'The Great Brain Race': Globalization alters higher education worldwide

'The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World'

by Ben Wildavsky

Princeton University Press, 240 pp., $26.95

Globalization is changing the food we eat, the way we communicate and, increasingly, the way we go to college. Nearly 3 million students were enrolled in universities outside their borders in 2009, a 57 percent increase over the previous decade, according to the Institute of International Education, which facilitates exchange programs.

"The Great Brain Race," by Ben Wildavsky, takes a comprehensive look at today's worldwide marketplace for college students — with stops in such places as Singapore, South Korea and Saudi Arabia where western schools, including the University of Chicago and potentially George Mason University, are opening satellite campuses or where local governments are making heavy investments in American-style research universities. The author, a former education editor at U.S. News & World Report, also explores the latest attempts to rate the world's top colleges now that more students are degree shopping across borders.

These rapid changes are provoking anxiety in some politicians, particularly in the United States, where the higher-education system has attracted the world's top academic talent for more than half a century. In India, which sends more students to American universities than does any other country, lawmakers have been anxious to stanch the brain drain but reluctant to open the market to foreign colleges they fear will only cater to the elite. Many would rather seek investment for their own overwhelmed education system.

But Wildavsky emphasizes that greater competition for scholars is not to be feared. "Increasing knowledge is not a zero-sum game," he writes. Better educational opportunities around the globe, he predicts, will lead to greater innovation and economic growth worldwide.