There are many important questions to ask about the widespread push toward world-class status for universities around the world. Why is 'world-class' the standard to which a nation should aspire to build at least a subset of its tertiary education system? Might many countries be better served by...

The countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) are currently emerging from the deepest recession suffered by any developing region. Post-crisis conditions are very different from those of preceding years. Financial resources are more limited and more expensive, and export growth is restrained by...

The Singapore economy has undergone significant stages of development since the 1960s. It has grown from its traditional role as a regional port and distribution center in the 1960s to an international manufacturing and service center in the 1970s and 1980s, and now into a center of...

Ghana has a youthful population of 24 million and has shown impressive gains in economic growth and in poverty reduction over the last two decades. The necessary sustained growth requires three critical steps: (1) increase productivity in the strategic economic sectors, (2) diversify the...

With the end of civil war in 1991, Ethiopia's government launched a New Education and Training Policy in 1994 which, by the early 2000s, had already produced remarkable results. The gross enrollment ratio rose from 20 to 62 percent in primary education between 1993-94 and 2001-02; and in secondary...

This book seeks to contribute to knowledge in two areas that are key to poverty reduction and social development: education and youth vulnerability. Specifically, the book focuses on the relationship between poverty, ethnicity, gender, and educational exclusion in four Northeast states in...

A fundamental question facing East Asia, especially its low- and middle income economies, is how to sustain or even accelerate the growth of recent decades. From 1950 to 2005, for example, the region's real income per head rose sevenfold. With aging populations, these economies will need to...

This report demonstrated that the key for success in a globalized world lies increasingly in how effectively a country can assimilate the available knowledge and build comparative advantages in areas with good growth prospects and how it can use technology to address the most pressing...