"Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world." -- Jimmy Carter

"What defeats poverty? Education. What increases net worth? Education. What helps race and ethnic relations? Education. What creates harmony and peace? Education. Re-educating people to live together and learn together is the foundation of our future economy."
--Melanie Alfonso

"No nation was ever ruined by trade." --Benjamin Franklin

"The rich countries do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich; they need to invest enough so that the countries can get their foot on the ladder"
--Jeffrey Sachs

"One of the weaknesses of development thinking is the relentless drive for a magic bullet, the one decisive investment that will turn the tide. Alas, it does not exist."
--Jeffrey Sachs

"Most societies with good harbors, close contacts with the rich world, favorable climates, adequate energy sources, and freedom from epidemic disease have escaped from poverty. The world's remaining challenge is not mainly to overcome laziness and corruption, but rather to take on geographic isolation, disease, vulnerability to climate shocks, and so on, with new systems of political responsibility that can get the job done."
--Jeffrey Sachs

"Globalization could be the answer to many of the world's seemingly intractable problems. But this requires strong democratic foundations based on a political will to ensure equity and justice". --Sharan Burrow

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world." --John Le Carre

"It is people who are the objects of globalization and at the same time its subjects. What also follows logically from this is that globalization is not a law of nature, but rather a process set in train by people."--Tarja Halonen

"The dramatic modernization of the Asian economies ranks alongside the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution as one of the most important developments in economic history."
--Larry Summers

"Poverty is the worst form of violence."
--Mahatma Gandhi

" Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world." --Kofi Annan

"Globalization, far from putting an end to power diplomacy between States, has, on the contrary, intensified it." --Omar Bongo

"Start with the idea that you can't repeal the laws of economics. Even if they are inconvenient."
--Larry Summers

"Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own." --William Greider

"Globalization is not something we can hold off or turn off . . . it is the economic equivalent of a force of nature -- like wind or water." --Bill Clinton

"A world of true security is only possible when the full range of human rights - civil and political, as well as economic, social and cultural - are guaranteed for all people. What we need now is a new approach - which begins with a broader understanding of what defines human and global security. We must craft a policy that manages and balances our increasing interdependence with our increased vulnerability. Governments from both the North and the South must expand their thinking and policies to encompass a broader understanding of security beyond the security of states."
--MARY ROBINSON

4. Physical Geography. This important area, Sachs argues, is often surprisingly overlooked by economists. Questions here concern how much of the population is close to seaports and airports, navigable rivers, paved roads and rail services. What is the length of the growing season? How are the agronomic conditions affected by climate variability (especially fluctuations in El Nino). How does the climate affect the burden of disease? What plant and animal disease post a threat to human health and international trade?

5. Governance Patterns and Failures. Sachs points out that although it is true that democracy is not a prerequisite for economic development, it does matter. Regimes that are despotic, arbitrary, and lawless can easily destroy an economy. Questions here concern the rule of law, and are there adequate public managements systems in place for registering businesses, trading property, defending contracts, etc. Is corruption rampant? If so, at what levels of government? Are public services adequately provided to the entire region, or just to the elite or selected regions?

6. Cultural Barriers. Is the society dealing with issues of class, ethnic, religious, or gender inequities? For example, are women deprived of the right to own and inherit property? Do cultural norms prohibit certain minority groups from owning property or acquiring education?

7. Geopolitics. Is the country under international sanctions? Are there cross-border security threats? Are there trade barriers in the rich world that impede development prospects?

Sachs's basic arguement in The end of poverty is that the poorest of the poor must get to the first rung of the ladder of development. The "development ladder" hoovers above them; they lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get to the first rung. In order to get the necessary boost, they need investments in six major kinds of capital:

• Human capital (health, nutrition, skills)
• Business capital (machinery, facilities, transport)
• Infrastructure (roads, power, water, sanitation, ports, and telecommunications systems)
• Natural capital (arable land, healthy soils)
• Public institutional capital (commercial law, judicial systems)
• Knowledge capital (scientific and technological know-how)

This is Sach's primary point: that "targeted investments backed by donor aid lie at the heart of breaking the poverty trap" (250). Once the donor investments have been made and the level of capital per person has risen, the economy should become productive enough to meet basic needs, and the climb on the development ladder can begin. But without donor investments, no matter how hard everyone tries, extremely poor countries simply cannot meet basic needs and at the same time finance the accumulation of capital.

