Knowledge Revolution: Globalizing Education

Technology enhanced globalization forces are likewise enveloping the education industry.

This from Ben Wildavsky at the Foreign Policy (bold emphasis mine)

But over the long term, exactly where countries sit in the university hierarchy will be less and less relevant, as Americans' understanding of who is "us" and who is "them" gradually changes. Already, a historically unprecedented level of student and faculty mobility has become a defining characteristic of global higher education. Cross-border scientific collaboration, as measured by the volume of publications by co-authors from different countries, has more than doubled in two decades. Countries like Singapore and Saudi Arabia are jump-starting a culture of academic excellence at their universities by forging partnerships with elite Western institutions such as Duke, MIT, Stanford, and Yale.

The notion of just how much a university really has to be connected to a particular location is being rethought, too. Western universities, from Texas A&M to the Sorbonne, have garnered much attention by creating, admittedly with mixed results, some 160 branch campuses in Asia and the Middle East, many launched in the last decade. New York University recently went one step further by opening a full-fledged liberal arts campus in Abu Dhabi, part of what NYU President John Sexton envisions as a "global network university." One day, as University of Warwick Vice Chancellor Nigel Thrift suggests, we may see outright mergers between institutions -- and perhaps ultimately the university equivalent of multinational corporations.

In this coming era of globalized education, there is little place for the Sputnik alarms of the Cold War, the Shanghai panic of today, and the inevitable sequels lurking on the horizon. The international education race worth winning is the one to develop the intellectual capacity the United States and everyone else needs to meet the formidable challenges of the 21st century -- and who gets there first won't matter as much as we once feared.

Read the rest here

Two comments

In terms of education, people should focus on the general or macro trend more than just looking and interpreting localized developments. With the introduction of the internet, what used to be local has increasingly become global.

I’d also say that there is more to expect than just the above. We’re likely to see an explosion of web based education that would bring down the cost of education, which subsequently should increase demand for it. The vertical flow of knowledge and communication process will enhance the Hayekian Knowledge revolution, education will be part of it.

Moreover, the web will possibly rearrange or restructure many aspects in the education-job process such as decentralization and more diversification (curriculum), more specialized jobs, reconfigure recruitment and hiring process, adaption of new certification or recognition standards and etc….