The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World (The William G. Bowen Series) - Hardcover

Wildavsky, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691146896 ISBN 13: 9780691146898

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2010

Synopsis

In The Great Brain Race, former U.S. News & World Report education editor Ben Wildavsky presents the first popular account of how international competition for the brightest minds is transforming the world of higher education--and why this revolution should be welcomed, not feared. Every year, nearly three million international students study outside of their home countries, a 40 percent increase since 1999. Newly created or expanded universities in China, India, and Saudi Arabia are competing with the likes of Harvard and Oxford for faculty, students, and research preeminence. Satellite campuses of Western universities are springing up from Abu Dhabi and Singapore to South Africa. Wildavsky shows that as international universities strive to become world-class, the new global education marketplace is providing more opportunities to more people than ever before.

Drawing on extensive reporting in China, India, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, Wildavsky chronicles the unprecedented international mobility of students and faculty, the rapid spread of branch campuses, the growth of for-profit universities, and the remarkable international expansion of college rankings. Some university and government officials see the rise of worldwide academic competition as a threat, going so far as to limit student mobility or thwart cross-border university expansion. But Wildavsky argues that this scholarly marketplace is creating a new global meritocracy, one in which the spread of knowledge benefits everyone--both educationally and economically.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"The Great Brain Race takes the reader to university campuses around the globe in order to powerfully make the case that open borders are as--and perhaps more--important in education as they are in trade and economics. You can't understand the way the world will work in this coming century without understanding the phenomenon Wildavsky reveals here.The Great Brain Race is an enormous contribution to the discussion."--Judy Woodruff, PBS Newshour

"Ben Wildavsky has given us the most thorough and penetrating account to date of how globalization is transforming higher education around the world. The details are rich and compelling, and Wildavsky's judgments are, in my opinion, unerring."--Richard C. Levin, president, Yale University

"In this masterful account, Ben Wildavsky documents the emergence of a global academic marketplace that will inevitably kindle protectionist anxieties in the established powers--but that will also spur research and innovation, boost economic growth, and solidify meritocratic values in emerging nations. At last this aspect of globalization gets the attention it deserves."--Sebastian Mallaby, Council on Foreign Relations

"No leader in a global business can ignore the increasingly international brain exchange that this book describes. Wildavsky convincingly contends that the spread of academic excellence internationally and a free trade in minds is to be celebrated rather than feared. This is a must read for anyone in the global race for talent."--Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline

"Ben Wildavsky has written an engaging primer on the world of international higher education."--Philip G. Altbach, Director of the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College

About the Author:

Ben Wildavsky is a senior scholar in research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation. Previously, he was education editor of U.S. News & World Report, economic policy correspondent for the National Journal, higher education reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, and executive editor of the Public Interest. He has written for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy among other publications and is co-editor of Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation. He has lectured widely in the United States and abroad.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0691146896
• ISBN 13: 9780691146898
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256