This article presents findings from a critical review of 163 peer-reviewed articles on the growth of private higher education (HE) cross-nationally. Our review finds that the vast majority of studies on the development of private HE are country-specific case studies, with few comparative or cross-national studies. Moreover, most studies endorse a…

Education spending has increased significantly in Latin America, but less is known about how resources are distributed. Using original data, this study measures the inequality in per-pupil spending between regions with different levels of socioeconomic status within Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. We find that Brazil has the widest…

Although soft skills are considered important for quality education, there is little consensus on which skills matter for which populations and few cross-culturally validated measures. We propose a conceptual and methodological remedy to this quandary through an investigation of "agency" as an outcome measure for adolescent girls' life…

Grade retention touches upon a tension field between the need for schools to promote cohesion and the need to differentiate students based on their abilities. This tension field may induce frustration among retainees. Following the frustration-aggression hypothesis, frustration might lead retainees to scapegoat minorities and to have diminished…

We hear calls to globalize, internationalize, decolonize, and diversify higher education from all corners of the world. What changes do they actually seek? Who is behind them and whose interests do they serve? How much are curricula actually changing? In this article, we explore these questions from outside Europe and the United States by…

A contentious debate in academic as well as policy circles relates to the growth in private schooling in the Global South. While proponents highlight the superior learning outcomes of pupils in private schools, others have argued that this is merely a reflection of the more advantaged family background of private school pupils, rather than an…

Globally many minority and Indigenous communities are searching for ways to reclaim languages that have been marginalized by socioeconomic and political processes. These efforts often involve novel literacy practices. In this article, we draw from ethnographic data in Mexico and Nepal to ask, what are the opportunities and constraints of teaching…