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Since the 1960s, Egypt has sought to increase equality in access to higher education. Data show that completion of pre-tertiary education has become more equal. However, this trend toward equality did not extend to higher education. Rather, entry to higher education has become more unequal during this period, principally due to tracking at the secondary level. Secondary track is highly correlated with wealth: students from the poorest families overwhelming attend technical education; most children from wealthy families attend general (academic) secondary. Lucas (2001) has called this relationship between wealth and tracking “Effectively Maintained Inequality.”

The aim of the chapter is to investigate the changing structural position of post-secondary schools in Poland, seen from the perspective of the expansion of higher education from one side and the current reform of vocational education from the other. Do post-secondary schools enhance opportunities for those who might not otherwise consider further education, especially when we consider lower cost, open admissions and greater accessibility in comparison with higher education institutions? Or do they play a role of a ‘discounted’ and ‘undervalued’ education for those who could not manage to enter three-year-bachelor cycles in tertiary education and thus were forced to lower their initial educational aspirations? The opening up of higher education to new student populations was done by the rapid expansion of the private (paid for) sector and the fee-paying courses in the public sector. Liberal educational policy not only opened an opportunity for the privatization in higher education, but also expanded the market-driven provision at the post-secondary level. The discussion on the relevance of post-secondary vocational qualifications must be seen within the context of the continual inflation of diplomas/degrees and the unemployment of graduates after finishing higher education. Since 2010, there has been a reverse process initiated at the governmental level in Poland: reform schemes to increase the participation of young people in vocational education and training. However, the structural position and functions of post-secondary schools, as well as their role in the employability of young people, are not subject to any open discussion at the political level. This sort of status quo concerning post-secondary institutions means that their institutional identity issues are resolved and their structural position defined predominantly by market forces.

Purpose: Although the transnational mobility of youth is prevalent across the globe, the policies and strategies used by developing countries to promote youths’ transnational mobility remains unclear. This chapter aims to discuss a few emerging trends and concerns related to youth transnational mobility and human capital accumulation. It focuses on the specific case of youth transnational migration from India. As such, this chapter considers the factors that have led to the construction of aspirations for transnational migration among Indian youth.

Study approach: In this chapter, we examine youth transnational mobility by synthesising the major literature available in the area of globalisation and transnational migration in the developing countries context. The study also incorporates the policy debates and secondary data evidence in these domains to substantiate the arguments.

Findings: Mainly focussing on the internal state of affairs of India, this work highlights three critical issues (a) new norms and practices of human capital accumulation within India’s knowledge economy; (b) understanding state and formal-informal ‘commoditised’ market dynamics in the changing aspirations for global human capital formation, specifically through transnational migration; and (c) examining the upshots of youth transnational mobility in terms of the production of relatively new forms of caste and class inequalities within Indian society.

Originality: This conceptual piece of work is an initial foray to unpack the complexities of Indian youths’ migration for specialised forms of human capital accumulation in a global landscape. The study motivates future policy-oriented interdisciplinary research on education and transnational mobility, specifically in empirical research projects.

One of the most significant worldwide transformations in education over the past several decades has been the drastic increase in women's access to colleges and universities. Research suggests that the trend of the narrowing gender gap in higher education is remarkable (particularly, among the industrialized nations), and sometimes it involves an interesting phenomenon – women outnumbering men, in what some scholars refer to as a “reverse gender gap” (Goldin, Katz, & Kuziemko, 2006; Woodfield & Earl-Novell, 2006; King, 2006; Mortenson, 1999). This higher education gender gap trend is consistent with a general global trend of narrowing gender gaps in education in recent decades. The data – at least, analysis of statistical data from countries around the world – support the contention that the disparity between men and women, at all levels of education and in terms of both academic achievement and enrollment rates, is not as dramatic as it once was (Arnot, David, & Weiner, 1999; United Nations Children's Fund, 2005).

Few people with special educational needs (SEN) had access to higher education in Brazil until the 1980s, mainly due to their lack of access to basic education and a lack of specific public policies for this population. It was only in 2003 that the Brazilian government implemented strategies for the dissemination of the factors referring to inclusive education. The objective was one of the support for the transformation of educational systems into inclusive educational systems. As these policies are recent; few studies have been carried out in Brazil. According to Brazilian statistical data, the number of enrollments connected to special education in regular basic education classes, in 2015, was almost 751,000 students, while in higher education in diverse graduation courses the number was 38,000. In this sense, this chapter aims to unveil and discuss Brazilian public policies for the access and permanence of SEN students in higher education. Reflections will also be presented related to the evolution of the number of enrollments of students with specific SEN (visual, physical, hearing, and intellectual) in basic and higher education, as well as the implementation of public policies focused on this population in a Brazilian context.

For over six decades, multilateral agencies in education have prompted the international community to embrace proposals for large-scale initiatives to solve once and for all the problems of illiteracy and the lack of universal schooling. Even with their highly contrastive policy frameworks, the major agencies can periodically be relied upon to call for military-like assaults to achieve basic education for all, usually over a 10–15-year time frame. Just as predictable have been inflated expectations, failures of analysis, strategy and financing, and the tendency of agencies to hold other actors to account for failing to meet agency expectations. The much-trumpeted World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA, 1990) is analyzed in the wider perspective of post-WW2 agency programs for universal literacy and primary education. Although expectations of success were high at the time, the WCEFA initiative quickly evaporated, although it remained for some time as a much-cited normative and political point of reference. The failure of WCEFA is analyzed in terms of the strains and stresses facing multilateral education at the end of the Cold War and in terms of more recent multilateral commitments to education for all.

This chapter takes a look at the evolution of Egypt’s educational system under different regimes that were in power during the years of 1954–2011. By analyzing the education policy under the regimes of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar El Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak, the chapter aims to show how different ideologies have influenced the educational system and the larger goals of social development in the country. In particular, the chapter will highlight the “open door policy” of economic liberalization and the abolishment of the guaranteed government employment policy for graduates that was initiated by Anwar El Sadat and continued during the Mubarak’ era. This became one of the factors that led to growing resentment against state’s policy and fueled the revolution in 2011. The chapter will conclude that the historical context provides a lens to understand the complexity of how education systems are formed and reformed under various regimes and ideologies, and the ensuing consequences of social inequity. What remains to be seen is how educational policy will be shaped in post-revolution Egypt.

This chapter aims to present the development of education in the South-East European (SEE) countries, which took place under strong influence of the European Union (EU) education policy. This is examined irrespective of the different relationships these countries have with the EU. Some of these are Member States, and others are candidate or partner countries. The chapter opens with the explanation of the concept of SEE, and it is processed with a discussion on the concept of Europeanization in the education field. The concept refers to the process of forming a common education policy in the EU. This is also transferred to non-EU European countries. The third subchapter synthetizes and evaluates the main characteristics and challenges of the education in the SEE countries from the perspective of common European policy goals.