Americans who visit Chinese schools quickly realize that many of our beliefs and assumptions about education hold little water in China: In the United States, our urban public schools perform relatively poorly, but in China the urban systems rate among the nation’s best. Here we often regard private schools as a cut above public ones [...]

The campus of the largest university in the world, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), in southern Delhi, is surprisingly small and modest. A cluster of nondescript, one-story administrative buildings line the drive leading to a brick library, where fans whip the stuffy air and a few students hunch over outdated computers. Further down the [...]

LANGFANG, China — Hundreds of private colleges and universities have opened in China in the past decade in response to soaring demand for higher education in the world’s most populous nation. The growing private sector fills a niche in a market long dominated by public universities. The private schools offer millions of students a no-frills [...]

The flood of China’s rural residents into cities has resulted in millions of migrants living illegally in urban areas where they are often denied basic social services, like education. In 2006, the central government made it clear that compulsory education for migrant children is the responsibility of local governments, and that migrant children should be [...]

KUNMING, China—With dirt streaking their faces and clothes, children shout and run around a concrete courtyard that doubles as a playground at the Dexin School. Minutes later, they squirm in their seats after being corralled into classrooms with bars on the windows. Their voices can be heard disrupting their English class as American volunteers try [...]

TORONTO—At the University of Manitoba, where she enrolled after high school, it seemed to take Angela Conrad forever to satisfy her degree requirements by taking courses in women’s studies, Greek mythology, and other courses she considered impractical. All she really wanted was a job in marketing. “It takes people two years, sometimes three years, to [...]

Americans learn a bit more every year about the strengths and shortcomings of the education systems in other countries, thanks to a steady raft of international test data, academic scholarship, and analysis arriving from home and abroad. Today, elected officials of all political stripes and advocates for a range of school policies scrutinize the results [...]

PATNA, India – On the outskirts of this sprawling city in one of India’s poorest states, the whitewashed columns and domes of Chanakya National Law University rise next to a deep and murky swamp. To get there, visitors bump along potholed streets lined with idle men sipping tea and cows rooting through piles of garbage. [...]

Residents of Bihar, India’s poorest state, often remind visitors that their home was not always known for high levels of poverty and illiteracy. It used to be the cradle of Southeast Asian civilization and a place to which scholars from all over the world flocked. In the next few years, many are hoping that Bihar [...]

BRIGHTON, England—When he was 14, Daniel Conn was part of a circle of friends so bright they programmed computer code for fun. One of his classmates went on to work in financial services, while another opened his own business. But when Conn tried college, he said, “I lost confidence in myself. The exams came and [...]

TOKYO—While on assignment in Japan recently, Blaine Harden sat down with Yujiro Hayashi, president of the Institute of National Colleges of Technology (Kosen), to talk about what the United States can learn from the Kosen system, why technical education is essential, what the future holds—and more. Q: What are Kosen Colleges of Technology doing right, [...]

HACHIOJI, Japan – When he was 14 and living at home, no electronic device was safe from Soichiro Tsunakawa. He took apart cassette recorders, stereo speakers and all of his family’s mobile phones. He swears that when he put them back together, they always worked. The Sony Corporation apparently believes him. The seventh-year student here [...]

As part of our coverage of international education, reporter Blaine Harden traveled to Japan recently to learn more about a five-year program that educates a small number of students at 57 high-skill, hands-on national colleges of technology, known as Kosen. Kosen schools are helping to close a “skills gap”–which the United States faces as well–where graduates [...]

Ruby Khatoon’s experience is common for many young women in Bihar, India’s poorest state: Her father didn’t allow her to go to school because the 50 cents she earned each day making incense was too valuable. At age 15, she didn’t even know the alphabet. Her neighbor Nazia Hassan, 16, dropped out of school in [...]

HACHIOJI, Japan—Every year, about one percent of Japanese 15-year-olds turn away from high school. Then they turn into full-time nerds-in-training, enrolling in colleges where they make robots and write software, test diodes and study English, dirty their hands on factory floors and wait for job offers to come flooding in. Flood in they do, even [...]

America’s universities have long had a reputation for being the best in the world—a truth so apparently self-evident that it’s rarely been doubted or questioned. But what if the nation’s 5,000 institutions of higher education, as a whole, have fallen behind their international peers? Indeed, there’s lots of evidence that American higher education could be [...]

Back-to-school season has been marked by student protests and teacher strikes around the world, making the debate over education reform in the United States look mild by comparison. It’s not uncommon for educators in some of these places hold demonstrations on a regular basis. In a year marked by severe economic troubles and civil unrest [...]

President Barack Obama hasn’t wavered in his goal for U.S. higher education since announcing it two and a half years ago: By 2020, the country will again lead the world in the percentage of young people (aged 25-34) who are college graduates. To hit this mark, the Obama administration aims to have 58-60 percent of [...]