In just a couple of decades, Finland evolved from one of Europe's lowest educated countries to the top performer of the international PISA ranking. Behind this "success story", there was a conscious strategy to use educational policies for creating a more equal society. Tracing the development of Finnish higher education system after…

With developments such as the overcrowding of universities and the student revolt of the 1960s, traditional ideals of German higher education based on the ideas of W. Von Humboldt, were reassessed. Concepts which had once been inspirational in the Humboltian ideal had become perverted. In the post-war period a reform tradition was pioneered by…

The conflict between access and quality in education has been front-page news for decades. Policies regarding the role of elite universities, the organisation of secondary education, admissions criteria, courses of study, high stakes testing, and fiscal and programme accountability have changed with uncommon frequency, resulting in confusion and…

A retrospective look is taken at the internal workings of a reform of university governance in the Netherlands, including a description of the relations between the various actors involved. It was found that a state of equilibrium has not yet been reached, but the most acute stages of the transition have passed. Then a broader look is taken at…

This book addresses issues of American-Japanese relations by focusing on how the Japanese educational system molds the Japanese people and culture. It identifies the vital determining issue in U.S.-Japan communications in the fact that all Japanese leaders emerge from the same educational treadmill or "cartels of the mind." This system,…

Government statistics reveal nearly 2.5 million students leave schools yearly without adequate work preparation. Support for career education, as a renewal force, is needed to redirect educational emphasis from academic elitism to open access for occupational preparation. Vocational school graduates choose advanced education almost as often as…

This pamphlet describes briefly school structure in Communist China. The role of Maoist ideology in the education and socialization of young people is also discussed. The first four chapters explain the organization of preschools, compulsory elementary schools, noncompulsory secondary schools, and higher education. Educational aims are primarily…

Continuing concern regarding the quality and future of education in both America and Japan prompts many comparisons of their nation's educational systems. Chapter 1, "Japanese Schools' Higher Achievement, Literacy, Efficiency, Discipline, Classroom Management, and Strengths of Civilization," attempts to explain the superior performance…

A new multidisciplinary discourse approach is introduced to the study of racism. It is shown that elites play a primary role in the reproduction of ethnic dominance and racism in the popular cultures of Western societies. The subtle forms of elite racism demonstrated in politics, business, academia, education, and the media are discussed. Chapter…

This history of the "polytechnic experiment" covers the period from the establishment of a binary British higher education policy in the mid-1960s to the passage in 1992 of the Further and Higher Education Act, which abolished the binary policy and the polytechnic sector, thus enabling the polytechnics in England and Wales to acquire the…

This book analyzes the transformation of British higher education from a closed, elite university system into an open, mass post-secondary education system. It sees the changes in British higher education as stemming from: (1) the rapid expansion in the number of students that created pressures for a shift to a mass, open post-secondary education…