Sachs asks the question: if a country were to receive a billion dollars in foreign aid, should it go to building roads, or schools, or power plants, or clinics, or to pay teachers, or doctors, or agricultural extension officers. The answer, obviously, is yes to all--but the mix will be different for each country. Sachs continues to emphasize that a rigorous differential diagnosis is at the heart of effective investment strategies.

Admittedly, the kind of poverty experienced by Latin American countries is different from the poverty experienced by many sub-Saharan African countries in the sense that Latin American countries (as a whole) are not really destitute, though they clearly have huge destitute populations within them. One difficulty Latin America and Africa do share is geography. While many African countries struggle with the limitations of interior jungles, Ecuador and Peru, for example, struggle with the limitations of interior mountains. Paraguay is landlocked. And Guatemala is a mix of mountains and tropical rain forests. All this makes transport hazardous and expensive. But in our new global context, where knowledge and data are traded via internet and communication technologies, and where individuals (as well as companies and governments) are empowered by access to these "transports," geography as an inhibitor to economic development can be overcome by new communication technologies.

At any rate, the point here is that any for a development program to be viable, it needs address the critical barriers to poverty reduction that is specific to that country, and it should contain appropriate investments in Human capital, Business capital, Infrastructure, Natural capital, Public institutional capital, and Knowledge capital.

Students and teachers crossing borders to learn and to teach is hardly anything new. But a globalization dynamic of increased market liberalization that is increasingly opening up new opportunities for trade in goods and services is new. And a technological infrastructure that allows instant communication and data transaction from almost anywhere in the world is new. And NICTs that allow anyone anywhere asynchronous access to dozens (if not hundreds) of educational opportunities is new. And since education is a key component that helps societies move into the new global market economy, and since quality educational opportunities in higher education are no longer restricted to specific geographical places, we do indeed have a new set of needs and a new set of opportunities for students and teachers across the globe to "cross borders" in order to teach and learn.

So with education more important than ever, what kind of numbers are we looking at? If the concern is potential students in the developing world in the coming years, we need first to look at demographics. Forecasts indicate a population of around 8 billion people in developing countries in 2025, more than half of whom will be young (Daniel, Kanwar, & Uvalic-Trumbic, 2005). As they report, "we have already crossed the threshold of 100 million students" in higher education worldwide, and forecasters expect that to grow to 125 million by 2020; although, as they suggest, that may be a bit modest, since China has doubled higher education enrollments in recent years (p. 4). Currently, enrollment rates of the relevant age group in many developing countries is at 5%, and it is estimated that in order for a country to function well in our current competitive and interdependent world, enrollment of the relevant population needs to be around 40-50% (Daniel, 2004). Further, we can expect that developing countries will have between 7 and 8 billion people in 2025. In Asia alone, there are now about 1.5 billion people under 15 years of age.

Whatever the actual numbers end up being, it is clear we are talking about a huge influx of new students needing to enter higher education. And it is clear that current on-the-ground higher education institutions do not have the capacity to meet such a demand. And it is just as clear that governments all over the world cannot afford to invest the same amount of money, proportionately, as they did when higher education was an elite pastime. The challenge is for education to become not only more accessible, but more affordable--to huge numbers of students.

Can distance education in general and cross-border education in particular help?

WHAT IS CROSS-BORDER EDUCATION?

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines cross-border education as those "situations where the teacher, student, programme, institution/provider or course materials cross national jurisdictional borders" (OECD, 2004; p. 19). This includes study abroad programs, branch campuses, and joint programs. But those types of programs depend on existing geographical locations and have only marginal capability for increasing absolute enrollment numbers.

