration process of the knowledge economy. This situation also concerns Ukraine, which is currently experiencing particularly difficult times of its state formation. This article investigates the state of the situation in the field of higher education in Ukraine,…

This article is a condensed analysis of the developing sustainability crisis of Australian universities. It is based on an address to National Council of the National Tertiary Education Union, Melbourne, 3 October 2014. Thanks to all my fellow-members, who have kept my hopes for the modern university alive.

This paper highlights how returnees and knowledge diaspora are important sources for China's human resources development, identifying push and pull factors that also contribute significantly to innovation in the higher education sector. By outlining China's key projects and schemes for recruiting international professional workers, the paper…

China aims to become an innovation-led nation by 2020, but its leadership is generally sceptical--and oftentimes hostile--to the market forces, open exchange of ideas, and creative destruction that have unlocked innovation in other countries. Instead, Beijing hopes to promote innovation in China through a massive expansion in higher education,…

Policy makers in both Singapore and Hong Kong have been preoccupied by the need to meet the competitive economic challenges of a global economy. As education is widely considered as a social investment which contributes significantly to economic growth, both in Singapore and Hong Kong there is a consensus that the school curriculum needs to be…

This article examines the possibilities and limitations of using ICTs for development in an African context from an education perspective. Although we provide an account of the Pan-African Agenda on integrating ICTs, which covers many countries on the African continent, our focus is specifically on using ICTs for development in a South African…

Although innovation policy usually follows the business cycle, it is both desirable and possible to reverse this trend. Perhaps the most telling commentary on contemporary Europe is the silence that met the presentation, at the recent European Parliament Innovation Conference, of the Chinese R&D spending curve passing the European Union curve…