What I Have Learned From My Topic on the Comparative Study of Higher Education and My Recommendations on Higher Education in the United States.

              Multiple categories of comparison can be made between the educational system in the United States and in European countries across the pond.  There is the international context – or cultural intelligence that exists in building the structure of a higher education system.  It is hard to find a direct differentiation between each piece of steel beam that makes up the structure of higher education. 

              An important encyclopedia entry I found stated these two broad classifications in which to subcategorize a comparison; Mortimore (1992) identifies these segmentations: International Context and Requirements of Higher Education on School Students.  The subsections drill down to the meat of the equivalence and are as follows: Organization of Schools, The Curriculum of Schools, Assessment of Student Achievement, Motivation of Students, Financial Factors, Entry Qualifications, and Ability to Benefit from Higher Education.

              What I came to find in my research was some difficulty in gathering data that would compare the “ROI” or return on investment of post-secondary education in different countries.  Especially in the hopes of finding European statistics that would be measurable to the United States.  The more I wanted to find this information, the lens began to focus on why this endeavor is quixotic at best.

              In other words, I was trying to stab moving fictional windmills.  There is not a one to one correlation between the ROIs of higher education because each country has an economy that runs in different ways and on various types of employment.  Thus making it difficult, if not impossible to conclude one educational path leads to greater return on investment over another in different countries.  So, what I thought would be a plethora of data turned out to be dry quicksand.

              As I continue to research, argue, and purpose in my position paper the information I obtain through scholarly writings may not mirror exactly the expectations of what I thought would be out there.  Therefore this final paper will be more qualitative than quantitative.