Introduction: Situating Graduate Education in a Rapidly Changing Higher Education Environment

Abstract

It has become commonplace to note that one prominent feature of contemporary globalization is the “speeding up of change” (Harvey 1989). We find evidence of this assertion throughout social life and particularly in those portions of social interactions being impacted by new information and communication technologies. A companion assertion holds that education in general and higher education in particular are stressed by what is familiarly termed the “alignment dilemma” by which is usually meant the lack of fit between the kinds of education and skills required in contemporary economies and those possessed by higher education graduates. We have discussed this issue in various other places (e.g. in a senior seminar held in Shanghai in November 2013 on twenty-first-century work skills and competencies, see Neubauer and Ghazali 2015). We have also noted that the “disruption” movement in higher education takes form in part as an expression of this tension (in this regard, see Christensen et al. 2011). In the main, discussion along these lines has focused on undergraduate education.