Studying Global Higher Education

The University at Albany, State University of New York: Image Credit – SUNY

This year the University at Albany’s (SUNY) Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies created a new organization focused on global higher education.  The Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT) is co-directed by faculty members Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser.  Here is what they say about their mission and focus:

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in higher education institutions exporting their educational programs across geopolitical borders.  The Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT) studies this phenomenon from organizational, sociological, economic, and political perspectives.   As distinct from strictly virtual or online education, C-BERT concentrates on instances of physical cross-border teaching and research activities.  These broad interests inform more specific inquiries into regulation, accountability, quality assurance, institutional legitimacy, patterns of growth, and institutional failures, among other topics.  C-BERT does not promote or represent any institutions, sectors, or national systems engaged in cross-border higher education.  Rather, the mission is to advance understanding of these issues through the discovery, analysis, and dissemination of knowledge. In turn, this research aims to inform institutional development as well as public policy and discussion.

C-BERT’s website is “a clearinghouse of scholarship and news about the movement of educational institutions across international borders.”  It is easy to use and a good resource for anyone interested in this issue (the “news” section of the site gathers news articles from around the world and has an excellent array of sources well beyond the usual higher education publications).   I have posted before (here) about the dynamics of American universities in the Middle East (in whatever form) and that issue, among others, is being addressed by C-BERT in a way that is scholarly, policy savvy and timely. Check their site on a regular basis for updated news, interesting research and upcoming events.