International student achievement comparisons have aroused interest widely across the world. Finland dominated the comparisons for a long time but now Asian countries have fared better. Both countries studied have faced abundant immigration, which has changed the student groups. In this article, we compare two quite different top countries:…

The importance of gender equality in academic leadership has been widely recognised, yet this issue has been underexplored outside the Anglo-Saxon countries. In this systematic review, we analysed 62 academic articles on women's academic leadership in Bangladesh (15), China (17) and Finland (30), published between 2000 and 2021. Our study revealed…

This study extends the comparative model of country groups to analyse the cross-national trends in the higher education expansion and opportunities. We use descriptive data on characteristics and outcomes of higher education systems in different countries groups, including the liberal market countries, the social democratic countries, the…

We indicate the size of family background effects in Sweden, Finland, and Estonia--countries that differ in both the rhetoric and extensiveness of the system-level school choice policies. Family background effect is defined as the dependence of student achievement on family background characteristics, such as parental education, income, and social…

This article examines cross-country variations in adult skills inequality and asks why skills in Anglophone countries are so unequal. Drawing on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's recent Survey of Adult Skills and other surveys, it investigates the differences across countries and country groups in inequality in both…

Employing data from 12 industrial societies, investigates differences in the labor force behavior, occupational distribution, and attainment patterns of ever- and never-married women. Finds little support for the dual-career theory, which attributes womens' concentration in low-paying employment to gender differences in marital and childrearing…