Introduction to special section: ``Perspectives on comparative higher education"

Abstract

In this special section of Higher Education, three leading scholars in the comparative study of education speak to distinctive research questions and methods that stem from three different social science frameworks ‐ postmodernism, feminism, and political economy/political sociology. Bill Tierney, co-editor (with Ken Kempner) of The Social Role of Higher Education: Comparative Perspectives(1996), explores “The Autonomy of Knowledge and the Decline of the Subject: Postmodernism and the Study of Comparative Higher Education.” Nelly Stromquist, author of Women and Education in Latin America: Knowledge, Power, and Change (1992), examines “Gender Studies: A Global Perspective of their Evolution and Challenge to Comparative Higher Education.” And Sheila Slaughter, coauthor (with Larry L. Leslie) of Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University(1997), analyzes “Problems in Comparative Higher Education: Political Economy, Political Sociology, and Postmodernism.” Each of these contributors draws on considerable literature outside of the field of higher education to pose issues for future research and to identify a range of methods for undertaking such research in studies of higher education. Long time readers of Higher Education may remember a special issue of the journal in 1996 (volume 32, number 4) entitled, “The State of Comparative Research in Higher Education.” How is the current special issue different? Does it simply “update” the state-of-the-art review of 1996, providing a five-year rolling review of current developments? In a word, the answer is no. The contributors in 1996 for the most part work out of organizational sociology and policy sciences conceptual frameworks, which could be seen as the prevailing perspectives characterizing comparative higher education generally and scholarship in Higher Education in particular. The stories that are featured in such studies have to do with the autonomy of higher education institutions relative to national ministries and federal governments, the