Globalization Higher Education

In this special issue we are also particularly concerned with the take up of neoliberal forms of globalization in schooling and higher education in cities, in both the Global North and South. There is a troubling inadequacy inherent in denoting the Global South and Global North, related most clearly to the invocation of a uni-directional, mostly paternal and exploitative set of relationships; whether these be of capital, of resources, of people, and so forth. Alternatively, following critical development studies, we might see the North and South in both politico-economic terms, pertaining to development, and in geographical terms (Riggs, 2007). As such an important conceptual framework for dealing with ideas of the North and South is the mutually constitutive nature of notions such as the global and local (Massey, 2005; M.P. Smith, 2001), especially the relationship to neoliberalism and space (Peck & Tickell, 2002). Understanding contemporary challenges to education in a globalized world requires attendance to space and place, and to scale; the global, national, regional, local (Robertson, 2000; Thiem, 2009), and to concepts and phenomena such as transnationalism that complicate understandings of and relations between space and place, global and local (Jackson, Crang, & Dwyer, 2004). The papers in this special issue, while not explicitly taking up spatial theorizing, nonetheless speak to a complicating of the global as producing the local, and correspondingly of the local (usually conflated with place) as always the 'victim' of the global (Massey, 2005). The papers in this special issue provide empirical and conceptual interventions that speak more to complex, relational understandings of neoliberal globalization. A relational understanding posits that: local places are not simply always the victims of the global; nor are they always politically defensible redoubts against the global. Understanding space as the constant open production of the topologies of pow

It is well known that most of the topical problems of our times cannot be addressed in clean disciplinary separations or total disciplinary make-up, but they are only successfully to be addressed in interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary or even superdisciplinary manner. For instance, ecological problems are not just natural science questions, but of course they are not only cultural or social humanities problem areas either. In the overriding and comprehensive problems of our society and age we encounter a complex of not only internal interaction and interconnection if not mashing of the prospective disciplinary areas. We need more abstract plus disciplinary methods, disciplines and technologies, so to speak generalized operational techniques in order to get a more formal or abstract or methodological perspective we will discuss below.

Based on the Community Innovation Survey, this paper suggests new indicators of innovation adoption. The magnitude of innovation adoption is assessed for 22 EU countries and different industries. The most striking feature is the correlation between the innovation activities and the adoption rate. Countries with strong R&D and human resources and high innovation output exhibit the highest adoption rates. This supports the idea that innovation adoption requires an absorption capability. In addition, the specificities of each country regarding the prevailing types of innovation and adoption (product or process, cooperation-based adoption or internal adoption) allow us to draw up a typology of the EU countries, for which a specific geographical pattern is observed.

Education is commonly regarded as a state responsibility. Non-state provision is, however, increasingly prevalent in many developing countries in response to the inaccessibility and poor quality of state provision. Its unplanned growth has led to proposals for developing 'public-private partnerships'. However, as a number of the papers in this collection indicate, such partnerships are insufficiently developed in national planning, with potentially adverse consequences for equity. More often, non-state providers are attempting to develop relationships with the state, both to strengthen their own service delivery as well as to put pressure on government to improve the quality of its own provision.

I report a study that investigated ideas about critical thinking across three disciplines: Philosophy, History and Literary Studies. The findings point to a diversity of understandings and practices, ones that suggest the limitations of a more generic approach. I argue that a more useful conception of critical thinking is as a form of 'metacritique' - where the essential quality to be encouraged in students is a flexibility of thought and the ability to negotiate a range of different critical modes.

Within some significant circles, where hegemonic representations of the idea of 'science' are produced, certain orientations of scientific research are carried out, and science and higher education policies are made and applied, references to the alleged existence of two kinds of knowledge, one of which would have 'universal' validity, and 'the other' (in fact the several others) would not, are frequent and do have crucial effects over our academic work. Although some outstanding authors within the very Western tradition have criticized from varied perspectives such universalist ambitions/assumptions, and although many colleagues have reached convergent conclusions from diverse kinds of practices and experiences, such hegemonic representations of the idea of science are still current. The acknowledgment of this situation calls for a deep debate. This article responds to such a purpose by attempting to integrate into the debate a reflection on the shortcomings of hegemonic academic knowledge to understand social processes profoundly marked by cultural differences, historical conflicts and inequalities, as well as significant perspectives formulated by some outstanding intellectuals who self-identify as indigenous, and the experiences of some indigenous intercultural universities from several Latin American countries.

