Global Perspectives in Higher Education Policy

This course analyzes a set of higher education policies that resonate globally. That is, they are being developed and implemented across nation states and within regions—although the nature and reality of implementation vary widely. While the most dramatic regional manifestation is the Bologna Process in Europe, similar policies are apparent in North and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. They include policies to change higher education financing, to create new governance and managerial structures, to develop student services, to introduce quality assurance measures, to modify existing relationships between research, teaching, and learning, to introduce 'borderless' higher education, and to accommodate changing labor market needs through life-long learning and alternative post-secondary school institutions. The policies almost always derive from a rhetoric of globalization often referred to as the imperatives of the “knowledge economy”.