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China has invested massively in higher education, reaching a mass system, envisaging, as a next step, reaching a universal system. Brazil is still an elite system but needs to create adequate public policies to migrate to a mass system. The purpose of this article is to analyze the paradigms for a mass educational system, with regard to the quality of education offered, and the prospects for achieving a universal system, with Brazil and China as a reference.

The author applied an exploratory and qualitative method, through categorical content analysis. The data were collected through nine interviews with government managers, 15 unstructured (open) questionnaires to specialists in higher education and four student leadership.

The results indicate that the change from an elite system to a mass system impacts quality, as there is an inevitable change in experience. However, this modification does not testify against the mass system, as it is necessary for a nation to pass through it and structure itself adequately in order to reach the universal system, a path desired by both countries.

The study presented the reflections observed by the migration from the elite system to the mass system from the main stakeholders of the system in China and the prospects for Brazil to become a mass system. Additionally, it presented the perspectives for both countries to achieve the desired universal system.

Entrepreneurial approaches to public mass education are not easily developed or managed by public sector institutions. Instead, private sector entities are often responsible for the development and implementation of innovative and entrepreneurial education. Part of the reason may be the resistance to change that isomorphism in mass education engenders, but the involvement of privately-funded, organized, and managed organizations plays a significant role as well. Private sector-driven educational change has become the dominant mode of entrepreneurship in 21st century national educational systems, but there are challenges and obstacles to privately managing public sector institutions such as education and the activities or curricula that comprise its core. To understand this phenomena the promises and challenges for innovation and entrepreneurship are discussed through an institutional framework.

During the 20th century, the United States rapidly developed its research capacity by fostering a broad base of institutions of higher education led by a small core of highly productive research universities. By the latter half of the century, scientists in a greatly expanded number of universities across the United States published the largest annual number of scholarly publications in STEM+ fields from one nation. This expansion was not a product of some science and higher education centralized plan, rather it flowed from the rise of mass tertiary education in this nation. Despite this unprecedented productivity, some scholars suggested that universities would cease to lead American scientific research. This chapter investigates the ways that the United States’ system of higher education underpinned American science into the 21st century.

The authors present a historical and sociological case study of the development of the United States’ system of higher education and its associated research capacity. The historical and sociological context informs our analysis of data from the SPHERE team dataset, which was compiled from the Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database.

We argue that American research capacity is a function of the United States’ broad base of thousands of public and broadly accessible institutions of higher education plus its smaller, elite sector of “super” research universities; and that the former serve to culturally support the later. Unlike previous research, we find that American higher education is not decreasing its contributions to the nation’s production of STEM+ scholarship.

The chapter provides empirical analyses, which support previous sociological theory about mass higher education and super research universities.

Purpose: The study explores how educators use mass media to sensemake their experiences in relation to school shootings.

Methodology/approach: The present chapter uses content analysis to analyze educator tweets and results from an anonymous online survey.

Findings: Twitter is used by educators in the aftermath of school shootings to sensemake the impact these events have on teaching and learning outcomes. Moreover, educators turn to Twitter to debate larger issues related to gun control and arming teachers. Collectively, educators remain committed to their institutions and students; however, they may struggle to meet the ever-changing demands of what it means to be a teacher in the post-Columbine educational landscape.

Research limitations: While providing a starting point for understanding how educators sensemake their experiences with mass media, there are limitations. The sample size was limited to 55 tweets and 40 survey respondents. Furthermore, researcher bias is a concern. Both researchers work in higher education and have experienced the emotional “heaviness” that comes with discussions of school shootings.

Originality/value: This study provides insights into how educators use mass media to sensemake school shootings as both content producer and consumer. Findings indicate that through the identification of patterns within educators’ sensemaking processes, educational institutions can develop better systems for processing the effect of gun violence on the teaching experience and within the classroom.

The development of a knowledge society in the Arabian Gulf is a nested and contextualized process that relies upon the development of nation-specific knowledge economies and region-wide knowledge cultures. The role of internationally comparative education data and mass education systems in the Gulf as mechanisms for the development of knowledge economies, societies, and cultures are discussed and debated in relation to the unique contextual conditions countries operate within. The role of “big” data and mass education in creating expectations for achievement, accountability, and access is shown to significantly contribute to the development of knowledge societies by providing the infrastructure and capacity for sustainable change, which potentially leads to the institutionalization of knowledge acquisition, exchange, and creation in the Gulf and beyond.

Neo-institutional theory has provided a productive perspective on comparative and international education phenomena since the 1970s. Yet, recent critical discourse about educational phenomena investigated through a neo-institutional lens has been somewhat one-sided. The authors reexamine neo-institutional theory and its application to comparative and international education by demonstrating the ways that the theory frames both macro- and micro-level educational phenomena. The ability to shift the discourse about neo-institutional theory from a largely macro-level framework to one capable of investigating educational changes occurring at the micro level is vital to understanding the comprehensiveness of national educational systems and the ways that both world culture and individual agency contribute to these systems. Specifically, using the empirical application of neo-institutional theory to the intersection of information and communication technology (ICT) and internationally comparative educational data, the macro and micro levels of educational phenomena can be productively examined. In so doing, this chapter shifts the discourse on how and why neo-institutional theory reflects cross-national educational trends and micro-contextual effects on education worldwide.

Standards are normative specifications for the steering of education policy and practice. They aim to clarify educational objectives, means and practice, by giving a shape to the worlds of education. They raise criticisms of oversimplification often splitting the discussion in unnecessary oppositions between pro and con standardisation. To escape from a fruitless antagonism, this chapter proposes the concept of waves of standardisation. Standards are essential characteristics of any organisation, including schools. Historically, standardisation of education increases with the emergence of modernity, and in particular with the unfolding and consolidation of mass schooling. Since then, however, waves of standardisation develop into diverse political scenarios and are oriented by different rationales. More than a standard world of education, a world of standards sustained by several circuits of expertise where competing logics of justifications are embedded in various political rationalities is illustrated.

As comparativists of education are well aware, over the second half of the 20th century there was a dramatic increase in the pace of educational expansion around the world. This revolution has made the world a schooled place both in terms of enrollment rates and increased average total years in schooling. What has been particularly noticeable is the degree to which governments in all types of nations have come to see that education plays a central role in the future development of the nation's human capital, and in turn governments have become the main providers of schooling. This alone is a significant shift from anything ever seen before the 20th century. Further this remarkable expansion of education has fostered notable homogeneity of goals, aims, and basic organizational forms of elementary and secondary schooling and, more recently, higher education.

Broad spectrum approaches to health promotion, using mass media techniques to reach the general population, have potential value in raising the profile of health issues, providing legitimacy to efforts at community level and providing the impetus for other activities. Their cost‐effectiveness, however, is difficult to assess and has been questioned by some. This paper makes the case for a systematic approach to the evaluation of mass media health promotional interventions. Formative evaluation is needed to ensure the optimally effective design of such interventions, followed by process evaluation to identify factors which have enhanced or hindered implementation, followed by outcome evaluation, to assess the extent to which desired effects have been achieved, and adverse effects avoided. An eclectic approach to outcome evaluation is recommended including the use of experimental approaches wherever possible, but also ensuring that non‐experimental methods are rigorous and comprehensive. This review is aimed at practitioners using mass media interventions in health promotion as well as students of health promotion and its evaluation.