Education in the age of globalisation

phylogeny in the age of globalisationIntroductionWhat does raising nourish to do with globalisation? The answer is simple entirely(prenominal)thing. The most youthful wave of globalisation, which began in the 1980s, is being driven by the intimacy miserliness and, in turn, this knowledge parsimony is being facilitated by globalisation. Without breeding, the knowledge economy collapses. So anyone talking near globalisation is similarly talking nigh the knowledge economy and program line.First, globalisation. Sometimes the concept intoxicatems like a many a(prenominal)-head stylused cream of tartar (Giddens, 2000). To some, the phenomenon is as old as the world itself just think of the massive kingdoms of antiquity, the voyages of disc e realwherey, the bully waves of migration in the 19th century, etc.. posterior on the world wars, inter subject ara institutions were created which were so-called to engineer to global governance, a type of world government which would founder a new world order. However, the most recent wave of globalisation has swept over this like a deluge. As a go forth of increasing internationalisation in production and distri be fountsion networks, sovereign asserts be suddenly being downgraded to water-carriers of international big business. The laws of the guiltless merchandise argon imposed upon them, for fear of being ignored by investors. Some institutions that were so-called to guarantee the creation of the new world order be themselves lecture deregulation and worldwide competition. In new(prenominal)(a) words, in debates to a greater extent(prenominal) or less globalisation, we argon non usually talking about the globalisation trend in its generic sense (the increasing trend towards worldwide interdependence, driven by telecommunications). The model of globalisation that is so controversial that it has become the target of savage demonstrations, is one that is coloured by neo-liberal ideol ogy. It is the globalisation of the let off marketplace placeplace, driven by competition and the quest for profit.Both heads of the monster too refer to the knowledge decree. In the kickoff definition, the Internet and the media play a key fictional character ideas locomote at the speed of light around the world and run across that every innovation that catches on in like manner moots on worldwide proportions. This way of life that anyone who notify master the Internet and the media is at the source and acquires power. In the uphold definition, the establishment of the global neo-liberal market economy, knowledge, IT and training play just as merchandiseant a role. A great many work that do not require physical proximity ( much(prenominal) as information bordering, accounting, monetary operate, translation, etc.) so-and-so indeed be produced anywhere in the world and delivered to the different side of the globe. Moreover, markets be connected across the worl d so that information about production, prices, innovations, etc., is distrisolelyed over the Internet in the blink of an eye. This signifi nominatetly increases the foil of the markets and boosts competition. Our driveers set about too understood that our free-enterprise(a) advantage in the global market economy no longer rests on the obstinacy of raw materials or manpower, but on our grey matter knowledge.The capital of Portugal St ramblegy knowledge as both(prenominal) competitive weapon and genial cement?During the 2000 spring summit in capital of Portugal, EU hightail iters high-flown the knowledge economy to the ultimate goal of the decade devising the EU into the largest and most dynamic knowledge economy in the world, with more and break out jobs and greater friendly glueyness.The exegesis of this text is a fascinating activity. At first sight, one sentence contains the most obvious contradictions on the one hand, the liking to be a winner in the global compe titive trial is unobjectionable enchantment, on the some other hand, we find the desire to counteract the companionable and regional polarisation that results from the neo-liberal market economy, using the said(prenominal) enthronements in knowledge. It seems to be a typically political sample compromise amid heads of state on right and left, all wanting to put their eggs in the EU basket without checking whether their agendas argon in any way reconcilable.The detail is that the Lisbon agenda outhouse be taken in many different ways.For the marketeers, it is first and foremost about playing out proportional advantages on world markets. consort to the Heckscher-Ohlin theorems of international apportion theory, free divvy up entrust spontaneously cause trading partners to specialise in producing those goods and services in which they start out a comparative advantage. Where necessary, the government may put up a helping hand. If we assume that Europe is relatively po or in raw materials and labour, but robust in brain power, then spend in information, enquiry and phylogeny is indeed the recipe for success. Investment in RD has to be increase, up to 3% of gross municipal product. The innovative temper has to be nurtured, including by establishing innovation platforms, incubation centres, public investment in eco-technology, etc.. Information and communication technologies atomic number 18 key areas of economic development. The number of scientifically and adeptly educated people at heartbeatary and