The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 24

Globalization and Higher Education

PETER MANICAS

INTRODUCTION

Like ‘globalization’, ‘higher education’ is a high abstraction. Accordingly, it is easy to slip into the assumption that arrangements in higher education globally are pretty much the same as arrangements in the United States. But differences in the histories and political economies of the nations of the world have resulted in differences in the situation of higher education across the globe. This regards not only questions of access, funding, organization, programmes and institutional variety, but questions of needs and goals.

Moreover, even if one restricts one’s sight to higher education in one country, for example, the United States, there are huge differences between public and private institutions, Research I Universities/Liberal Arts colleges, four-year colleges/Community colleges, non-profit/for profit, proprietary schools (which offer training in trades and regulated industries, e.g. auto-mechanics, tourism), online universities, corporate universities (for example, Sun Microsystems University, the University of Toyota) and finally, ‘diploma mills’, digital and otherwise.

Similarly, while it is clear that ‘globalization’ is a real phenomenon, one can easily fail to acknowledge its complex and multidimensional character. Depending upon how it is characterized, globalization takes on enormous ideological freight. One popular view, well articulated by Thomas Friedman (1999), holds that ‘globalization ...