Lectures on a Train in Israel

Not really socio-political as our usual postings, but interesting none-the-less.

Affirmative Action Policies in Israel

This is an interesting article discussing affirmative action policies in Israel. The focus is to reach out to underrepresented populations in universities in Israel including women, Mizrahi Jews and Arabs and students from lower socioeconomic classes.

Qatar Stages a Global Education Summit With Flash and Dazzle

Qatar us hosting what it hopes will be a regular conference on education.  Apart from the details of the conference itself, I think this effort falls into a theme we've discussed in class of wealthy Middle Eastern states and/or monarchs essentially buying they're way onto the world stage of education.

Preparing Women for Careers in Business and Finance

AMIDEAST is an educational organization that assists students from the Middle East in learning about study abroad programs and increasing educational opportunities for students in the Middle East. This is an interesting article about a new corporate partnership with HSBC to advance Arab women in the fields of business and finance.

Exporting higher education: Offshore campuses in the Middle East

A very contemporary article about the exporting of higher education into the Middle East.  Here's the abstract:

This paper maps the landscape of transnational higher education in the Middle East, as part of the Ford Foundation of Cairo project on University Governance and Autonomy in the Changing Landscape of Higher Education in the Arab World. From Education City in Doha to New York University in Abu Dhabi, foreign universities are expanding their professional schools, building new campuses, exporting faculty, staff and students and creating a myriad of partnerships throughout the Middle East, and in particular the Gulf states. Of the estimated 100 branch campuses currently operating world-wide, over half are in the Arab region and the majority have opened within the last decade. Very little research has been conducted on these new institutions, raising many questions for education researchers. Why has this new phenomenon of transnational higher education grown so quickly and become so popular in the Arab states? What impact are foreign models of higher education (best practices in governance, academic freedom and curriculum) having on national higher education policy in the host country? This draft paper suggests that this phenomenon can best be understood not only through the lens of globalization, as many scholars have argued, but also in the context of theories of educational transfer. We also raise questions for further inquiry.