high(prenominal) levels must be dramatically increase. The connection between direction and the labour market must be improved. The flow of unqualified school-leavers must be press clipping by half. Participation in life-long teaching must be increased and every adult must apply access to prefatory IT skills.By specialising in knowledge-intensive sectors according to the forecasts of neo-classical contend theory the European econom y exit grow further and the deuce-ace World will besides pull ahead as a result because the flipside of the coin is that labour-intensive activities will be outsourced to low-wage countries. Both sides, North and South, can barely benefit as a result.The World Bank looked and saw that it was good according to the Bank, the new globalisers a group of 23 exploitation countries that have feeded up their borders (China, India, brazil-nut tree and others) saw average economic development in the 1990s (per head of population) of 5% per year. In the rich countries, where globalisation was promoted, this growth was 2% per year, while the stragglers, countries that sealed themselves off, experienced negative average growth (World Bank, 2002). At the similar time, the OECD and the EU learned from research that the knowledge economy was once once again to set them on the path of sustainable growth. Temple (2001) found that every supernumerary year of procreation by the working population increases national income by about 10%. This topic can be impoverished down into a level effect and a growth effect the former operator that the working population is more productive and so generates more income. The growth effect can be attributed to the fact that the more passing educated have withal learned to learn however after leaving the classroom they continue to behave creatively and flexibly under changing circumstances, producing a snowball effect as a result. As far as investment in research and development is concerned, the figures are just as telling Sakurai et al. (1996) estimate the average rate of take place from RD activities at 15%, with exceptions up to 40-50% in some countries and sectors. In other words, every euro a company or government invests in RD is fully recovered in an average of 7 years. The observation that a couple of(prenominal) investments are as profitable as investments in upbringing and research is maybe one of the most imp ortant findings to come out of well-disposed sciences in the past decade. The European Commission has also received this meat loud and clear (de la Fuente Ciccone, 2002).So much for the good news. However, the way in which globalisation and the knowledge economy can be conciliate with favorable cohesion indoors the EU is not specified anywhere. counterbalance the built-in pattern, that the global free market in truth undermines social cohesion within Europe, is not discussed anywhere in EU documents. Indeed, the associated specialisation in knowledge-intensive sectors boosts the regard for extremely specialised scientists and technically educated labour. The increasing shortages in these labour market segments will exert upward pressure on the wages of these workers. On the other hand, the outsourcing of low- good, labour-intensive production processes leads to reduced get hold of and a structural pointless of un ingenious labour, which means that the wages and working co nditions of these groups are also stepwise undermined (Wood, 1994). Whether this polarisation on the labour market is caused by globalisation itself or by technological evolution or the tertiarisation of the economy is more like a discussion of the gender of the angels the ternion trends are after all dimensions of the same knowledge economy.Ine timberland in Europe, horizontal in the whole of the rich North, has been systematically increasing since the mid-1980s (Frster, 2000). According to Pontusson et al. (2002), some countries are still managing to curb inequality by a strong trade union execution and/or public employment, but these counteracting forces are coming under increasing pressure.The Lisbon schema consequently seems like trying to square the circle. The more the member states encourage it, the slight social cohesion thither is. The EU does have structural capital available to promote social cohesion (both between regions and between the exceedingly skilled and out of practice(predicate)). Since the enlargement of the EU, however (itself also a stage in globalisation), these structural funds themselves have lost some of their twine because they have not grown in proportion to the size of the Union, certainly not in proportion to the drastically wider gap within the EU28.In our opinion, the only way to reconcile the knowledge economy with the objective of greater social cohesion and is through mass investment in teaching method. The exit between this approach and the previous is that investment in knowledge influences the submit side of the labour market, while globalisation and intensification of the knowledge-intensive production sectors influence the crave side. This difference is essential peradventure it requires some explanation.RD investment and specialisation in knowledge-intensive trade (IT, financial services, pharmaceuticals, eco-technology, etc.), as we have said, boost the posit for highly skilled workers, while the o utsourcing of unskilled production sectors causes a decline in the demand for unskilled workers. All other things being equal, this shift in the demand for labour causes a reverse redistribution of employment and income, from unqualified to highly qualified. instead than stimulating this (spontaneous) trend, indemnity must be geared towards bringing about similar shifts on the supply side of the labour market. fostering and vocational training are really geared towards converting unskilled workers into more highly skilled workers if this process can (at least(prenominal)) keep pace with the shifts on the demand side, inequality can be kept in check, or even reduced. It is a race against time and, if we claim that large-scale investment in preparation is directed, the distribution of this investment itself among the various pieces of the population is also of great importance. The deeply ingrained Matthew effect in commandment and life-long learning actually threatens to und ermine the effectiveness of this strategy. From a social perspective, the first priority in didactics policy is to eliminate the flow of unqualified school-leavers from education the second priority is the literacy plan and the third is to increase the supply of engineers and those with scientific and technical skills. Not everyone will agree with this ranking. It is a question of social choice.The Lisbon strategy does not actually contradict this approach but nor does it lead automatically to the desired result. As we wrote in the introduction to this section, it seems like a sample compromise between diverging national priorities. Anything is possible with such compromises. We can characterise the contrasting policy alternatives described above as knowledge-intensive versus knowledge-extensive. The knowledge-intensive path, which gives priority to the development of advanced technology, will boost economic growth in the short term, but gradually become bogged down on the labour m arket, further dualisation of society and social unrest. The knowledge-extensive path, which gives preference to a hoi polloi of basic skills for as many people as possible, will perhaps deliver less visible results in the short term but, in the longer term, lead to more sustainable growth. The debate surrounding the specify mix has, to our knowledge, not yet been explicitly pursued.Free ride of education servicesThe education sector is not only an involved ships company in the globalisation process it is itself also partly the subject of it. In the 1990s, the WTO (World Trade Organization) launched an offensive (in the Uruguay round and again in 2001 in the capital of Qatar round) to involve a number of subsidised services in the negotiations about trade liberalisation as well. In principle, every service over which the government does not have a genuine monopoly can be discussed at the negotiating table. Education services are embroild here as soon as private organisers of ed ucation are admitted, even if they are 100% subsidised by the state. This is certainly the case in Belgium, tending(p) that the free education network alone is larger than the two ex officio networks combined. International trade in education services can take various forms from distance learning across national borders, international schoolchild or lecturer mobility, to the establishment of campuses abroad (Knight, 2002).Of course, it is up to the members themselves to decide, through free negotiations, whether they want to string out up their education sectors to international competition. The EU commissioner for trade, who acts during the GATS negotiations on behalf of all EU member states, had given undertakings during the Uruguay round for privately financed education (in other words the mercantile or at least unsubsidised education circuit). All compulsory education and most higher education thence fall de facto outside the scope of GATS. Only entirely private schools and commercial green lights in adult education were liberalised. What does this mean in practice? We are not used to talking about trade in educational services, even less about their liberalisation. After all, import tariffs are neer charged Trade barriers do not, however, consist solely of import tariffs, but also of what are known as non-tariff obstacles (e.g. quota restrictions, quality standards, recognition procedures for orthogonal qualifications, etc.). Once a party has opened up its borders, it must at least apply the general principles of GATS in this respect. Market access means that no quantitative barriers may be imposed, such as a ceiling of x foreign savants or y branches of foreign schools. The most-favoured clause means that no privileges can be denied to one member if they are committed to another member of the WHO.1The principle of national treatment implies that, when there is free access to foreign service providers, no different standards or subsidy rules can be imposed on provide of domestic or foreign origin. Furthermore, undertakings are irrevocable and WHO members hand over juristic power over any conflicts to a panel of international trade experts.The GATS initiative was not exactly welcomed with great enthusiasm. Its intentions were good to increase prosperity by bringing burgeoning service sectors out of their national cocoons and to allow matching between demand and supply to take place across national borders. repose means diversification, greater freedom of choice, more efficiency and quality incentives and perhaps also less of a burden on the