Vol. 76, No. 3&4 (2001), pp. 1-6

Title: General Introduction:

Global Issues in Education

Date of Publication: 2001

Place of Publication: Peabody Journal of Education Vol. 76, No. 3&4 (2001), pp. 1-6

Document Number:

General Introduction:

Global Issues in Education

Stephen P. Heyneman

Peabody College Vanderbilt University

Some changes come about suddenly and have an immediate world- wide impact. Friedman (2000) suggested that this is the case with respect to the Internet. Other types of change are glacial in the speed by which they are recognized, yet in terms of impact they are no less profound. This is the case with respect to education issues and their shift from local to international relevance.

The changes that have influenced global economics and politics have also affected education. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was common for gov- ernments to determine economic investments. Today transfers of private capital far outstrip public investments. A future computer manufacturing plant might be located in Nashville, Northern Ireland, or Southern Italy; a textile plant in Bangaldore or Senora; a farm for winter fruit in Florida or Chile. What determines the choice of where to invest? Investment capital flows to one or another location on the basis of many factors—taxation policy, freedom to repatriate profit, labor productivity, labor cost, and social stability. The latter three are heavily influenced by education and the success of local education systems.

School systems differ from one country to another, but all share certain characteristics. Among the most prevalent is the pressure for schools to respond to local economic demands and to marshal the necessary policies

Requests for reprints should be sent to Stephen P. Heyneman, Peabody College, Box 514,

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203.

S. P. Heyneman

to efficiently meet those demands. New policies that have become common in widely disparate localities include quality and relevance of teaching materials procured from an open and competitive market; a professional force in which more effective teachers are more highly compensated;

research allowing for transparent comparisons available to the public; and financing from multiple sources maximizing local investment without abrogating equity. Educational managers around the world now focus on these common problems—school-based management, teacher incentives, multicultural education, civic responsibilities, tracking, curriculum depth, individualized instruction, fair testing and assessment, special learning problems, and communication with the public.

Higher education has also been affected. Higher education is now mass education, no longer for the elite. For instance, in the 1960s, no country in Western Europe had greater than 9% of the age cohort enrolled in higher education. Yet today, no country enrolls less than about 35% of the age cohort. The shift to mass higher education has been associated with fiscal and administrative pressures. These, in turn, have generated a demand for creative policy reforms. There are demands for innovations in institu- tional efficiency in terms of student/faculty ratios, judicious use of new technologies, efficiency in generating contractual outsourcing of tradi- tional functions, department-based dollar budgeting, marketing of uni- versity copyrights, and attention to the problems of international trade in education commerce.

The U.S. education system, in terms of size, accounts for 5% of world enrollment (Figure 1). The industrialized countries together account for about 17%. Eighty-three percent of the world’s enrollments are located in middle-income and developing countries, with 57% enrolled in East and South Asia. Each segment is changing rapidly. As economies grow, more is spent on students (Figure 2). Unit expenditures across the world dou- bled between 1980 and 1994, but various regions showed different rates of growth (Table 1). Expenditures doubled in the United States, but they increased by 135% in Europe and by 200% in East Asia. In terms of chal- lenges and dilemmas, the world’s education systems share more today than ever before.

These common challenges imply several things. The demand for inno-

vative policies in education is growing rapidly, and their source is no

longer confined to one country’s experience. This is particularly impor-

tant for the United States, which has a high demand for policy innovation,

yet a small portion of the world’s education experience from which to

draw lessons. To attain excellence today, the education profession must

keep abreast of relevant innovations and educational experiences from

wherever they derive.

*World Total
1 billion children enrolled of the 1.5 billion in the 5–18 age group Figure 1. Distribution of elementary and secondary students.

By Category of Economic Development

US A

OECD

Middle Incom e/

Developing*

Enrollment

Middle Income/

De velopi ng*

83%

USA 5%

OECD 12%

These trends imply something else as well. With the common decen- tralization of decision making, the client for educational research and pol- icy innovation is not limited to central or public authorities. There are many different demands for good ideas and for good information, and therefore many different clients to decide what is relevant. Local school officials in Minnesota have opted to join international studies of academic achievement to compare their educational performance with Sweden and Singapore (Perspective, 2001). The American Federation of Teachers has studied the degree to which American high-stakes tests compare with those in Europe and Asia (American Federation of Teachers and the National Center for Improving Science Education, 1994). This illustrates not only that traditional notions of what is relevant to local school systems are constantly being retested with new information, but that it is also in the hands of an increasingly diverse set of local educational clients and decision makers.

