The assumption behind the fierce competition for admission to elite colleges and universities is clear: The more elite the school one attends, the brighter one's future. That assumption, however, may well be flawed. The research examined recently by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights provides strong reason to believe that attending the most…

Educators and policy makers confront challenging questions of ethics, justice, and equity on a regular basis. Should teachers retain a struggling student if it means she will most certainly drop out? Should an assignment plan favor middle-class families if it means strengthening the school system for all? These everyday dilemmas are both utterly…

This paper analyzes how China has managed to embrace mass higher education in a short timeline, and examines how far this move has followed the existing or established patterns elsewhere through comparing its core aspects with those of four identifiable models of mass higher education: the American model, the Western European model, the Latin…

As a result of massification of higher education and the quest for competitiveness, the Taiwanese government has adopted a series of higher education reforms since the late 1990s. While the low birthrate has become a potential threat, recent developments in higher education policies such as the Program for Developing First-Class Universities and…

Since 1999, the expansion of higher education has been viewed as an important step in accumulating human capital for China that was to gradually open its domestic sectors to the global market at a turbulent time at the turn of the century. Recent studies suggest that the improvement of human capital has succeeded in preparing China with a solid…

This research explores the impact of Taiwan's university multiple-channel entrance policy on student learning outcomes, using quantitative research to look for differences in the learning experiences of third-year students who were admitted via different methods (examination and placement, application for admission, recommendation and selection,…

Since most states adopted college- and career-readiness standards, about one million new teachers have graduated from teacher preparation programs in the United States. With five years lead time on incorporating new standards into policy and practice, this year the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has expanded its policy analysis to…

Performance indicators and performance-based funding are becoming integral components of higher education (HE) policy around the globe. We explore some of the implications of this type of policy on Norwegian HE. We believe the case will be of significant interest to policy-makers, stakeholders and academics alike, not least because our empirical…

The distribution of pupils amongst schools is fundamental to concerns about equality of educational opportunity and it is for this reason that the process by which pupils are admitted to schools is of significance. This paper focuses on admissions criteria and practices used by English secondary schools in 2001 and 2008 in light of changes to…

It has been widely claimed that UK students from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds but nevertheless having the potential to benefit from a degree programme are being denied higher education places because of their relatively poor paper qualifications. As a consequence, the claim continues, students from independent schools have an advantage in…

This paper examines the politics of policy-borrowing in Korean education. I use the term "loanwords" as a metaphor for the practice in some Korean educational sectors of using borrowed English-origin educational rhetoric to create actual policy reform. I argue that discourses of choice and diversity, as loanwords, are initially…

Not for the first time in its history, the UK Higher Education sector finds itself in a position of significant financial constraint. The current coalition Government's actions to address the budget deficit have led to sweeping cuts across many public sector departments, but it is higher education that has seen the most draconian reduction in…

One of the important arguments by critics of affirmative action is that it actually hurts the students it is supposed to help by subjecting them to the "stigma" of being admitted under policies explicitly seeking campus diversity. Such students, this theory argues, must feel embarrassed and uncomfortable as a result and would prefer to…

Elite public schools must use some method of selecting their students. Given the desirability of this scarce resource, these methods are closely scrutinized. Demographic and other changes in the school districts may make unstable procedures that were deemed successful at one point. This "recurring problem" is the subject of this article,…

Higher-education institutions in Texas are increasingly exploring innovative approaches to structuring and delivering degree programs. Several institutions have developed competency-based degree programs, which aim to offer new pathways for students to obtain postsecondary credentials and to reduce higher-education costs for students by focusing…