The context for cross-border education that concerns us most here is when a developing country does not have the capacity to educate its own citizens and relies on trade in educational services under GATS to perform that task. Surely, to meet the current and expected demand for education in such countries, we will have to depend on "distance education" offered primarily by Open and Distance Learning (ODL) Institutions. An acceptable definition of an ODL institution is a school where (a) most or all of teaching is done by someone removed in space or time from the learner, and (b) some type of open admissions policy is offered, along with relatively flexible organizational/learning structures.

Few need to be reminded how the explosion of online learning in recent years has begun to revolutionize distance education in rich world countries. Obviously, online distance education requires significant technological infrastructure and it requires significant educational capacity; that is, the type of online education many would prefer is not the old fashioned type of distance education that functioned primarily as correspondence schools, but the mode of online learning that is interactive, collaborative, and faculty controlled. The downside is that this form of "distance education" is not nearly so scalable. But in a cross-border environment, with numerous foreign and domestic suppliers of education, the situation may very well be that competition produces efficiencies. Under GATS, with all member countries treated as MFNs, the likelihood is that the market will not be dominated by a few well-connected mega-universities making huge profits, but multiple for-profit and private schools, who engage in various kinds of partnerships, consortia, and innovative multinational relationships in order to provide quality education for the world.

This brings up what is, perhaps, the biggest issue for cross-border education: quality control. The General Agreement in Trade Services (discussed below) must recognize some international quality assurance and accreditation system. If the floodgates are truly to open, it must be to institutions that meet a high minimum standard. Who decides and who administrate the accreditation is probably the key issue of cross-border education and the GATS that must be decided by the member nations.

The second biggest issue is the so-called digital divide. Cross-border distance education can only happen if there is an accessible, affordable technological infrastructure. In almost every part of the world, such infrastructures are being built and planned. And after getting a late start, Latin America is slowly but surely catching up to the rest of the world, especially since it can leap-frog to wireless technologies (Economist Intelligence United Limited, 2004). But even where supporting technical infrastructures are lacking, there remains the more traditional distance education technologies of mail and variant existing technologies such as digital radio (Rangarajan, 2002). The point is, cross-border education would not necessarily be restricted to those countries that only have appropriate NICTs. But since economic development in our new global context largely depends on NICTs, it seems almost certain that if developing countries expect to participate in the new global marketplace, investments will continue to be made in the technical infrastructure, and online distance education will be the dominant type of cross-border education.

But it does not dominate now.

As a matter of fact, if the subject is cross-border education in developing countries, nothing at all really dominates. It is happening. But in very small numbers and in mostly pilot programs. Currently (2005), almost all cross-border higher education that is taking place is happening among developed countries and, to a lesser extent, with Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) importing education from developed countries. Admittedly, however, finding appropriate data in this field is notoriously difficult (see in this regard OECD, 2004a and OECD, 2004b), but when data are published, developing countries almost never even show up on cross-border education charts. Perhaps the most instructive set of figures comes from the UK's Higher Education Statistics Agency. Daniel, Kanwar, and Uvalic-Trumbic report (2005) that that agency reported for 2002-3 the UK had 101,645 enrollments from 191 countries via cross-border delivery (DE and branch campuses), and that the highest numbers were from well-developed countries (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia). Especially interesting is that of those 101,645 enrollments, fewer than 100 came from 30 African countries taken together (excluding South Africa) (p. 5-6).

If one argument against GATS for education services is that it is a train that has already left the station, and that cross-border education is a booming industry going along just fine without a general agreement from the WTO, that would only be the case for developed countries. It certainly is not the case for developing countries.

Broadly speaking, the current cross-border education situation is that America, Canada, Australia, and the UK (and to a lesser extent, Germany, France and Belgium) are primarily exporters of higher education to other developed countries or NICs (such as India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Malaysia, and Mexico). Most NICs are primarily importers of higher education. The participation of the least developed countries (such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Nepal, Togo, and most of sub-Saharan Africa) is virtually non-existent, either as exporters or importers (OECD 2004a, p. 33). They do not yet have the access. And they do not have the funds.