government budget.On the international stage, the study Anglo-Saxon countries were clearly in favour of the initiative. After all, they have had a strong comparative advantage right from the resume because the working language of their education systems is the most important world language. E-courses, whether or not supported by specialist call centres, are very attractive as an export product because they are associated with huge economies of scale. However, the response of foreign students can also be a lucrative business. For example, Australia is making big bucks with the tens of thousands of Asians attending university there. Even if this export education is partially subsidised, chase away effects can still be gained from other spending by foreign students and, if the best brains can then be retained in the phalanx state, the picture is even more favourable.As importers, some major growth countries, led by China, can also make money from liberalisation. Thanks to the meteoric growth of its economy, the Chinese government cannot satisfy the increased demand for higher education. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students judge their studies abroad every year, perhaps with a grant from their government. Most of them come back with westward qualifications and unite the expanses scientific and technological elite. The Chinese government saves on higher education because most migrants pay for their studies abroad themselves. In some cases, multinationals investing in China establish their own colleges to train suitable executives.By contrast, in the European education sector, liberalisation and commercialisation meet with great reticence, not entirely without justification (OKeeffe, 2003 Hanley and Frederiksson, 2003). Not for nothing do governments curb market effects in education because of the risk of market failure. A free, competitive market also requires homogenous goods (a nursing qualification in outlandish A should have the same value as in country B) at the same time, all those involved must be well-informed about the quality and cost price of the goods. Power concentrations (e.g. of large universities or associations) are out of the question, etc.. None of these conditions for healthy competition is truly fulfilled. Education is a very complex, opaque market. If all this applies to domestic provisions, how much more then to foreign provisions? Will liberalisation not lead automatically to privatisation and price increases? Does globalisation of the education sector not open the door to the suppression of national culture?It is not actually clear to what extent all these objections are founded. It is a fact that the EU pursues a somewhat ambiguous strategy in this area. It portrays itself to the outside world as the defender of a regulated, protected education sector but, internally, despite its subordinate word role regarding education, it promotes liberalisation by all means available. The Bologna process and the Copenhagen process should create a European educational space for higher and vocational education respectively, in which supply and demand can move freely. Harmonisation of structures, recognition of qualifications obtained elsewhere and the development of a uniform, transparent European Qualification Framework should help to enable EU citizens to brush up or refine their skill s in other member states. Erasmus grants should boost student mobility and, last but not least, the EU services directive (the disreputable Bolkestein directive) has led to the free movement of educational services within the EU, which that same EU is fighting at the GATS negotiating table.So what effects should we expect? To begin with, remember that compulsory education is also not subject to the services directive or the GATS rules, so that a great deal of movement should not be expected at this level. Secondly, higher education will also remain largely subsidised in the future. Free movement in this sector will perhaps lead to a downwards levelling off of subsidies (or an upwards levelling off of adaptation fees). After all, in an open educational space, a member state cannot allow itself to offer cheaper education than its neighbouring countries for very long. In the long term, thousands of students from other member states could benefit from this international generosity. After all, different prices cannot be charged to EU students and to domestic students. In higher and adult education, an increased registration fee is not actually undemocratic it counteracts the misplaced redistribution currently ravaging these segments because the crack-off make disproportionately more use of education which is partly funded by less well-off taxpayers. The democratisation of higher and adult education is not threatened if increased registration fees are coupled with higher study grants.The creation of a more transparent, uniform European educational space can, we believe, only be regarded as a positive phenomenon. It is the task of the government, where the market fails, to ensure that the educational supply is more transparent. This allows the user to choose more freely. The competition between provisions is also heightened as a result, which should lead to better quality and/or lower cost price.Nonetheless, the impending commercialisation of higher education m ay also have detrimental effects in this context, education is gradually reduced to its most utilitarian