What is Wrong with Global Inequality in Higher Education?

Elaine Unterhalter, University World News

Virtually all the discussion of collective good associated with the debate about the increase in university tuition fees in England has been framed by national concerns to ensure Britain’s universities remain ‘world-class’. The term ‘world-class’ denotes intrinsic achievement. But it also implies rank order and attendant inequalities.

What forms does global inequality in higher education take and what’s wrong with it?

Global inequality in higher education is enmeshed with wider dimensions of global inequality, particularly poverty and vast discrepancies in income. Common measures of poverty indicate that nearly two billion people live in conditions of grave inequality. More…