Date of Graduation

Winter 12-16-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in International Studies

Department/Program

International Studies

First Advisor

Keally McBride

Abstract

I began this project worried that states no longer contributed to the direction of educational reform. I thought I would find that global economic forces, the integration of labor markets and the statistical assessment of these relationships were determining the direction of reform. What I found was that national models of education, institutional structures, and their supporting political ideologies still greatly influenced policy. Nevertheless, it is still important to consider the pressure exuded by the integration of the global labor force. My research focusing on China and Europe revealed that different states translated global labor market pressures into educational reform according to long standing state ideas about the role of education and the influence of state institutions. In other words, both institutions and state ideologies still matter, but need to be viewed as influenced by increasingly common technocratic and external economic pressures.

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