One key question here is that can a balance be struck between assistance and trade? In other words, can trade be combined in innovative ways with new forms of assistance to promote educational service agreements and NICT investments to least-developed countries (or even Newly Industrialized Countries)?

Interestingly, there are large distance education universities in NICs such as India, Mexico, Turkey, and Korea, but they primarily serve students from their own countries. On the OEDC chart of "Foreign Students per Domestic Students Abroad in Tertiary Education in 2001" (2004a, p. 33), Korea had the highest import figure, sending out 18 students for every foreign student received. Australia had the highest export figure, receiving 23 foreign students for every domestic student sent abroad. Mexico had the next highest import figure, sending out 7 students for every foreign student received.

To suggest that the debate surrounding the World Trade Organization's General Agreement in Trade Services (GATS) is slightly complex is something of an understatement. First, the document itself is filled with ambiguous, conditional, and unclear language, which leads to a number of arguments simply based on misapprehensions. Second, the debate is mired in competing political and economic ideologies, as well as competing views about development, education, and the role of the state in economic planning. Finally, the multiple stakeholders (students, unions, governments, academics, departments of trade, ministries of education, educational planning boards, institutional leaders, and businesses, as well as private, state, and for-profit universities) make the whole notion of there being a national perspective on GATS almost impossible. In other words, not only are there disagreements among nations, there are competing agendas within nations. Then add the very real possibility that in terms of education, it may not make much difference anyway. As suggested above, it could be argued that with or without GATS, cross-border education is a train that has already left the station.

WHAT IS THE GATS?

The GATS is an agreement between nations (members of the World Trade Organization) that offers a set of legally enforceable rules promoting and protecting the liberalization of international trade in services. It is similar to the earlier General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was an agreement dealing with goods, yet GATS is far more flexible than GATT. In its preamble, GATS actually states that the liberalization process must respect the needs and rights of governments to regulate in order to pursue national policy objectives. GATS is clearly based on the belief that liberalization of services will assist the growth of international trade in services, yet one of its primary aims is to facilitate the integration of developing countries into the global economy. For better or worse, this is no ideological cookie cutter structural adjustment program. The GATS seeks to reinforce the (a) capacity, (b) efficiency, and (c) competitiveness of domestic service industries. Part of its appeal to many is that GATS is an economic development program attempting to navigate in post-neo-liberal seas. Even so, it must be recognized that the GATS negotiations are taking place in the context of a fierce anti-GATS campaign.

One of the major features of GATS is that it covers almost all services, from education and healthcare to banking, tourism, and rubbish collection. One major exception is the exclusion of services "supplied in the exercise of governmental authority." This adds to the complexity regarding educational services. How does a government define its involvement in its educational institutions? Does this mean that only for-profit public institutions would be regulated under GATS? What about the majority of educational systems that are various mixtures of public (government funded) and private? It is almost impossible to come to a definition of education that would cover the range of educational services offered in WTO countries, so it almost has to be left up to the individual countries to define the scope on what they wish to be covered. Although the debate is continuing, it appears fairly certain that for most countries, primary and secondary schooling (so-called basic/compulsory education) will remain outside the scope of GATS. So when discussing the GATS and education, we are essentially discussing post-secondary education.

Structurally, the GATS has three core components: (1) framework of rules that lays out the general obligations, (2) annexes on specific service sectors, and (3) schedules of commitments submitted by each member country.

KEY PRINCIPLES OF GATS

While recognizing that the GATS document is complex and ambiguous, it can be argued that there are at least three key principles: its provisions on (1) most favored nation treatment, (2) transparency, and (3) market access.

Most Favored Nation (MFN) Provision. Essentially, the MFN obligation means that a country must treat the service suppliers from any one member country no less favorably than it would the service suppliers from any other member countries.

Transparency. No secret negotiations. Article III requires all members to publish all relevant measures of services in trade and Notify all members if there are any changes in laws or regulations that might affect trade commitment.

Market Access. Article XVI lists six different types of market access limitations that must be scheduled if the WTO member country wishes to maintain them.

1. limits on the number of service suppliers
2. limits on the total value of service transactions
3. limits on the total number or quantity of service output
4. limits on the total number of natural people that may be employed in a particular service area
5. limits on joint ventures or specific types of legal partnerships
6. limits on the participation of foreign capital.

These types of limitations on market access are acceptable if they are scheduled up front.

BARRIERS

Since the elimination of trade barriers is the raison d'être of the GATS, it is important to be clear what barriers the GATS is concerned about. Barriers to trade that affect all sectors (from tourism to trash collection) are typically: (a) lack of transparency of government regulation, policy, or funding, (b) unfair administration of laws, (c) discriminatory tax treatment against foreign suppliers, and (d) less favorable treatment of certain foreign partners.

Barriers to trade specific to higher education are listed in the Table 1 below, along with the four major "modes of supply" through which services can be regulated. The Major Modes of Delivery come from the GATS agreement, and the listing of Education Sector Barriers was taken from Knight (2002, p.14-15).

GATS CRITICISM

Much of the criticism of GATS seems to originate in the broader context of a backlash against globalization. And ironically, most of the anit-GATS rhetoric appears to come from OECD countries, countries that have for the most part enjoyed the benefits of trade liberalization and who are (or soon will be) countries that primarily export education services. Following are two more tables. Table 2 is an attempt to sum up the major arguments for and against GATS for educational services. Table 3 is a slight reworking of text from Svava Bjarnason (2003) in outlining rationales for exporting education services and rationales for importing education services (p. 14-15).

Access and Affordability

For cross-border education in developing countries to work, citizens will need access to both educational opportunities and technological resources. As important as educational access is, in our new global context, technology may even be more important since it is the means to education and, in many cases, the means to employment. The key to access is technical infrastructure. No sustainable economic program and no sustainable education initiative can afford to overlook the new reality that technology is access. But access is not enough. For sustainable economic development, it has to be affordable to the many, not just the elite. Obviously, the nature and extent of government funding (investments, development assistance) in both technological infrastructure and educational opportunities will vary from country to country. Mexico and Brazil are rich enough to use domestic funds to support both technology and education for its citizens. And it appears they are doing just that. Mexico's eMexico project is tailor made to create the appropriate infrastructure for educational access via online or "distance education" means, whether it be cross-border or in country.

Quality / Accreditation

No question, with or without GATS, there will always be rogue for-profit suppliers of inferior online education. The vision is that trade liberalization will open floodgates to multiple education providers. If they are all mostly quality providers, then we can depend on competition to maintain efficiencies and keep costs down. If there is no system to to ensure quality and assign internationally recognized accreditation, then the likelihood is that the two-tier system of education will prevail: quality education for the rich; inferior education for everyone else.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently published Quality and recognition in higher education:The cross-border challenge (2004b), where they make the important points that the GATS: (a) only minimally encourages mutual recognition agreements for professional qualifications and (b) fails at providing any standard for recognition. This lack of a coherent international framework for quality assurance and accreditation may be the GATS biggest weakness. To address this problem, OECD has partnered with UNESCO to draft some non-binding guidelines. The assumption is that individual countries would prefer to have national authority over quality assurance and accreditation within their own countries. The proposal is: (a) to establish an international"database" that offers a clear set of definitions and a typology of regulatory systems, (b) have each individual country submit a list of "bona fide" institutions based on their own national criteria, (c) list all institutions that are recognized, authorized, accredited, etc. to operate within each country, (d) list all institutions that meet the international criteria, and (e) give an international agency, such as UNESCO/OECD, the authority to manage such a list. The biggest question still open for debate: would the international agency have any authority to restrict or impose sanctions on institutions that do not meet the international criteria?

