Comparative and international studies of education that focus on policy borrowing and transfer must be expanded to account for aspects of what Terence Halliday and Bruce Carruthers call "global norm-making." Such an approach examines how global policies are refracted within divergent but interrelated sociopolitical and economic contexts,…

Random selection is a fair way to break ties between applicants of equal merit seeking admission to institutions of higher education (with "merit" defined here in terms of the intrinsic contribution higher education would make to the applicant's life). Opponents of random selection commonly argue that differences in strength between…

This special issue introduces a set of article addressing the question of what "fairness" means with respect to the distribution of access to higher education. Articles herein address the criteria that "should" be used to allocate funding, offers of admission at selective institutions, and conceiving and assessing …

The study investigates the chances of gaining admission to Georgian higher education in relation to residential origin. The analysis of broad trends is combined with details from an in-depth individual-level inquiry. Qualitative data on the entire population of 150,000 applicants over the period 2005-9, together with interview data from a…

In France, the proportion of second-generation immigrants enrolling in tertiary education has increased as education has undergone a process of "democratization." This article analyzes their postsecondary choices, access to tertiary programs, dropout, and transition to the labor market, compared to those of students of French origin.…

Access to higher education in Egypt is expanding in both the public and private sectors. Using a nationally representative sample from the Survey of Young People in Egypt, this article is able to disaggregate patterns of access by both demographic group and university sector. Findings suggest that access in the public sector is governed strongly…

Access to higher education in Poland is changing due to the demography of smaller cohorts of potential students. Following a demand-driven educational expansion after the collapse of communism in 1989, the higher education system is now contracting. Such expansion/contraction and growth/decline in European higher education has rarely been…

This article reflects on the possibilities for democratic and direct participation that have emerged through socially engaged research on education rights in South Africa. The Education Rights Project is located in a university-based research and advocacy center for education rights and social justice that has been working with township…

This article elaborates a model of social democratic and conservative discourses in relation to access, financing, management, and results of higher education. The model is contrasted with the position of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom from the late 1970s to 2010 as expressed in their electoral manifestos. The…

The presence of a teacher in the classroom is central to the provision of schooling, with accumulating evidence showing that teacher absence compromises student learning. Teacher absence is common in schools in low- and middle-income countries. With much of the developing world making rapid progress in achieving universal primary school enrollment…

Over the past two hundred years in the United States and Germany, special educational systems have been institutionalized to facilitate access to learning opportunities for children with disabilities, difficulties, and disadvantages. Originally heralded as innovative, the positive views of these mainly segregating and separating educational…

This article explores the "two faces" model of education through which Kenneth Bush and Diana Saltarelli (2000) describe the positive and negative roles that education can play in situations of ethnic conflict. The authors apply it more narrowly to analyze the effect of inclusion and diversity in education in a conflict situation. In addition to…

In recent years sub-Saharan African states, including Malawi, have adopted the Education for All (EFA) goal of universal, fee-free primary education (UPE). The EFA process is often linked to the expansion and sustainability of universal rights, democratic processes, and political systems. The EFA policies have also been tied, discursively and in…

In almost every dimension, South Africa has undergone dramatic changes since the end of apartheid. Public education in South Africa has been completely transformed from an amalgam of separate and highly unequal educational systems, defined in terms of the race and place of residence of students, into a unified system based on the principle of…

This article examines the schooling that is provided in the world's refugee camps. The limitations provided both by the nature of schooling itself and by the international refugee relief system are explored. It is concluded that there are actually three separate paradoxes making problematic the development of refugee education programs. The first…