Rethinking the World Bank Agenda for Chinese Higher Education Reform

This article explores the way in which the World Bank has worked effectively with China in higher education. It investigates whether or not the cooperation between the two has changed in line with their changing relationship. More specifically, it discusses whether the World Bank’s China agenda reflects the reform package of socio-institutional neoliberalism which the World Bank has tended to promote worldwide in the era of the Post-Washington Consensus, and how China’s higher education reform has been influenced by the agenda. The article argues that as China is transferring its role from that of a recipient country to that of a donor country, it is increasingly important to position itself as a global player. Other than mastering the game rules of the international community, China should also expand its influence within and through these major international organizations.     

The rise of the transnational capitalist class and World Bank 'aid' for higher education

This article looks at globalisation as a process of replacement of the global political order of nation states with the global economic order of transnational corporations. It is argued that this process carries far-reaching consequences, in which a growing number of spheres, including education, are subjected to the interests of the global economic order. Under the disguise of global economic development activities the new world system strives towards maximising the short-term profits of the transnational capitalist class. Following Sklair's global systems theory, this article looks at the World Bank as a transnational organisation. Based on recent World Bank higher education reform loan projects in Eastern Europe, it is argued that the primary outcome of the World Bank loan projects is the redistribution of the resources of the so-called 'recipient countries' to the transnational capitalist class.     

浅析世界银行贷款协议的法律适用问题

作为当今世界最重要的国际经济组织之一，世界银行在其与借款人签订的贷款协议中，均未约定明确的法律适用条款。这并非是世界银行的疏漏，而是世界银行出于种种考虑的结果。随着国际政治经济形势和法律环境的变化，要求世界银行修改其贷款协议中的法律适用条款。将国际法明确规定为贷款协议准据法的呼声日苴高涨，面临这一形势，世界银行极有可能对其贷款协议中的法律运用条款作出调整。由于我国是世界银行的主要借款国之一，了解并掌握世界银行在这方面的动态，对我国具有重要的现实意义。     

From the Adam Smith Institute to the Zapatistas: An Internet Gateway to all development knowledge

This article critically examines a major World Bank Internet initiative, the Development Gateway. It describes the importance of the World Bank as the Knowledge Bank and the threats posed by the Internet to its near monopoly of development thinking. The Bank's Gateway plan attempts to bring together views of all stakeholders on a large number of topics at both global and country level. The article argues that this effort is naive, impossible and dangerous. The initiative, which will marginalise dissident and minority views, reveals biases and misunderstandings in the World Bank's overall approach to knowledge for development.     

Agent of global markets or agent of the poor? The World Bank’s education sector strategy paper

This article contrasts the official, largely silent, role of the World Bank as an agent of global markets with its professed role as agent of the poor. The failure to make explicit its role as global market advocate creates a policy environment that can be destructive of both global markets and the long-term survival of the world’s poor. The article examines the World Bank’s Education Sector Strategy in this light. The article begins by outlining the institutional, policy and education frameworks that emerge from the conflicts of the World Bank’s dual role in markets and poverty. It then shows that the implementation and outcome analyses in The Strategy grow out of these frameworks and are, therefore, limited in scope and effectiveness. An approach that explicitly acknowledges the market roles of the World Bank would have led to a more effective policy document.     

Distance education and the World Bank

This article is based on a study undertaken for the Education and Training Department at the World Bank which reviewed 32 Bank projects 1963–1985 that included education via broadcasting (television and/or radio) and by correspondence. It is clear that Bank investments in distance education were most beneficial when the borrowing country and the Bank agreed on the educational objectives of the distance education component. It is also clear that distance education was most effective when it was sharply focussed on improving the quality of teaching available, when it was used to offer non-formal education to students who were without teachers and classrooms, and/ or when it met social demands and answered urgent needs for formation of human capital through education and training.     

Resistance Towards the Language of Globalisation – The Case of Sri Lanka

This paper relates the contemporary educational reforms in Sri Lanka to the processes of globalisation. The international monetary organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank and the regional organisations like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) play a dominant role in influencing the debt-receiving countries when it comes to their educational practice. The intensity of the influence of these organisations can vary depending on the existing educational policy of the aid receiving countries. This paper, after a brief introduction on globalisation, examines its effects on the education policy in Sri Lanka with a special emphasis on the current language policy. Equity in education is usually advocated at primary level based on the universal primary education concept so highly upheld by the World Bank. However, the present high human development indicators are undoubtedly due to Sri Lanka's free education policy in native languages. The paper concludes stressing the importance to retain the national education policy as a means of empowerment and liberation of its masses and creating stronger ethnic harmony.     

