The Xingwei Experiment
Xingwei College is a quiet and leafy campus near the bustle and gleam of Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport. I visited the four-year private liberal arts college for a week in November, when its lawns glowed under the creamy sky of the Shanghai winter. A stream cut through the flat sprawling campus on its way to the […]
What Future for Higher Ed in the Arab World?
Higher education leaders in England, France and Italy often take pride in claiming that their country is the seat of the oldest university in the modern world. Indeed, Oxford University was set up in 1167, the Sorbonne was created in 1160, and the University of Bologna began to operate in 1088. But historians have established […]
Many College Graduates Are Not Equipped for Workplace Success. Why?
Most employers hiring college graduates take it for granted that these candidates are more qualified than other potential employees who don’t have a degree. Many job postings emphasize a college degree as a requirement for a position. And there is long-standing evidence that people with college degrees make more money over their lifetime than those […]
Is Higher Education Still Worth It?
Today, we often hear about high prices charged by universities and colleges while, at the same time, graduate unemployment and underemployment has increased with the sluggish economy. Students may be saddled with sizeable loan debts in order to complete a degree. We have recently seen students very visibly complaining about this situation in the “Occupy” […]
Make College Worth It
I am the youngest of seven children from an agricultural province in China, and the only one to have made it to college. The late 1980s in China was a time of transitions, when the government started to let students fund themselves through college, as compared to the previous decade when tuition was minimal. Our […]
Redesigning the Goals of a 21st Century Education
Many have addressed how present and future students should learn. Few have examined what students should learn for the 21st century. The rapid increase in the rate of systemic change around the globe creates an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world and thus is significantly more unpredictable. Six emerging trends will require a diverse set of individual abilities and […]
The World Needs a New Curriculum
“Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you… Don’t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don’t want to become.” ― Chris Hadfield, astronaut What will it take for the world to stop offering our children an education that is only a slightly updated version of what was offered in the 19th century, and […]
The School to Work Transition in Latin America
This article is part of a series on innovative solutions to tackle the main challenges of Latin American education (part 1 of 6). Latin America’s education systems are facing major challenges. Higher education remains off-limits to all but a small minority, and better early childhood education is desperately needed, given how our most fundamental cognitive skills develop […]
Sir Ken Robinson: “All kids have great promise, it’s the job of education to help them fulfill it”
We need to revolutionize education, asserts Sir Ken Robinson. In this exclusive interview with WISE, Ken Robinson shares his views on education challenges in the 21st century and the need to boost students’ creativity and talents. Students have great expectations but schools often ignore them, focusing in a narrowed type of ability –the academic one. […]
Read Local, Think Global on Education
Global education is abuzz with the new insights and improved practices of creative thinkers and on-the-ground practitioners who are implementing innovative solutions to education challenges everywhere. Every day education stakeholders around the world share ideas and inspiring stories through articles, blog posts and research, but these sources remain too dispersed and often fail to reach […]