Brain Drain / Brain Gain and Capacity Building

For sustainable development, a country needs to build capacity. And one of the key elements in building capacity is to have not just an educated citizenry, but also a highly trained, highly educated set of leaders and entrepreneurs. Developing countries in general, and Latin America in particular, have long suffered from the so-called "brain drain." Brain drain occurs when one country loses its educated and skilled citizens to another country. That often happens when students from developing countries study abroad, then remain in that country as highly skilled migrants. It has to be admitted that students from developing countries who wish to study in America or Great Britain often do so for migration related reasons. The United States, by having so many leading universities, has benefited greatly from so-called "brain gain." The OECD (2004a) reports that in 1999, 27% of scientists and engineers in the United States with a Ph.D. in science and engineering were foreign-born. In computer science, 46.4% are foreign born (p. 279). Those incredible statistics demonstrate that there is extraordinary talent in developing countries, but the students leave their countries and often do not come back to live. The OECD reports that in 2001, the average stay rate (four to five years after graduation) in the United States of foreign doctoral recipients in science and engineering was 56%. For Chinese holders of doctorates, it was 96%, for Indians, 76% (p. 279).

Will the increase in cross-border post-secondary online education alter those figures? It should. If students have educational (via online) opportunities in their own countries, that would offer a solution to brain drain and a catalyst for capacity building. By importing online education from a quality institution in a foreign country, a country's students (and possibly teachers or future teachers) can: (a) acquire advanced degrees, (b) make essential connections and build networks with other academics, and (c) stay in their own home countries and make key contributions in the field of local education, business, science, etc.

GATS can encourage forms of cross-border post-secondary education that do not entail student mobility and thus produce less risk of brain drain. Ultimately, that should contribute to capacity building and nation building, especially given the importance of a trained work force as modern sources of economic growth.

If we have learned anything from the failures of the neoliberalist structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s it is that standard, ideological cookie-cutter approaches do not work. As Sachs argues, each country needs its own "differential diagnosis."

Yes, we want to liberate markets. Yes, we want more free trade. Yes, we want to do away with corruption and promote government transparency. Yes, we want to gain efficiencies in government by means of decentralization, lower taxes and the like. But we also need to address specific causes of poverty that run the gamut from the very nature of the poverty trap itself (and overwhelming debt) to special problems caused by geography, to the assault of malaria, AIDS, and others debilitating diseases. And we need to invest in technical infrastructure, because in today's global environment, NICTs are the new roads and the new classrooms.

A key question concerning cross-border education for Latin American countries is what balance can be struck between assistance and trade? Obviously, Mexico and Brazil will have different needs than Haiti and Nicaragua.

Can trade be combined with new forms of assistance to develop educational service agreements in innovative ways? Almost certainly. The protective structure of GATS (and a solid quality assurance/ accreditation program) would surely encourage an increase in multinational university alliances, partnerships and consortia.

Intriguingly, countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, with large and well-developed distance education systems of their own, may end up exporting education not only to other Latin American countries, but also to students in developed countries. In the beginning, cross-border education is likely to be primarily north exporting to south. But as countries develop, capacities are built, and cross-border education enters into new stages, it seems almost certain that Latin American higher education institutions can participate significantly in the export of educational services under GATS.

Can the GATS make a difference in Latin America?

Yes. It is not likely to be the silver bullet that makes everything work. But if new education providers are made available to developing countries in the context of a coordinated economic plan, cross-border education can make positive contributions to education, capacity building, and sustainable development.

Commonwealth Secretariat. (2003, May). Report on the fifteenth CCEM preliminary meeting on education and the   general agreement on trade services: What does the future hold? London: The Commonwealth Secretariat.   Retrieved on September 19, 2005 from:   http://www.thecommonwealth.org/shared_asp_files/uploadedfiles/%7B907E583B-DF9B-4132-B832-     F1E5D268CC97%7D_GATSreport.pdf

Varoglu, Z. (2002, October). Trade in higher education and GATS basics. Paris: UNESCO. Retrieved on September   20, 2005 from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/file_download.php/
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