The power struggle over education in developing countries: The case of the UNESCO-World Bank Co-operative program, 1964-1989

This paper examines the relationship between the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) between the 1960s and the 1980s. It focuses on the Co-operative Program (CP) between the two organizations, which was established in 1964 and lasted officially until 1989. In the context of the Co-operative Program, the Education Financing Division (EFD) was established, a joint unit located in UNESCO, with the purpose of carrying out technical missions to assist governments in the identification and preparation of educational projects and the formulation of funding requests to the World Bank. Drawing on archival research and interviews with former UNESCO and World Bank officials, the paper traces the history of the Co-operative Program, which was characterized by intense power struggles exacerbated by Cold War tensions. During the 25 years of the duration of the Co-operative Program, the World Bank developed into the most influential policy shaper for education in developing countries, while the influence of UNESCO, created in the post-World War II order as the United Nations’ designated organization for education, declined. Using Bourdieu’s concept of fields and DiMaggio and Powell’s concept of isomorphism as analytical lenses, the World Bank’s expansion to a development agency will be explained by its greater autonomy as a field, endowed with more capital based on the rationalization of education and isomorphic processes of professionalization of the “field of power” of educational planning. To the detriment of UNESCO, the World Bank became the powerhouse of a global governance structure that was built with support from the United States government and furthered by the rise of economics.     

The World Bank,support for universities,and asymmetrical power relations in international development

This article examines the role of the World Bank in advancing higher education sectors in the developing world, considering in particular the increasing power and strength of a global knowledge-based economy. Given the powerful role that intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank play in shaping global economic policies, the authors are concerned about how the Bank’s policies and actions may limit knowledge generation and capacity building of universities in the developing world. Relatedly, the authors use case studies of the Bank’s involvement in Thailand and Uganda to better understand the role it plays in producing and reproducing forms of global hegemony. The authors discuss hegemony in terms of neocolonialism and neoliberalism. Neocolonialism is described as forms of domination advanced by powerful nations and their institutions, while neoliberalism is understood as an economic ideology by which weaker nations may be brought into greater alignment with global trade initiatives.     

Education in developing countries: the view from Mount Olympus

In a recent issue ofProspects we published a review of the World Bank's recent publication,Education Sector Working Paper. This publication represents a major policy statement by the Bank on the subject of education and significant (not to say radical) departure from previous policies. It is a document all the more important in view of the enormous funding power of the World Bank and the undeniable influence of its policies on national governments and even on international organizations. TheEducation Sector Working Paper, which has been generally welcomed in international circles, is certainly not without its critics both in the developing countries and in the industrialized world. We feel that at a time when there is a push for examining educational policies and concepts on an international level, we can contribute to the debate by publishing some criticism and rejoinder centring around the World Bank publication, much as we did in 1973 and 1974 on the subject ofLearning to Be, the report of the International Commission on the Development of Education. In this issue, therefore, we open the discussion with an article by Peter Williams, originally written for a one-day review meeting to consider the World Bank publication, held on 19 May 1975, at the University of London Institute of Education, and which he revised forProspects. The institute hopes to publish a report of its meeting, together with the papers, before the end of this year. Peter Williams' critique seems to us to be particularly interesting because it is based on the author's disagreement with the prevailing pessimism in the world, reflected by the World Bank, on the state of education in the developing nations. As always, our readers are warmly invited to contribute their reactions in any form they choose.     

Re-visioning from the inside: getting under the skin of the World Bank’s Education Sector Strategy

This paper uses the device of imagining Education personnel at the World Bank engaging in study and discussion that causes them to rethink their 1999 Education Sector Strategy document. The Bank’s educators discuss issues that lead them to see that the World Bank’s assumptions of human capital theory are deficient. Having studied the severe limitations in the effectiveness of the education reforms of several countries, they admit not only that the education model being promoted by the Bank is flawed, but also that its preferred paradigm of modernist development is unsustainable. Thanks to the program of study and reflection, Bank educators decide to meet the challenge of reinventing themselves as educators collaborating with their national clients in developing new paradigms in which both creative education and sustainable development can flourish.     

Knowledge aid as instrument of regulation: World Bank's non-lending higher education support for Ethiopia

In the context of low-income countries, the role of donors in public policymaking is of great importance. Donors use a combination of lending and non-lending instruments as pathways of influence to shape policy directions in aid-recipient countries. This paper reports some findings from a doctoral study on the role of the World Bank in the recent higher education (HE) policy reform process in Ethiopia. It focuses on the nature and impact of non-lending assistance by the Bank to the Ethiopian HE subsystem. Based on an interpretive policy analysis of sector reviews and advisory activities of the Bank, and selected national HE policy documents, the following findings are highlighted. First, as a ‘knowledge institution’, the World Bank produces, systematises and disseminates knowledge through policy advice, policy reports, analytical sector reviews, and thematic conferences and workshops. Second, knowledge aid from the Bank not only has a profound discursive effect on shaping Ethiopian HE policy reform priorities in accordance with its neoliberal educational agenda but also undermines the knowledge production capacity of the nation. The paper also argues that, for an effective education policy support, the Bank needs to shift its modality of engagement from knowledge aid to research capacity building.     

跨国工程移民权益与环境资源的保护——以哈萨克斯坦“CAREC”运输走廊工程案为例

在跨国工程建设中必须对移民权益与环境资源予以妥善保护,否则容易引发纠纷,哈萨克斯坦＂CAREC＂走廊工程案就是一个典型例子。在哈萨克斯坦政府和法院解决未果的情况下,该案最终交由工程融资机构世界银行的问责机构进行处理,至今仍未彻底终结。对世界银行监察组在本案中的运作及哈萨克斯坦政府的缺失进行探究有着重要意义。     

世界银行职业教育政策的演变

世界银行是对教育项目资助最多的国际组织,几十年来世界银行的职业教育政策经历了几个阶段性的演变,对世界各国的职业教育政策产生了重要影响.本文梳理了世界银行的职业教育贷款政策演变进程,并对其政策进行了评价.     

