Globalisation; impact on universities in an unequal world the Cross River State Nigerian experience

Abstract

Since the 1990s, globalization has come to be seen as a central theme for both society and higher education. Some have argued that globalization, broadly defined as largely inevitable global economic and technological factors affecting every nation, will liberate higher education and foster needed change and innovation. Technological innovations such as the internet, market forces, the expansion of the private sector in higher education, and massification will permit everyone to compete on the basis of fairness. Knowledge interdependence, it is explained, will help everyone. On the other side, critics claim that globalization strengthens worldwide inequality, fosters the franchising of higher education institutions, and tends to keep academic power in the hands of the wealthy universities of developed countries. All contemporary pressures on higher education, from massification to the growth of the private sector are characterized in general as resulting from globalization. There is a grain of truth in each of these positions-and a good deal of misinterpretation as well. This paper will seek to " unravelled'' the realities of globalization in higher education and to highlight some of the impact on the university. Out of a total population of 1600, academics in the universities in Cross River, 400 lecturers were sampled through stratified random sampling technique. The independent t-test analysis will be used to test the hypotheses. The findings will enable the researchers make appropriate recommendations.