THE IMPACT OF GLOBALISATION ON HIGHER EDUCATION
CURRICULUM REFORM: LITERATURE SURVEY
Paula Ensor
As part of the project on higher education policy, institutions, society and
globalisation, a modest survey of relevant literature was undertaken to assess
how curricula and teaching are changing in higher education institutions
around the world.
Both Scott (1984) and Gibbons (2000) suggest that ‘the university’ is
becoming transformed in a uniform way in all parts of the world and that credit
accumulation and transfer, as well as interdisciplinarity in undergraduate
teaching, characterise university faculties globally. It was a matter of interest,
therefore, to investigate whether this was, or is, the case.
Although based largely on a small number of journals devoted to issues in
higher education, the literature survey proved to be illuminating. It is striking
how broad, complex and varied are the issues with which university systems
are grappling: in Latin America (Schwartzman, 1993; Klein & Schwartzman,
1993; Twombly, 1997; Brunner, 1993; Balan, 1993; Lucio & Serrano, 1993;
Kent, 1993), North America (Ferris, 1991; Barrow, 1996), Africa (Hughes &
Mwiria, 1990), the Indian subcontinent (Altbach, 1993; Chitnis, 1993), former
eastern bloc countries (Mok and Wat,1998; Mok, 1999; Yang, 2000; Bain,
Zakharov & Nosova 1998), the UK (Tasker & Packham, 1990; Peters, 1992;
Daniel, 1993; Green, 1995; Trowler, 1996; Trowler,1997; Seddon, 1997;
Knight & Trowler, 2000), the Pacific rim (Morris et al, 1994; Cheng, 1995;
Mok, 1999; Cummings, 1994; Ryu, 1998; Morris et al, 1994; Cheng, 1995;
Mok, 1999) and Australasia (Peters & Roberts, 2000; Mahony, 1990;
Marshall, 1990; and Symes, 1996).
Significantly, the structuring of the undergraduate curriculum is rarely written
about, except in the most general terms by, for example, researchers who
describe ex-eastern bloc countries introducing courses into the undergraduate
curriculum which were previously outlawed. In the developing countries, the
problems facing universities are in crucial respects different from those Scott
discusses in his ‘crisis of the university’ (see for example, Van den Bor and
Shutte, 1991). India, with the second largest higher education system in the
world, epitomises the crisis of the universities of the poor: problems of
continued expansion, deteriorating standards and limited resources, and the
political complexities involved in achieving systemic reform.
The review suggests further that while there does seem to be some
convergence of educational policy at the level of rhetoric, there appears to be
much less convergence in practice (see, for example, Ganderton, 1996, and
Green, 1999). Commenting on the UK, which forms the contextual backdrop
1
of Scott’s engagement with higher education issues, the credit accumulation
and transfer system, according to Trowler, (1996) has gained ground within
the ex-polytechnics, but is far less established in the traditional universities. In
the former, there has been relatively rapid adoption of modularisation,
semesterisation, franchising, the accreditation of work-based learning, credit
transfer and, to a lesser extent, the accreditation of prior learning and
experience. However, this movement towards credit systems in general has
been cautious. Madeline Green (1995) suggests that reactions to
modularisation in the UK have been mixed, with many academics fearing that
it could eventually erode the integrity of the British first degree, “leading to the
‘pick ‘n mix’ university degree typical of the American system, where students
move among universities and among departments and can obtain an
undergraduate degree with a wide array of coursework and possibly little
depth in the major.” (p232).
Significantly, this review of literature provided little tangible empirical evidence
of the credit exchange discourse working in curriculum reconstruction in
practice, or evidence of undergraduate curricula being structured as
interdisciplinary offerings on a global scale.
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