Privatization undermines the role of public education in keeping democracy alive, offering consumerism as the only form of citizenship. Challenging the encroachment of corporatism is essential if democracy is to remain the defining principle of education and society. (SK)

Reviews "outsourcing" of technology services by institutions of higher education, including the College of Notre Dame (California) and East Tennessee State University, and finds that, although external companies, especially COLLEGIS, offer expertise and savings, they sometimes do not understand the special problems of an academic…

The privatizing agenda of corporate globalization is being abetted by such institutions as the World Bank. Educators are being told to accept its inevitability. However, adult educators can assert alternative values and help build a healthy civic society. (SK)

Privatization is a spectrum along which public institutions operate. As the share of public investment in their operations declines, institutions are increasingly required to function in the competitive marketplace and so become increasingly privatized. In this article, former University of Wisconsin System President Katharine C. Lyall and…

The author initially describes several seminal and interconnected departures from the old social order which are currently happening and which are creating a new and indeed unprecedented setting for the educational process, thereby raising a series of never-before-encountered challenges for the educators. He then details how society is being…

This article examines equity in national systems of education in terms of differences in student outcomes, as measured by mathematics achievement scores on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003. The author uses four measures for assessing equity in student outcomes: (1) the strength of the relationship between student…

In the last two decades, China's education has experienced significant transformations and restructuring on account of privatization and marketization. Unlike the Mao era when the state assumed the major responsibilities in financing and providing education, individuals and families have now to bear increasing financial burdens in paying for…

This article reviews educational initiatives of state and federal government that were designed to remedy the effects of racial segregation on Black public school students in the United States after the famous "Brown v. Board of Education" decisions. Several policy and legal initiatives are reviewed, including school desegregation,…

Breaking new ground in studies of business involvement in schooling, this book dissects the most powerful educational reforms and highlights their relationship to the rise of powerful think tanks and business groups. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong movement to privatize public schooling through business ventures. At the…

This article reflects on the historic tensions of education under capitalism, arguing that they have been exacerbated in our era of neo-liberal globalisation. Government drives for greater "accountability" and "effectiveness" are a blinkered response to the threefold global crisis we face: poverty and debt; a collapse of the…

Concern over Social Security's forecasted long-run deficit is occurring at a time when the program has a short-term surplus. One proposed strategy to address this forecasted deficit is to allow the investment of a portion of payroll taxes into private savings accounts (PSAs). The author analyzes recent proposals for PSAs and concludes that PSAs…

In this article we introduce and explain a funding framework for advancing an equity agenda at the community college. The need for the framework is premised on (a) Dowd's observation that the traditional community college commitment to student access no longer suffices as an adequate strategy to achieve greater equity in society and (b) the…

In "The Transformation of Great American School Districts", William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects. They examine the core assumptions that underlay the Progressive Era model of…

Recently, Latin America has seen the advent of research activities to meet the call for research that long preceded them and of the full-time research faculty who engage in them. These developments have taken place as the region partakes in contemporary worldwide trends that have affected universities elsewhere: the consequences of the increased…

In the management of common property resources, privatization is often advocated as the surest path to sustainability because of its reliance on human self-interest in natural resources decision making. This article demonstrates that the motive of self-interest, though powerful, does not necessarily lead to environmental outcomes that promote the…