dimension. As the student himself finances a larger share of the cost of education, he will also be more likely to choose the more lucrative studies. In particular, humanistic discipline and cultural sciences could come under pressure as a result. If society attaches importance to an adequate balance between courses of study, it will also have to build in the call for incentives for this (e.g. by differentiated registration fees). another(prenominal) risk the intensification of the brain drain is covered in the final section of our paper.Last but not least, at international level, the risks of any forms of market forces in education are of course present, specifically increasing polarisation in quality and prestige among educational establishments. The Cambridges, Paris VIs, Munichs and Stockholms are doubtless becoming even more of a major draw within a unified European hig her education space. It will not be long before they increase their registration fees and tighten up their entry conditions in order to cream off the European elite. regional colleges, by contrast, will see a weakening of the target earshot as a result of the same mechanisms. If access to higher education (and, even more so, adult education) is to remain democratic, European directives will also have to be enacted, as was also necessary for the liberalisation of other public welfare services. For example, Flemish higher education is already tactile sensation the consequences of entry restrictions in the Netherlands. The question is whether this will be sustainable in a context where international student mobility is on the increase.On the whole, the free movement of educational services does not look as scary as many make it out to be. It is important that a musical note be made between compulsory education, on the one hand, which belongs to the champaign of basic social rights, and further education and training on the other hand. In these latter segments, partial commercialisation should not automatically lead to social breakdown. It can even contribute to a more balance financing mix, which is necessary to cope with the growing participation trend in the future. EU legislation will still have to ensure the necessitate limit conditions to prevent negative social side effects.Education and trinity World developmentIn the above sections, we have largely throttle ourselves to the European perspective. What do education and the knowledge society mean for the Third World?Curiously enough, the theory regarding the social role of education in the development literature is much richer and more subtle than in Western education literature. Whereas the Chicago economist Becker (1964) labelled education as an soulfulness investment in human capital, with a financial return in terms of future income, the Bengali Sen (Sen, 1999) teaches us that education can also be regarded more broadly as an investment in capabilities which by and by enable higher levels of functioning to be attained at the levels of health, family life, social participation, etc.. Empirical research underpins this beat and demonstrates that a higher level of education also leads to better nutrition, health (e.g. AIDS prevention), housing, sex education, etc. (MacMahon, 1999 Saito, 2003).Moreover, investment in education generates many spill-over effects on the wider society. People learn from one another. Education also has a positive influence on security (prevention of high-risk and delinquent behaviour), social commitment, civil responsibility and the quality of democratic decisions. Research increasingly points to the role of education in the development of social capital (de la Fuente and Ciccone, 2002). These positive social effects are most clear in the context of gender-specific anti- beggary programmes. For instance, more education for women is associated with better family planning and better nutrition, health and training for children (for a summary of the results, see Behrman, 1997). In order to break through the vicious circle of poverty and disease, education and training programmes for girls and women are essential. In this context, UNICEF talks correctly of the multiplier factor effect of education for girls (UNICEF, 2004). These positive external effects are an supernumerary reason for government intervention in education and training.Sufficient point exists that educational investment in developing countries produces a higher return than in developed countries (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004). This difference is a direct indication of the need for education in the acquisition of basic skills. In addition, Behrman (1997) points out that, as far as subsequent educational investments in their children are concerned, basic education or basic literacy for women is more important than achieving higher levels of education. Sen (20 02) also emphasises the role of basic education and the role which this plays in increasing the required human security and further human and social development. Cost-benefit analyses have show that investments in pre-school education and basic education have a higher rate of return than spending on secondary and higher education particularly in developing countries (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004 Cunha et al., 2006).In seven-sided development cooperation, these findings have been well received. At the World Conference in Jomtien (Thailand), in 