Capital and Knowledge Flows: Global higher education markets

Abstract

Accelerating global flows of people and information have formed new communities and networks across social and political borders. Higher education is one such globalised knowledge community in which new patterns of knowledge, accreditation, research alliances, and social and professional relationships are emerging. In this paper I outline the push–pull dynamics of globalisation in higher education: the co-constitutive nature of local and global interests and educational formations; disjunctive flows of capital, information, people, and knowledge; and the new politics of knowledge capital as they affect academic research and the public archive of scholarly publishing and university libraries. I close with reflections on the differential consequences of globalisation on: the role of the nation state in higher education provision and reform; the role of education in nation building and national identity politics; and the governability of a global eduscape.

Notes

1. Spearheaded in 1998 by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) as part of Singapore's Industry 21 strategy, the long-term plan is to establish 10 world-class university bases in Singapore. Currently, INSEAD (a French business school) and the University of Chicago Business School have set up campuses. Singapore Management University was developed on a blueprint of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School but is not a twinning programme or WBS branch plant. Australia's University of New South Wales will establish its own campus by 2007, offering degree programmes from Bachelor's to PhD with capacity for 15,000 students.

2. The ISI, formerly The Social Science Index, is now owned by the Thomson Corporation, which posted a US$2.1 billion profit in 2004 in its “Learning” market alone. About 20% of ISI indexed journals produce 80% of ISI listed citations.

3. See for example: http://www.openarchives.org/, http://www.publicknowledge.org/, and http://www.openarchives.org/. Other initiatives include open-access sites for research software (Open Journal systems at http://www.pkp.ubc.ca), free search and citation analysis tools (http://citebase.eprints.org), and a self-archiving site for refereed research literature that is not subject to journal copyright strictures (http://www.eprints.org).