Globalization in science education: An inevitable and beneficial trend

SummaryGlobalization is one aspect of the larger phenomenon of modernization, which describes societies characterized by progressive growth in the complexity of communications. Despite its inevitable problems, globalization is a generally desirable phenomenon, since it enables increased efficiency, effectiveness and capability of societies and thereby, potentially benefits most people most of the time. Scientific research was one of the first global communication systems, especially at its most advanced levels. And high quality scientific education at the post-doctoral level is also now essentially global. The next steps will be for lower level science education – at doctoral, undergraduate, and even school teaching levels – to become progressively globalized. This phenomenon is already happening in the mathematical and quantitative sciences, and will probably spread to include other kinds of science. But to be efficient requires the development of a trading medium of internationally standardized and quantitative educational credits – for instance, standard certificates, objective comparative examinations, and a hierarchical qualifications structure (which will almost certainly be based on the United States system). Globalized education also requires a common language for organizational communications, which is already in place for the quantitative and mathematical sciences, and will be increasingly the case as competence in a simplified form of international scientific English becomes more universal. As such a global science education system grows there will be increased competition and migration of teachers and students. The law of comparative advantage suggests that such mobility will encourage societies to specialize in what they do best. For example, some countries (even among wealthy nations) may provide little advanced scientific education, and import the necessary expertise from abroad – this situation seems to be developing in Germany and France, who lack any top-quality research universities. Conversely, just a few countries may provide the bulk of advanced science education teaching - as well as applied and pure research personnel – for the rest of the world: potentially China and India might supply most of world’s mathematical expertise. In conclusion, there are two complementary aspects to the globalization of science education: these are standardization and specialization. We anticipate a simultaneous trend towards international convergence of basic educational structures, certificates and English usage; with increasing national differentiation of specialist educational functions.