Since the World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990, the push for modern mass schooling has become a primary focus of national education policymakers and researchers around the world. The EFA declaration that grew out of this conference served as a culmination of a century-long movement to transform existing national educational systems into the most comprehensive mass system of schooling ever devised.
Comparative education researchers have been studying both the promises and the challenges surrounding EFA for decades, but in comparative education research literature there is still neither consensus on the impact that EFA has nor clearly identified global trends in either EFA policymaking or policy implementation. It seems that for every promise that EFA brings, there is an accompanying challenge. It is this struggle between the global promises and the national challenges that this volume of International Perspectives on Education and Society seeks to identify and explain.
Chapters range from critical syntheses of EFA policymaking or policy implementation to original comparative education research on the impact that EFA has had in specific nations or across clusters of nations.
*Compares and contrasts the promises of EFA v. implementation of policy
*International contributions ensure global coverage of content
*Part of the International Perspectives on Education and Society series

Winner of the 2017 Award for Significant Research on International Higher Education (CIHE/ASHE) Winner of the 2018 American Publishers Awards for Professional & Scholarly Excellence: Education Theory In The Century of Science, a multicultural, international team of authors examine the global rise of scholarly research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health (STEM+) fields. This insightful text provides historical and sociological understandings of the ways that higher education has become an institution that, more than ever before, shapes science and society. Case studies, supported by the most historically and spatially extensive database on STEM+ publications available, of selected countries in Europe, North America, East Asia, and the Middle East, emphasize recurring themes: the institutionalization and differentiation of higher education systems to the proliferation of university-based scientific research fostered by research policies that support continued university expansion leading to the knowledge society. Growing worldwide, research universities appear to be the most legitimate sites for knowledge production. The chapters offer new insights into how countries develop the university-based knowledge thought fundamental to meeting social needs and economic demands. Despite repeated warnings that universities would lose in relevance to other organizational forms in the production of knowledge, these findings demonstrate incontrovertibly that universities have become more-not less-important actors in the world of knowledge. The past hundred years have seen the worldwide triumph of the research university.

Winner of the 2017 Award for Significant Research on International Higher Education (CIHE/ASHE) Winner of the 2018 American Publishers Awards for Professional & Scholarly Excellence: Education Theory In The Century of Science, a multicultural, international team of authors examine the global rise of scholarly research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health (STEM+) fields. This insightful text provides historical and sociological understandings of the ways that higher education has become an institution that, more than ever before, shapes science and society. Case studies, supported by the most historically and spatially extensive database on STEM+ publications available, of selected countries in Europe, North America, East Asia, and the Middle East, emphasize recurring themes: the institutionalization and differentiation of higher education systems to the proliferation of university-based scientific research fostered by research policies that support continued university expansion leading to the knowledge society. Growing worldwide, research universities appear to be the most legitimate sites for knowledge production. The chapters offer new insights into how countries develop the university-based knowledge thought fundamental to meeting social needs and economic demands. Despite repeated warnings that universities would lose in relevance to other organizational forms in the production of knowledge, these findings demonstrate incontrovertibly that universities have become more-not less-important actors in the world of knowledge. The past hundred years have seen the worldwide triumph of the research university.

This volume of International Perspectives on Education and Society explores how educational research from a comparative perspective has been instrumental in broadening and testing hypotheses from institutional theory. Institutional theory has also played an increasingly influential role in developing an understanding of education in society. This symbiotic relationship has proven intellectually productive.

In light of the impact that comparative education research has had on institutional theory, the chapters in this volume ask where the comparative and international study of education as an institution is heading in the 21st century.

Chapters range from theoretical discussions of the impact that comparative research has had on institutional theory to highly empirical comparative scholarship that tests basic institutional assumptions and trends.

Two pioneers in the field, John W. Meyer and Francisco O. Ramirez, contribute the Forward and the concluding chapter.

In addition to the editors, other contributors to this volume include M. Fernanda Astiz, Janice Aurini, Jason Beech, Edward F. Bodine, Karen Bradley, Claudia Buchmann, Scott Davies, Gili S. Drori, David H. Kamens, Jong-Seon Kim, Hyeyoung Moon, Hyunjoon Park, Emilio A. Parrado, Lauren Rauscher, John G. Richardson, David F. Suarez, and Regina E. Werum.

This volume of International Perspectives on Education and Society highlights the valuable role that educational policy plays in the development of education and society around the world.

The role of policy in the development of education is crucial. Much rests on the decisions, support, and most of all resources that policymakers can either give or withhold in any given situation. The eleven chapters in this volume present persuasive arguments that the internationalization of educational policy has a wide and irreversible effect on schooling and society around the world. Indeed, educational policy is intricately woven into the development of societies.

Chapters range from empirical investigations of educational policies impact on national schooling trends to narrative histories of policy-important multilateral organizations and professional societies. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Sheng Y. Cheng, Holger Daun, Diane G. Gal, Stephen P. Heyneman, W. James Jacob, Nancy O. Kendall, Veronica Martini, Mary Ann Maslak, Diane B. Napier, Jordan Naidoo, and David N. Wilson.

Higher education worldwide, including the university and other related academic programs, is currently undergoing intensive change and transformation perhaps as no other time in its long history. One factor contributing to this rapid transformation is the global expansion of higher education at unprecedented rates. More of the world's population is continuing to higher education (and other forms of tertiary education) now than ever before. In fact, enrollment in institutions of higher education around the world is growing at a rapid rate. Some scholars have suggested that one reason for this rapid expansion is that the role of higher education has shifted over the last 50 years from an elite to a mass institution. As a result of this rapid expansion and shift in focus, the nature of students, faculty, the curriculum, and assessment is changing within the institution. And in society, the value of higher education and its impact on socioeconomic status, human capital, and technical innovation is changing as well. As a whole, the chapters in this volume in the "International Perspectives on Education and Society" series present a thoughtful discussion of the worldwide transformation of higher education from multiple perspectives. Contributors include Gaele Goastellec, David Turner, John C. Weidman, Adiya Enkhjargal, Christine Min Wotipka, Francisco O. Ramirez, Karin Amos, Lucia Bruno, Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, Mark S. Johnson, Christopher Collins, Robert A. Rhoads, Sunwoong Kim, Jun Li, Jing Lin, Chuing Prudence Chou, Philip G. Altbach, and Patti McGill Peterson.