In an era of globalization, public-private partnerships often tip too easily toward privatization, where global processes of consumption, production, and migration complicate the conditions and consequences of engagement in public life. Like the logic of service, the logic of activist capitalism underlying social entrepreneurship and microlending…

What explains the crisis of the Eastern European universities, and how can they overcome it? This article tries to find the causes of such a crisis in the communist tradition and the lingering communitarian systems of thought in Eastern Europe. The current state-controlled academic systems in the region continue to reproduce such a culture.…

Owing to their common history, similarities in language and culture, long traditions in political collaboration and the shared Nordic societal model, an assumption is often made that the operational and regulatory context of universities is similar in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. In this article, we…

A fundamental goal of the university must be to advance a democracy based on the socialist principles of freedom and critique. A Marxist revolutionary critical pedagogy for democracy is advanced that includes a call for the inclusion of faculty of color who may bring diverse epistemes toward doing research that promotes dissent. The author…

The restructuring of European higher education (EHE) since the 1980s is a widely studied subject. However, this paper argues that previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the role of transnational policy-making groups in this complex and multilevel process. This argument is supported by focusing on how the European Round Table of…

After the revolution in 1918, many reformist teachers were convinced that they could put into practice their dreams of a free and independent school in a democratic republic. Four state schools in Hamburg became anti-authoritarian school communities, in which teachers, parents and students experimented with revolutionary concepts of education. For…

This paper draws on Jean-François Lyotard's (1984) seminal study "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge" to reflect on two macro-level catastrophes: the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2009 (and its continuing effects throughout the Eurozone and elsewhere) and Fukushima. These two case studies probe aspects of these grand…

Social system perspective which belongs to systems theory has been elaborated comprehensively using its founders' ideas, and characteristics of schools have been explained consulting to this perspective. The course of social system idea has been reviewed along with its relation to other systems. How researchers who assumes schools as social…

This article offers an analysis of four Norwegian policy documents on inclusion of minority language pupils. The main concepts of this policy will be reconstructed and re-described, applying Niklas Luhmann's systems theory at different levels of the analysis. Luhmann's theory about society as a conglomerate of self-referential social systems…

Driven by social and environmental criticism of the neoliberalization of agro-food systems, urban agriculture today enjoys renewed interest throughout the United States as a primary space to engage the politics of food. Using Brooklyn, New York as a case study, I employ mixed qualitative methods to investigate the contradictions that arise in…

The competence discourse issued by the Colombian Ministry of National Education defines an ontological duty, a set of logics for the education of subjectivity. Some interesting elements result from this analysis. The first level, or denotative level, manages a management or business cultural code. This code is closely related to the second level…

In order to integrate into the host labour market, immigrants are often expected and indeed trained to minimize sociocultural differences. This paper problematizes the deficit/dismissive approach towards difference. It stresses instead that, in the context of globalization and immigration, encounters of difference have afforded a potentially…

This article aims to identify selected determinants of migration among former international student mobility participants. It is based on a large-scale online survey (2450 completed questionnaires) distributed among all Polish alumni who took part in Erasmus mobility for studies 5-6 years before. The survey was conducted in 2012. We apply…

Contextual factors have received increased attention in understanding the challenges and difficulties in translating career education and career guidance services from Western societies to non-Western societies, many of which are undertaking a shift from a socialist and collectivistic system to a more individualistic one. In this article, using…

This article analyzes the role of STEM initiatives designed by city and corporate elites in a large urban district and outlines an alternative, grassroots vision for (STEM) education and city schools. Within a neoliberal context of gentrification, displacement, disinvestment, and privatization, STEM schools have become strategic components of…