Globalized higher education

[Extract] Higher education is both influenced by and reinforces global trends. At the present time there is a commodification of education in all of the world’s national economies, which is associated with an increasing global orientation toward knowledge-based economies. The role given to higher education, as an indispensable ingredient in national economic growth, is not disputed. It is therefore necessary to examine what impact this global trend has upon higher education itself, and to what extent higher education is thus being transformed.

The idea of a ‘knowledge economy’ highlights the importance of intellectual talents and highly-trained workers, as well as high-technology production in economic advancement and enhanced competitiveness in a global marketplace. In the era of the knowledge economy a curious paradox arises. The economic purpose and role of universities is accentuated by academic administrators and government officials alike. At the same time, however, state funding for higher education has everywhere declined. Additionally, higher education has become an export good, especially in the foreign investment activities of the US, British and other Western countries’ drive to expand their higher education industries to the rest of the world. Developing states and institutions leverage leading US and other English-speaking ‘brand’ universities in order to strengthen their own development.

The growth of transnational collaboration in higher education, the growth of virtual delivery of education products, offshore campuses, and so on, are responses to and enhancements of a globalized trend of knowledge economy growth and expansion. Education without students is meaningless, and a globalized higher education is expressed through the enormous growth of international student mobility. In the relatively short period from 1975 to 2014 the international student population went from 0.8 million to 4.5 million, a more than fivefold increase (OECD 2014: 344). These and related issues shall be discussed in what follows.