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PostcolonialMediating The Global And The Local

The postcolonial era is marked in most countries by attempts to combine the quality of teaching inherited from highly elitist higher education systems and the necessity to widen access to higher education to "bridge the development gap" and to strengthen democratic institutions. However, political developments since the 1960s, economic choices, and global pressures show that higher education cannot be developed to the exclusion of broader policy initiatives, leaving out the sociocultural context. The unequal distribution of colonial universities generated contrasting

The postcolonial routes to study abroad: main destinations in 2001

Australia Belgium France Germany Japan Netherlands UK USA
Algeria (F) 36 613 24,040 346 32 38 586 381
Cambodia (F) 254 43 1,151 45 245 0 34 324
Côte d'Ivoire (F) 6 203 5,079 252 22 8 142 1,104
D.R. Congo (B) 2 3,482 1,516 206 0 38 39 0
Djibouti (F) 0 10 2,144 1 0 0 6 13
Ghana (UK) 90 51 118 374 112 82 2,015 4,282
Hong Kong (UK) 15,842 4 0 14 0 0 16,244 13,230
India (UK) 12,390 238 462 1,413 395 98 8,441 94,822
Indonesia (NL) 21,452 159 365 2,128 2,420 1,058 2,070 20,165
Jamaica (UK) 12 1 22 12 8 2 715 7,328
Kenya (UK) 1,054 113 228 202 105 34 4,788 10,805
Madagascar (F) 0 74 4,620 125 20 0 27 199
Malaysia (UK) 25,858 10 214 197 3,241 24 18,183 13,521
Nigeria (UK) 126 278 34 667 70 132 4,598 6,626
Pakistan (UK) 1,912 42 237 681 210 84 3,781 12,052
Rwanda (B) 8 574 36 100 2 29 93 452
Senegal (F) 6 202 243 247 48 4 52 1,269
Singapore (UK) 21,430 10 96 73 259 20 9,075 7,226
Suriname (NL) 4 34 22 2 0 1,737 12 209
Trin. & Tob. (UK) 20 0 48 13 4 2 883 5,032
Vietnam (F) 3,260 305 2,801 1,458 1,229 67 331 3,507
Zambia (UK) 164 18 10 35 26 10 799 1,063
Former colonial authorities in parentheses.
SOURCE: OECD statistics, 2001

expectations from populations. National policies on education then endured enormous tensions from the multiple pressures of ever more exigent demands from an educated minority; of ever more dramatic educational, social, and regional discrepancies; and of ever more restrictive recommendations and conditions set by international organizations. The landscape of higher education that emerged from these contradictory tensions reflected both the peculiarities of national trajectories and the inequalities of the postcolonial world order.

See also Colonialism; Education: Global Education; Education: India; Empire and Imperialism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ajayi, J. F. A., Lameck K. H. Goma, and G. Ampah Johnson. The African Experience with Higher Education. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996.

Altbach, Philip G., and Suma Chitnis, eds. Higher Education Reform in India: Experience and Perspectives. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993.

Dunne, Mairead, and Yusuf Sayed. "Transformation and Equity: Women and Higher Eduation in Sub-Saharan Africa." International Studies in Educational Administration 30, no. 1 (2002): 50–66.

Federici, Silvia, George Caffentzis, and Ousseina Alidou, eds. A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles against Structural Adjustment in African Universities. Trenton, N.J.: African World Press, 2000.

Hoogvelt, Ankie. Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development. Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1997. 2nd ed., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Howe, Glenford D., ed. Higher Education in the Caribbean: Past, Present and Future Directions. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2000.

Lebeau, Yann, and Mobolaji Ogunsanya, eds. The Dilemma of Post-Colonial Universities: Elite Formation and the Restructuring of Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ibadan: IFRA/ABB, 2000.

Lee, W. O., and Mark Bray, eds. Education and Political Transition: Perspectives and Dimensions in East Asia. Hong Kong: CERC, University of Hong Kong, 1997.

Task Force on Higher Education and Society. Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2000.

Tikly, L. "Globalisation and Education in the Postcolonial World: Towards a Conceptual Framework." Comparative Education 37, no. 2 (2001): 151–171.

World Bank. Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002.

Yann Lebeau

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Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Two-envelope paradox to VenusUniversity - Postcolonial - A Contrasted Picture, Indian Higher Education System: The Crippled Giant, A Peripheral World Of Learning