Change Magazine Article(s): A Tectonic Shift in Global Higher Education

Change Magazine Article(s): A Tectonic Shift in Global Higher Education:

For two decades, worldwide enrollment growth in higher education has exceeded the most optimistic forecasts. A milestone of 100 million enrollments was passed some years ago, and an earlier forecast of 120 million students by 2020 may be reached by 2010. If anything, enrollment growth is accelerating as more governments see the rapid expansion of higher education as a key element in their transition from developing to developed countries.

That is the situation in China, where enrollments doubled between 2000 and 2003. With 16 million students enrolled by 2005, China had overtaken the United States as the world’s largest higher education system. Malaysia also illustrates the trend. It plans to increase enrollments in higher education by 166 percent in the next four years, from 600,000 to 1.6 million, to achieve college participation rates similar to those of developed nations. Mauritius has recently passed legislation to create a third university for its 1.2 million people, having added its second only five years ago.

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Some would say that this will ruin…. the american university… I say… contrarily that the key is to encourage learning and that doesn’t have to be ‘american’