Describes historical and current trends in Argentina's private and public primary- and secondary-school enrollment levels and policy reasons behind changes, including deregulation of private schools. Evaluates research analyzing impact of increased private-school enrollment; argues middle- and high-income students are opting out of public schools…

During the last quarter of a century, public higher education institutions have found themselves buffeted by a perfect storm. This storm has led to discussions about the privatization of those institutions, which has implications for their ability to improve, or at least maintain, their quality and their accessibility to students from all…

The institutional landscape of K-12 educational contracting is fundamentally changing. Based on industry and district data, this study identifies three distinct shifts in the content and structure of interactions between suppliers of instructional goods and local school systems. These shifts include 1) elevation of test-related services and…

Chile has experienced considerable educational expansion over the past few decades, as well as a privatization reform in 1981 that introduced full parental choice through a voucher system, in the context of a market-oriented transformation of the country. Using a cohort analysis of the 2001 Chilean Mobility Survey, this article examines trends in…

Trends suggest that business practices and private sector ideas and values are increasingly permeating public funded higher education institutions world-wide. The impact of business practices and values on higher education policy and practice is discernible in the growing dominance of global privatisation, quasi-marketisation and new managerialism…

The voucher model of financing schooling is becoming increasingly common throughout Latin America, with at least 12 countries using vouchers or voucher-like schemes. The present study focuses on the voucher models of Colombia and Chile, which have the most extensive programs of this type and those of the longest standing in the region. Using…

Reform in the Mexican education system accords with global patterns of liberalisation, decentralisation, compensatory programs and accountability. The present study analyses reform in that country during the past 15 years. It reveals that despite expectations of change attending the installation of the new government which replaced the ruling…

The dynamics of educational policy discourse in the USA are illustrated by the highly contested positions on charter schools in three arenas: media debates, national policy and local school reform. In media debates, civil society actors--including teachers' unions, think tanks and print media--engage in polarized exchanges notable for their…

What fuels the push toward privatization of public higher education institutions? This article attempts to unravel the nine beliefs that underlie conversations taking place in state legislatures and on higher education campuses and then asks, Will privatization work? How will it work for the state's citizens, the states, and institutions? The…

This paper summarizes the phenomenon of offshore outsourcing and relates it to the history and current state of engineering education and the engineering profession in Europe and the USA. In order to assess the climate affecting employment decisions by and about engineers we have used as sources mostly the serious press, with an emphasis on…

In this article, the author features the America's Choice School Design, a school improvement program that has enlisted 547 schools in 16 states in its brand of comprehensive reform, and describes the program's move to loosen its nonprofit moorings and change to a for-profit company. The purpose of the move to for-profit status is to raise capital…

The increased marketisation and privatisation of schooling in economically developing countries struggling to achieve Education for All and Millennium Development Goals warrants a focused examination of the phenomenon. However, there is little work on the nature and extent of private provision in countries that, on the one hand, are striving to…

This article discusses how representations of individual discipline and risk-taking in mass media inform the broader public discourses about public education and the public sector generally. Such representations and narratives about individual discipline and risk-taking often function in mass media as moral imperatives of consumer culture. Such…

India demonstrates many features characteristic of private higher education in much of the world. Among these features are proportional size, with roughly 30 percent of total enrollment, and fast growth. Also rather typical is finance, which comes almost exclusively from non-government sources, principally tuition, while public higher education is…

The Subcommittee heard testimony from seven witnesses and statements from three senators on whether or not it is in the Federal Government's best interest to divest itself of the Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae), and the College Construction Loan Insurance Association (Connie Lee). Lawrence A. Hough of the Student Loan Marketing…