In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its now famous report, "A Nation at Risk," which warned of "a rising tide of mediocrity" in American schooling. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education but largely written by a group of prominent academics, "A Nation at Risk" invoked a crisis…

Today's world may be characterised as the dawn of the new millennium of the learning society, where knowledge is considered as a country's most valued asset and primary source of power. In the increasingly intense competition among international communities, Thailand has been respected for advancing the concept of transforming communities, cities…

In the current society, economic development in any region has to rely on higher education. Conversely, higher education cannot do without regional economic development in order to achieve greater progress in scale and level. Starting with the function of higher education in Wenzhou, this paper analyzes the reality and problems in Wenzhou's higher…

In Sweden, higher education has moved away from distance education, including physical meetings, to online education with no physical meetings at all. This article focuses on the shift from distance to online education using an educational management perspective that is based on economic, staff, and student data collected between 1994 and 2010…

Within the last decade, adult education has faced significant challenges in terms of its relevance to socio-economic development as it sought to define itself through many international conferences. In spite of these re-conceptualisations, adult education continues to be relegated to the periphery, and therefore lacks the needed funding to play a…

This is the first in a series of reports from the Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB) exploring the leading vocational and technical education systems from around the world to draw out what makes these systems great and what other countries can learn from them. This first report was based on a visit of several days to Singapore…

The current and still-evolving role of the American research university has been shaped by four key developments in the past sixty-five years: the historic decision to establish a comprehensive postwar federal science policy, described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 report, "Science, The Endless Frontier;" the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980; economic analyses…

Among the little truly predictable, the author suggests three truths. First is the inevitability of recessions. Second is the belief that, in prosperity, these good times will just keep on rolling. Third is the fall. Bubbles will burst, myths shatter, plans unravel and pain sadly borne unjustly by those who didn't have a hand in the decisions that…

The end of the Cold War ushered in a paradigmatic shift in international development discourse whereby a human rights-based approach to development was generated. This shift has stimulated the pegging of international development policy to the objectives of the human rights regime. However, in attempting to unify development and human rights…

This article examines Brazilian higher education (HE) politics from a post-colonial perspective. The term "post-colonial" originally referred to a historical period of colonial empires established by European nations. Nowadays, the term commonly distinguishes a field of contemporary studies of "defamiliarisation of the imperial…

The nature of higher education is by no means fixed: it has evolved over time; different models of higher education co-exist alongside each other at present; and, worldwide, there are demands for higher education to change to better help support economic growth and to better fit changing social and economic circumstances. This book examines, from…

The study examined variations in district performance in KCPE national examination in Kenya between 2001 and 2007. The individual change model revealed that district poverty rate was not a significant predictor of either the initial district performance (2001) or the rate of change over the seven-year period. The regional context of North Eastern…

The experience of public policy in Sri Lanka has had a profound impact on the thinking of the global development community in relation to the role of education in economic development. In particular, the example of Sri Lanka helped to persuade policy makers around the world that governments can successfully develop a general education system to…

In Spring 2007, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded funds to the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) to undertake an analysis of Career and Technical Education (CTE) in Philadelphia, and to make recommendations on how CTE and other forms of career-connected education could better align with Philadelphia standards for college and career…

Argues that the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations' overseas programs and development strategies after 1945 were frequently coordinated by intermediate organizations established or funded by one of the foundations and that these programs and strategies were neither exclusively humanitarian in purpose nor apolitical. (NEC)