Public research universities were founded on the premise that high quality teaching needed to be available to all citizens on the basis of intellectual qualification, and that high quality research needed to be available for the public ends of society. In recent years demands on public institutions of higher education and research have expanded and diversified just as pools of public monies for them have been reduced. Along with relative declines in government funding, global policies of deregulation, privatization, and liberalization have given rise to new international markets for higher education, proprietary private-sector competitors, the Internet as an affordable instructional option, and corporate interests and investments that privilege certain sciences over others. Countries are responding to the changing global educational landscape in like and unlike ways. The interviews contained in this section are meant to provide snapshots of the varying responses across regions of the world so that we can better understand how, why, and to what end this transformation is unfolding.

Nicholas Rice, a writer currently based in London, conducted these interviews. In addition to this work, he has produced a UNFPA report, "Unseen, Unheard and Unreported," about donors' perceptions of the fight against sexual and gender based violence worldwide. He has also co-edited Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" for Barnes and Noble Classics. He holds a Master's degree in Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Bachelor's degree in Russian from Oxford University.