Driven by neo-liberal principles, globalization attempts to position education as the source of prosperity and a great social equalizer. As globalization intensifies, Jamaica is actively reforming its educational policies in order to reap the benefits of the new "knowledge economy." However, significant policy approaches, which accompany the emerging policy changes-referred to as policy discourses-have the unintended consequence of perpetuating disempowerment of low income Jamaicans. I identify and critically analyze education as (private) investment as one of Jamaica's dominant policies. I note that the neo-liberal ideology that influences this discourse is fundamentally inconsistent with the post-war/post-independence social welfare approaches that Jamaica used to address social asymmetries of colonialism. The result is that education as (private) investment predicates educational opportunity on the capacity to pay, thus limiting the likelihood of education to be the great socio-economic equalizer.

International postdoctoral researchers are growing in number and importance in academic research around the world. This is contextualised by a shift to international and enterprise modes of academic production. Through a multiple case study, this paper analyses the role of international postdoctoral employment in life sciences and engineering fields at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. In doing so particular attention is given to understanding why there are increasing numbers of postdocs from abroad working in these fields and countries, and the ways in which international postdoctorates are incorporated into research laboratories and projects. International postdoctoral employment appears driven by the same factors in the US and UK but is related to different modes of academic production. The findings of this study have implications for research on academic labour, and the organisation of academic production.

In recent years, EU policy-makers have acknowledged the role of universities in supporting the knowledge economy and a common approach on higher education has been evolving. The problem faced is one single market with widely varying higher education syste

"The purpose of this paper is to explore the dominant positions in the debates on globalization in American social studies education. Specifically, the paper illustrates that, first, globalization is conceived of as more of an unprecedented new age and less of a historical development. Second, it is conceived of as more of a natural process and less as an ideological project. All in all, this paper argues that globalization should be approached as a historic and discursive condition in the field of social studies education. To do so, educators should include more skeptical perspectives and critical voices about globalization. Also, they need to approach the vocabulary used to frame globalization discursively, rather than as an objective fact. The paper contends that the different positions taken in the debates on globalization are part and parcel of the social imaginary of globalization. The paper has ramifications not only for American social studies education but also for related subjects such as civics and citizenship education elsewhere."

Recent years have seen a number of studies on the determinants of educational spending. Almost all of the existing work emphasizes the importance of left-wing governments as a motor of expansion because such expansion allegedly ensures both redistribution and the facilitation of a supply-side economy. The existing literature thereby corroborates the power resource theory. Against this common wisdom the article presents an argument building on the varieties of capitalism approach. It is argued that education is a poor instrument for redistribution because access is universal and high-income groups have a tendency to use education even more than low-income groups. Instead, we argue that deindustrialization is the main driver of educational spending because deindustrialization constitutes one of the most salient threats to workers in modern societies. As deindustrialization rises workers risk ending up with redundant skills, especially in countries where the average skills specificity is high, that is, coordinated market economies. The expectations find empirical support in a time-series cross-section regression analysis of 18 Western countries in the years 1980-2000

There is a growing body of literature discussing evidence-based education, practice, policy, and decision-making from a critical perspective. In this article, drawing on the literature and policy documents related to evidence-based education in the USA, Britain, and Canada, I join this critique and offer an anticolonial perspective. I argue that proponents of evidence-based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American-European colonial era. I posit that this colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonized labor. I conclude with the decolonizing implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform

Globalizing Education Policy. Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard. New York: Routledge, 2010. 228 pp. $45.95 (paper); and Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom. David Harvey. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 352 pp. $27.50 (cloth). The authors of the texts reviewed here situate current education and social policies within the rise of the neoliberal state and describe how Friedman's free market capitalism became the dominant view of society not only in the United States, but also throughout much of the globe. Rizvi and Lingard explain how neoliberalism became the dominant "social imaginary which is, as Taylor (2007) defines, the way in which large groups of people "imagine their social existence-how they fit together with others and how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations" (19). The concept of social imaginary is useful in placing how people think about the world within the context of culture, economic, and political events. Social imaginary differs from social theory in that it is held by large groups of people, and often communicated in stories and anecdotes. However, although it may be less theoretical, it is no less powerful because it shapes how people think of the role of government and the "nature and scope of political authority" (Rizvi and Lingard 2010, 13). It reminds us that how people view the world is largely contested not theoretically, but at the level of lived experience. Consequently, scholars and members of the educational community must explicitly engage in problematizing our social imaginaries.

Although R&D has been highlighted as the main source of firm-level innovations, a significant group of firms develop innovations without performing R&D activities. The primary goal of this study is to understand the sources of innovation in such firms. To accomplish this goal, we explore the role played by other, non-R&D activities that can lead to innovation - activities such as technology forecasting, design, use of advanced manufacturing technologies and training. Our empirical analysis is based on a representative panel of Spanish manufacturing firms. The results strongly support the view that non-R&D activities are critical factors in explaining both product and process innovations attained by any firm, especially in the case of firms not performing R&D. Academic, managerial, and policy implications are derived from these results.