World Bank okays public interest in higher education

This essay review discusses the report of TheTask Force on Higher Education and Society(TFHES), convened in 1998 by the World Bank butindependently financed and staffed incollaboration with UNESCO and severalfoundations. Peril and Promise marks anhistoric turning point in the framework forpostsecondary educational planning. Rate-of-return analysis has been de-emphasized,while promotion of the public interest hasmoved front and center. The report of theTFHES, published in 2000 by the World Bank, hasreceived deserved attention in some parts ofthe world and has even developed an associatedwebsite (http://www.tfhe.net). As we explainbelow, the framework advocated by the TFHES isalready being used in official policy documentsof the World Bank, whose position will surelymultiply the influence of the Task Forcethrough its effect on other development banksas well as on programs of bilateral nationalassistance. And yet, despite its seminalimportance, the TFHES report has yet to befully appreciated by many researchers of highereducation. With this essay review, we hope tobroaden the discussion of the Task Force, and to offer a preliminary assessment of its impactin the 2002 World Bank policy document, and toconnect its arguments to questions that arecentral in the scholarly literature of ourfield.     

Doing Business under construction

<正>In 2004 the World Bank published the first Doing Business Report(DBR).A few years later it was clear,that it became one of the few flagship knowledge product of this important institution.When Dr Jim Yong Kim become the 12th president of the World Bank on 1 July 2012 one of his first initiatives in October 2012was to work on an Independent Panel Review(IPR)to review DBR with regards to its methodology,data collection process,     

世界银行对中国的教育贷款研究

改革开放以来,我国经济已取得了飞速发展,世界银行作为促进我国发展的一个重要的外部资金来源也相应地改变了它的贷款重点。从历史的线索考察这种改变以及世界银行现行的政策和以后的趋势,对我国教育取得世界银行的进一步贷款尤为重要。     

Academic achievement,pupil participation and integration of group work skills in secondary school classrooms in Trinidad and Barbados

Studies have shown a positive relationship between a rise in schooling levels and economic production [World Bank, 2005. A Time to Choose: Caribbean Development in the 21st Century. World Bank, Washington, DC; Jules, V., Panneflek, A., 2000. EFA in the Caribbean: Assessment 2000, Sub-Regional Report, vol. 2, The State of Education in the Caribbean in the 1990s. UNESCO, Kingston, Jamaica; Haddad, W.D., 1990. Education and Development; Evidence for New Priorities. World Bank Discussion Paper 95. The World Bank, Washington, DC; McClelland, D., 1969. Does Education Accelerate Economic Growth. In: Eckstein, M.A., Noah, H.J. (Eds.), Scientific Investigations in Comparative Education. Macmillan, London], but this link may be limited in systems of education where traditional pedagogic methods have been dominant (such as the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Barbados where underachievement is also associated with lack of participation and low levels of social inclusion skills by teachers: World Bank, 1992. Access, Quality and Efficiency in Caribbean Education: a Regional Study. World Bank, Washington, DC; Kutnick, P., Jules, V., Layne, A., 1997. Gender and School Achievement in the Caribbean. Department for International Development, London). Into traditional classroom contexts in Trinidad and Barbados, a new social pedagogic method was introduced by teachers and changes in attainment and motivation of pupils and attitudes of teachers were assessed over two terms in secondary schools.     

Using quantitative data in World Bank per-student funding reform projects: data,designs and dilemmas in transition countries

Since the late 1980s, education systems have increasingly moved to allocating funding for general education by means of a per-student formula. The trend started with developed economies and moved to transition and developing economies, where the World Bank has promoted the adoption of per-student funding (PSF). But promoting a particular reform, such as PSF, by including it in a package of sector-specific development projects funded by World Bank grants or loans, and employing local and international specialist staff do not guarantee successful implementation. This paper examines experience with implementing PSF to school level in transition countries, comparing varying degrees of success to date (2013) in Bulgaria, Moldova and Kosovo. The paper considers the dilemmas inherent in designing PSF formulae for schools, how this played out in each of the countries and the reasons for varying success in implementation.     

Markets,equity and democracy — structural adjustment and the tensions of educational change in South Africa

In 1994 South Africa embarked on a process of major reform of an education system that had existed to support and maintain apartheid. Two of the key principles behind these reforms were greater equity and democracy. However, although not formally having a structural adjustment policy, since 1994 the South African government has had close ties with the World Bank and has increasingly adopted the type of free market macro-economic policies that it favours. This article examines tensions in South African educational policy caused by existing policies favouring state initiated redistribution of resources and power on the one hand and the wider context of a mounting emphasis on limiting public expenditure and increasing private provision on the other. It concludes by asking whether South African education would benefit by borrowing from the World Bank to invest in human resources and argues that the potential dangers outweigh the potential benefits.