This double issue of the Peabody Journal of Education is designed to illus-

trate lessons from these global issues. I have chosen four categories. The

first category is Finance and Administration. Rich or poor, in each coun-

try, education is among the largest of public expenditures. In each

instance, the education system is challenged by a common set of dilem-

mas. Expectations for quality improvement are rising, in excess of the

S. P. Heyneman

Figure 2. As economies grow, more is spent on goods and services per student.

R

= 0.3289

$0

$5,000

$10,000

$15,000

$20,000

$25,000

$30,000

$35,000

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$0 $500 $1,000 $1,500 $2,000 $2,500 $3,000

Non-salary current expenditure pe r stude nt Finland

Israel

Denm ark USA

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financial resources required. Improvements in quality must always come in conjunction with improvements in efficiency. I have included five arti- cles exploring this search for innovations in efficiency. The second catego- ry is The Role of Policy and Research. All nations and democracies, in par- ticular, require better information on education to make informed policy decisions. I have included four contributions that explore the role of research and data availability in this process. They review the debate over the quality of publicly funded education research, the value of one or another outcome, the question, “Who should make education policy?”

and how the answer to that question should determine the tone and style

of the product of education policy analysis. The third category concerns

the outcomes of schooling—Human Capital and Social Cohesion. What is

a community’s or nation’s return on its public education investment, and

how does it know this? How should a particular outcome, such as a skill,

be assessed with respect to another outcome, such as social cohesion? The

fourth and last category is Multilateral Development Banks and Religious

Organizations. To what extent should these groups determine social

development and social policy? The two articles in this section include an

in-depth discussion of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund

(IMF), and religious organizations. These international organizations, to

some readers, may appear distant from the problems of American schools

and school systems. They are included for two reasons. Because all coun-

tries (except North Korea and Cuba) are members of the World Bank and

IMF, each country is responsible for its policies and positions. Educators

Table 1

Large Growth of Education Expenditures Per Region

Public Expenditure on Education Per Inhabitant ($)

Continents, Major Areas, and Percent Change

Groups of Countries 1980 1985 1990 1994 1980–1994

World total 126 124 202 252 100

Africa (North and SSA) 48 40 41 41 15

America 307 375 521 623 103

Asia 37 39 66 93 151

Europe 418 340 741 982 135

Oceania 467 439 715 878 88

Industrializing countries 31 28 40 48 55

SS Africa 41 26 29 32 22

Arab states 109 122 110 110 1

LAC 93 70 102 153 65

EAP 12 14 20 36 200

S. Asia 13 14 30 14 1

Poorest countries 9 7 9 9 0

Industrialized countries 487 520 914 1,211 149

Note. Data from UNESCO Statistical Yearbook, 1998. SSA
Sub-Saharan Africa; LAC
Latin America and the Caribbean; EAD
East Asia and the Pacific Islands.

in each country need to know their policies and the debates that often sur- round them. However, the articles also have analogies to U.S. experience.

In the case of the World Bank and the IMF, the analogy is with the U.S.

system of courts and their tendency to make decisions over educational policy. In certain respects, a nation that borrows from the World Bank is similar to a state or local district in which a court has ruled that current policies and programs are inadequate. With respect to religious organiza- tions, the analogy might be with the debate over the degree to which faith-based organizations might be more effective in the application of social policy and welfare than the government sector. American readers might keep these issues in mind when reading the final section.

Each section is introduced more specifically to help the reader see the

relevance of each contribution. To summarize, the profession of education

is slowly but surely shifting away from an exclusive interest in local expe-

rience for solutions to local problems to looking at the problems and solu-

tions to similar issues in other parts of the world. Just as in public health,

engineering, law, and business, global issues are not the only issues. How-

ever, they are important today and, therefore, are important for all educa-

tors to better understand.

S. P. Heyneman

References

American Federation of Teachers and the National Center for Improving Science Education.

(1994). What college-bound students abroad are expected to know about biology: Exams from England and Wales, France, Germany and Japan. Washington DC: American Federation of Teachers.

Friedman, T. L. (2000). The olive and the lexus tree: Understanding globalization. New York: Far- rar, Straus & Giroux.

Perspective, 1995 and 1999 (2001). Initial findings from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study—Repeat. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

UNESCO. (1998). Statistical yearbook. New York: Author.