Shifting Tides in Global Higher Education

Mary Allison Witt is Assistant Director of Academic Affairs at the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Her research focuses upon globalization and political economy of higher education, and issues of equitable access to higher education. She received a PhD in educational policy studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

«Mary Allison Witt brings to life 'the global network of higher education' - not as a facile neoliberal given, but as social facts that are made and negotiated institution by institution. 'Shifting Tides in Global Higher Education' takes us inside a single partnership between two universities, one in Singapore, the other in the US Midwest. While the cry of global educational isomorphism might lead us to see nothing but the workings of American hegemony, Witt's fine-grained analysis introduces the often fragile processes through which both universities adopted 'shared codes of communication' to navigate conflicting organizational structures and institutional cultures. This book is a must-read for all those interested in how 'global' education is lived locally.» (Nancy Abelmann, Harry E. Preble Professor, Anthropology, Asian American Studies, East Asian Languages & Cultures; Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, Humanities, Arts, and Related Fields, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
«'Shifting Tides in Global Higher Education' provides one of the very few case studies of how cross-border collaboration actually works.» (Philip Altbach, Monan University Professor, Boston College)
«Mary Allison Witt's engaging account of the cooperation between a research university in the American Midwest and a research institution in Singapore addresses an important part of the emerging network of global knowledge society. The internationalization of higher education is a vital chapter in unfolding twenty-first century globalization.» (Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Mellichamp Professor of Global Studies and Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara)