In the new world of international trade, the playing field is hardly level. The richer countries have relatively low trade barriers for most goods and commerce, but cling to protection for selected sectors of the economy, especially their farmers, services, and their airlines. These countries enjoy the trade advantages of having high-quality transportation and communication networks, the best technology, and the most educated workers. Developing countries, in contrast, seek to achieve equality in infrastructure, capital, and labor, but know it will take decades to catch up. In the meantime, they also feel the need to protect many of their young industries from the full force of the industrial nations, while demanding access to the markets of those countries for their agricultural and food products.

Two World Wars were sufficient to create a large void in international trade for about forty years. While a cold war and various hostilities prevailed after the late 1940s, international trade and capital flows resumed and grew remarkably. The fall of the Berlin Wall, symbolic of the end of the Cold War, intensified interest and growth in trade in the early 1990s and we find us now in a world where almost all countries feel quite free to trade with any of the others. We trade anything and everything. We trade old and new goods. We trade each other’s financial assets and we open up factories, stores, and offices almost any place we want.

This chapter provides an overview of the admissions process, the admissions materials requested and how they are reviewed, and how success of the admissions process is measured. It also discusses the need for transparency during the admissions process. Examples from across a variety of world regions are presented to illustrate various admissions models.

The chapters in Part I provide an overview and critical discussion of college-level higher education admission practices from around the world. This discussion illustrates common goals, concerns, and challenges related to: broadening higher education admissions criteria to diverse populations; improving student preparation to meet labor market demands; and preparing students to complete increasingly more advanced courses, all from an international perspective.

Chile’s national, centralized admissions system selects students for both public and private universities that are part of the Unified Admission System. This chapter details the centralized admissions process that controls, supervises, and evaluates the tests; how the testing operation –testing, scoring, application, and selection processes – is conducted; equity issues in admission to Chilean higher education institution; and reforms to the admissions test, the Prueba de Selección Universitaria.

The foreword provides the context for the rationale and need for the book.

This chapter describes the admission system to higher education in Sweden. It focuses on the instruments used in the selection –upper secondary grades and scores from the admissions test called the SweSAT. The Swedish educational system has a high degree of centralization. In addition, there is a strong belief in opportunities, lifelong learning, and second chances, all of which influence the educational system in numerous ways. The chapter first describes higher education institutions in Sweden and this is followed by discussions of admissions regulations and the selection criteria. Finally, various reform efforts are described.

Here we argue that Africa at first appears least ready for a Liberal Management Education because of the historical challenges to organizing higher education in general in Africa. But we contradict this assumption by laying out a potential African-centred management education that draws on indigenous theories and practices of oganisation as they meet global markets and global demands.

Open admission approaches offer a mechanism to reduce barriers for students whose backgrounds are disadvantaged or underprivileged. Institutions with open admissions provide higher education opportunities to many types of students including those who need or wish to reduce the costs of a more selective four-year institution, those who are seeking vocational or technical education, those who may need further academic preparation, and those who do not qualify for admissions to other, more competitive institutions. This chapter discusses the issues surrounding the open admissions model, including the benefits and challenges of implementing such a model. Avenues for future research and applications of an open admissions model are also discussed.