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A Look at Educational Reform around the World
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14563 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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3 / 1988 |
19,110 Words |
| Author
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Philip G. Altbach
Philip G. Altbach is professor and director of the Comparative Education Center, State University of New York at Buffalo. He is editor of the Comparative Education Review and author, most recently, of The Knowledge Context (SUNY press, 1987). He has written extensively on Third World higher education. |
Since the end of the colonial era, the development of universities and research facilities has been one of the top priorities of the Third World nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Indeed, universities were seen as a major symbol of nationhood, a long with a national airline and a flag. Universities were also considered one of the main tools for rapid modernization and development. The dominant ideology of human capital development, now under considerable criticism, argued that academic institutions were key elements in training the high-level manpower that would provide leadership for development. Thus, virtually all Third World nations put substantial resources into higher education despite the high costs involved. Some Third World nations, such as India, Nigeria, the Philippines, and others built very large academic systems, which now suffer from unemployment or underemployment of university graduates, while substantial parts of the population remain illiterate. It is now generally agreed that resources were misallocated: that too much was spent on higher education and not enough on basic literacy and other sectors of the educational system. No one, however, argues that universities are important institutions in the Third World. But the reform of higher education, the role of research and of working in an international knowledge network, the maintenance of quality in higher education, and perennial conflict between access and equality continue to be perplexing social as well as academic issues in the Third World. It is worth noting here that what used to be known as the Third World--virtually all of Africa, Asia (except Japan), and Latin America--has become a highly diverse and complex majority of the globe. Included among third world nations are the economic miracles of Asia--South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Bangladesh. Massive China, with its ambitious goals of reform and modernization in which higher education plays a key role, is an important third World nation. Oil-rich Kuwait shares the appellation with debt-ridden Brazil and Mexico. A few Third World nations, such as Argentina and Singapore, have high literacy rates but have yet to ensure their citizens a basic education. Countries such as India, Mexico, and China have impressive scientific infrastructures, and a few Third World nations have the know-how and resources to build nuclear weapons (China is officially a member of the club and India is unofficially a member; and Pakistan is on the threshold); yet the Third World is dependent on the West for most of its scientific research and development. In short, the concept of the Third World is virtually meaningless in the contemporary world precisely because a number of the formerly underdeveloped nations have achieved impressive gains in the past two decades--and a few are ready to be designated industrialized
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