1990, the Education For All (EFA) initiative was launched under the auspices of UNESCO. All parties agreed with the position that universal, compulsory, free, public and good-quality basic education is the cornerstone of an education strategy which also includes secondary, further, vocational and adult education. During the international Education Conference in capital of Senegal (2000), the importance of education for all was again unde rlined and 6 objectives were formulated, two of which were later adopted as millennium objectives (completion of basic education by all young people and equal educational opportunities for girls and boys at all levels by 2015). The key target groups of the EFA campaign are the 80 million children who have never been to school and the 800 million illiterate adults in the world. Every developing country participating in EFA draws up a national education action plan that fits in with the national poverty reduction strategy (Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper) and gives priority to basic education. This action plan is time-tested on all relevant social actors. A set of indicators is envisaged which can be used to test effective implementation. Monitoring and evaluation are entrusted to one single financier by the international community, per receiving country.In an attempt to accelerate the EFA train further, in 2002 the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was launched, further by the World Ba nk, which both international financial backers and receiving countries can articulation on a voluntary basis. In addition to endorsing the EFA principles, donors are asked for an additional commitment to long-term financing and receiving governments are asked to commit to transparent evaluation.The least that can be said about EFA and FTI is that they have the wind in their sails. Participation and invested resources are rising phenomenally. Since 2000, official development help for education worldwide has more than doubled. Nonetheless, the challenges are still considerable the major enemies of education are poverty (and, associated with this, child labour), war, the debt burden, migration, mismanagement and disease. In crisis regions, education precisely grinds to a halt. In some countries, the ravages of AIDS on teaching faculty are so severe that it is barely possible to replace beep and deceased teachers. In addition, it has to be said that the interests of financial backer s and receiving countries, even if both groups have noble objectives, do not always coincide. The governments of developing countries are happy to make use of international support so that they can spend some of their own budgets on other priorities. On the other hand, the leading role of the World Bank in the FTI is not wholly altruistic. unrivaled of the conditions for support, specifically, is that the national EFA action plans be linked to poverty reduction plans (PRSP) the latter are the World Banks key aid instruments. This means that multilateral educational aid serves as a lever to reinforce the influence of the World Bank on its customers. It is known that this external pressure is not always popular. Along with development aid, pro-globalist, liberal policy ideas are also dished out to receiving countries. In the past, for example, they were often obliged to reduce their import tariffs or food subsidies, which hit farmers and consumers particularly hard.Brain drainOne of the reasons why the return on higher education in developing countries is relatively low has to do with the brain drain from developing countries to the rich North a phenomenon that does not exactly mesh with the predictions of international trade theory. In the first section of our paper, we referred to the theory of comparative advantages every country will specialise in exporting goods and services for which the production factors are present in relative excess. Robert Mundell (1957) demonstrated that the international mobility of production factors can be regarded as a substitute for trade in goods, and with the same effect. In specific terms, this would mean that if developing countries have a surplus of unskilled labour and rich countries relatively large numbers of highly skilled people, we would expect a South-North migration of unskilled workers and a North-South migration of highly skilled workers. In both cases, migrants are attracted by the fact that, in the host count ry, they are relatively better paid than in their own countries because they are relatively scarcer there.In reality, the dominant pattern is a South-North migration of both unskilled and highly skilled workers. In 2005, around 4 million legal migrants (and an unknown number of illegals) flooded into the rich OECD countries (OECD, 2007). These figures do not include temporary migration. Upon closer inspection, the contradiction between theory and practice can be explained by a series of factors, of which we highlight only the most important. Firstly, the rich North dominates the world economy to such an extent that it also depresses demand for highly skilled people in the Third World. Secondly, governments in the North do not pursue a liberal policy when it comes to immigration. When push comes to shove, they place restraints on the laws of neo-classical trade theory, erect barriers to unskilled immigrants and are even actively recruiting the more highly skilled workers to fill bri sk bo