Globalisation inevitably increases competition among nations and international economy. Financing education in the global economy has become an important task. A major part of International Monetary Fund policy is to reduce the public deficits. Reducing public spending means reducing the spending on education, so that shift national resource from government control to private sector. Finance-driven reforms have a direct impact on education, mainly in three aspects: shifting public funding from higher to lower levels of education; expanding secondary and higher education through increased privatisation; and increasing quality of education through decentralisation reform. Decentralisation is cast as a globalisation reform to increase productivity in education and hence contributes improvement in education quality. For many, an extension of such reforms is public school choice and the privatisation. Private schools are claimed to be much more cost-effective than public, its positive effect on inter-school competition and school accountability, hence school quality.
The increasing demand in education obliged school to expand. Thus, developing nations will have to rely on families to finance a high fraction of school costs privately. The finance-driven reforms also focused on increasing community contributions to schools, in both pecuniary and non-pecuniary forms. Yet, globalisation enters the education sector in an ideological from, and its effects on education are largely a product of that financially-driven, free market ideology, not for a clear conception for improving education. The decentralisation reform reduces access and quality of education in lower-income regions with the least resources; it is also likely to put increased pressure on teacher salaries, hence to create resistance among the very educational actors needed to improve the quality of education. Many of the reforms implicit in structural adjustment are actually needed, but their form of implementation results in a series of negative impacts that could be avoided by more coherent focus on school improvement rather than on simple financial objectives.
Globalisation cause labour exchange globally by immigration. Foreign counties are interested in sending their students or works to the United States, Europe, and other developed countries in order to obtain knowledge and the latest technological skills back home. Globalised finance and investment creates a worldwide demand for certain skills which is associated with higher levels of education. In return, globalised demand for higher-level skills upward higher education. Meanwhile, globalisation also causes the increasing rate in women’s return to higher education. Globalisation is accentuating and already growing trend by women to take as much or more education than men. The increased professionalisation of women cost effectives on family as well rasing the average level of schooling. In addition, globalisation will bring the wage quality of male works and female works into balance in the long run.
Because globalisation is influenced by financial assets, the competition in the global economy produces policies tend to hurt the lower-educated more than higher educated. It leads to increased wage inequality between lower and higher educated. Though globalisation pushes up the rates of return to higher education and to increase the demand for schooling, it has two side effects. The good side is that it may increase labour productivity. The bad side is that inequality in access to high quality, children form lower-income families has less chance get access to higher education than before under the conditions of increased competition for hight quality education.
How to improve educational process within the context of globalisation rather than on globalisation’s financial imperatives?
Globalisation has produced an increased emphasis on teaching math and science. Moreover, there is a much greater focus on comparing performance in these subjects with other countries’ students. The most recent expression is collecting data on student performance as a measure of the quality of education. The use of national and international tests in a comparative way is already having obvious policy effects Global notions of efficiency and measurement can therefore have a positive effect on educational output without separated from the financially-driven reforms discussed above. So that, there is much more political and even financial space for government to condition the way globalisation is brought into education than is usually admitted. Testing and standards are a good example, and decentralisation and school autonomy are others. States can provide schooling access more equally, provide more change for the poor, and produce knowledge more effectively within globalised economy.
Discussion
Refer to the key ideas discussed above, the most notable one is the financially-driven reforms. As an alternative, it is the patterns of global economic restructuring. Economic restructuring reflected a world trend characterised by the following elements:
The globalisation of the economy in the new international division of labour and economic integration of national economies; (Such as emerging common markets and trading agreements) (Robert B. Reich. 1998)
The increasing internationalisation of trade;
The new exchange relations among nations, and among classes within each county, and new areas, that information and services are becoming more important than manufacturing;
The increasing financial, technological, and cultural gap between developed and developing countries, with the exception being the “newly industrialised countries”(NICs);
The growing importance of capital-intensive production, which result in the de-skilling or redundancy of large sections of the workforce, a situation that leads to a polarised labour market composed of a small, highly skilled on the one hand, and well-paid sector, and a large, low-skilled, and low-paid sector on the other hand (Nicholas C. 2000);
The decrease in capital-labour conflict, mainly due to such factors as the increase of surplus workers, the intension of competition; the decrease of profit margins, less protective labour contracts (Andrew, S 1992);
The increase in rate of part time and female workers;
The raise of new forces of production, within industry shifting to self-regulating machines, which has led to the emergence of a high-tech information society based on computer;
Economic restructuring also has reflected a deep fiscal crisis and budget reductions affecting the public sector have result in the reduction of the welfare state and increased privatisation of social services, health, housing, and education. These elements of economic restructuring have been related to the trend toward globalisation. (Nicholas C. 2000) The globalisation of economy has produced a unification of capital on a world scale, while workers and other subordinate groups have become more fragmented and divided.
The economic restructuring produces the process of privatising education which is occurring in the context of new relations and arrangements among nations, characterised by a new global division of labour, an economic integration of national economics, the increasing concentration of power in supranational organisations such as World Bank, IMF, UN, E.U., and G-7 (George, P. 1989), and what we have called the “internationalisation ” of nation-states.
In addition, educational policy change is another prominent sector in considering to the globalisation. The author discusses the idea as the impact of decentralisation on educational reforms. It argued for educational decision-making autonomy. The idea of globalisation has assumed considerable significance in educational thinking. Educational policy makers and theorists alike have sought to understand both the ways in which global processes affect education and the manner in which education must repose to it. (Miriam, H 2001) Globalisation and educational policy changes in government reflected in flowing perspectives:
Reconstituting the Nation-State. Globalisation creates pressure upon the nation-state from above and from below. Commenting on the devolution. The destabilisation and reconstitution of the nation-state from both above and below affects policy-making processes and the available policy options for governments.
Globalisation of the Economy and a Post-Keynesian Policy Consensus. The political concomitant of globalisation of the economy has been the dominance of neo-liberalism, replacing the post World War II era of Keynesianism as taking the form of a post-Keynesian policy consensus (Miriam, H 2001).
Changing Relationships. One way of viewing the relationship between the national, the international and global levels of policy making is to see globalisation as a context for a relatively autonomous nation-state, with international organisations serving as instruments of governments or as forums for exchange of ideas between government. (Flower, 1995)
The effects of globalisation on educational policy production within and beyond nation-states has been analysed above. Within the new forms of governance at national and sub-national political levels in education performativity augments the rationalisation and technicisation of policy. Davies and guppy develop the concept of “global rationalisation” as another element contributing to the apparent convergence of educational policy structures across nations. (Davies, S. and Guppy, N.1997) It is believed that political globalisation and the new human capital policy consensus in education push such global rationalisation even further through performativity. Broadly speaking, the emergence of the globalisation problematic in education has contributed to a reconfiguration of political positions with respect to educational policy. (Martin Carnoy.)
Conclusion
The rise of a global, informational economy has weakened position of the state and has in turn opened the way for increased commodification of education, as well as calls for reforming education in response to the supposed imperative of globalisation. In a nutshell, based on Martin Carnoy’s analysis, together with the elements of economics restructuring and the changing of educational policy which added to expand the understanding of social changes of globalisation and educational reforms.
Reference:
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Carnoy, M. (1998) ‘globalisation and Educational Reform’, Melbourne Studies in Education, Vol.39, and No. 2, pp.21-40.
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