Value diversity and promote understanding--so read a heading in a school district's strategic plan. The phrase was to initiate six months of controversial community debate that was eventually encapsulated into the single question: Should our schools respect or should they value diversity? This question polarized the community, ultimately shaping…

This introductory essay describes an analytical framework that locates students, staff, and institutions within both local and extra-local patterns of stratification and clarifies our theoretical understanding of ethnographic data concerning student perceptions and practices in higher education. The essay introduces four articles based on…

As a summary piece, this essay describes more fully the wider globalizing context in which both students and institutions of higher education are now located. It explores three transitions that signal this new configuration: the creation of new information and media technologies; the transformation of time and space; and the expansion of the…