In this paper, we introduce a new framework that generates a list of strategic actions to support successful management of the innovation process as new technologies are taken to market. The framework links different stakeholders inside and outside the organisation to obtain an holistic view of the requirements necessary to develop the new technology. It integrates and synthesises existing frameworks into an inclusive set of guidelines. The framework is then tested in a case study located in a mid-size semiconductor organisation currently seeking new business opportunities in the emerging photovoltaic market. We conclude by reflecting on the usefulness of the model. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the literature on the management of the introduction of new technologies; practically, the framework provides a normative tool for practising managers.

Concomitant with the rise of rationalizing accountability in higher education has been an increase in theoretical reflection about the forms accountability has taken and the ones it should take. The literature is now peppered by a wide array of distinctions (e.g. internal/external, inward/ outward, vertical/horizontal, upward/downward, professional/public, political/economic, soft/ hard, positive/negative), to the point that when people speak of 'accountability' they risk speaking past one another, having some of these distinctions in mind and not others. Furthermore, often these distinctions are vague and cross-cut each other in ways that are as yet unclear. The field could benefit from having a comprehensive framework in which to place these distinctions and to view their relations. My aim in this article is to provide an analytical tool by which to classify important debate about what accountability in higher education has been and ought to be. Beyond organizing such debate, this schema will serve the purposes of revealing ambiguities in terms, conflations of ideas, assumptions that warrant questioning, and gaps in present research agendas.

This article uses four academics' gendered and cultural responses to life in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand under the new managerialist regime. Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) requires academics to submit evidence-based portfolios every six years to categorise and rank them, with government funding assigned accordingly. When the authors met as members of a writing group, the talk often turned to negative aspects of PBRF. Using co-operative enquiry, the four co-researchers began writing observations of their individual experiences, differences and identities to help them reflect and understand the impact of the changed environment. The four phases of writing as enquiry were: deciding on a focus, writing observations, engaging with the written accounts and interpreting the outcome through metaphor. The article process facilitated a positive outcome by helping the authors regain a sense of collegiality and mutual support, along with a sense of preserving their academic identity by writing and publishing as a group.

So I come to you tonight in part with an academic analysis of current discourse. But more than that I come to you with an invitation. An invitation to participate in a loosely coordinated set of efforts, a national coalition and a national campaign, a national caucus, if you will, of academic labor seeking to reframe and redirect public discourse and public policy about higher education. A national coalition and campaign that are underway. Central to that campaign is entering in a systematic, coordinated, collective way, the national conversation about higher education. That conversation is being advanced and defined outside of the academy by foundations such as Gates and Lumina, by governors and state legislators, and by the Department of Education and Congress. It is a conversation that is being defined within the academy by academic managers. It is a conversation that is framed by a neoliberal political economy that privileges the private over the public (which is remarkable given the collapse and bail-out of Wall Street), that features large corporate, for-profit employers, but that ignores small and medium-sized business, not-for-profit organizations, and not-for-profit employees. It is a conversation that calls for students (as customers) to pay more to get less, that overlooks the persistent gap between what we promise and what we deliver to various student populations, that are the growth populations of the future, lower income students, students of color, and immigrants. It is a conversation that is defined by absence, by an absence of professional voice, an absence of imagination, and an absence of a sense of the possible. It is a national conversation defined by a politics of scarcity, and by a narrow view of what we do in higher education, of the functions we serve.

This article aims to introduce corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an ideational concept that is being globally and regionally engineered by an epistemic community of elite stakeholders that include business, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and government. The concept of CSR engineering seeks to address gaps in the literature that neglect the emergence of a highly integrated network of elite brokers committed to neoliberal ideology and the manufacturing of ethical corporate governance. Conclusions are drawn from 60 semi-structured interviews with key CSR stakeholders and well over 250 'off-the-record' conversations held at 60 industry-led conferences. The findings suggest that when powerbases within the elite networks are exposed, the Western nation-state is revealed as the most dominant stakeholder.

Since the late 1990s, the intersection of education and migration policies in Australia has shifted international students from transient consumers to potential citizens. This article analyses responses to the 'problem' of international students as consumers, workers, and migrants, particularly the conceptualization of their rights and protections, and the ways students have been positioned as both passive subjects and activist citizens. The article provides a theoretical review of academic, government, community, and media responses to international students in general and the consequences of the education-migration nexus in particular. It argues that discourses of human rights and consumer rights have become increasingly interconnected in these debates. This analysis adds to the emerging literature on changing conceptions of rights and citizenship in neoliberal contexts, and also illuminates the social and political consequences of the education-migration nexus in Australia. This will have resonance for countries who have implemented a raft of similar policies.