Advancing Global Education »

Barry B. Hughes is Johns Evans Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures. He initiated and leads the development of the International Futures (IFs) forecasting system.

Janet R. Dickson is a Research Associate at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies. She has focused for many years on education research, analysis, and planning in a university setting, and has a particular interest in women’s education and advancement.

Mohammod T. Irfan is Post-Doctoral Research Associate of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. His research focus is on long-term computer simulation of education systems around the world.

Education is one of the most fundamental prerequisites to economic growth and social stability in the world. It is also one of the most inadequately realized goals of development, with the average education of global adults remaining essentially at primary levels.

Advancing Global Education is the second in a series of volumes that explores prospects for human development—how development appears to be unfolding globally and locally, how we would like it to evolve, and how better to assure that we move it in desired directions. The first volume addressed the reduction of global poverty. The third will turn to the enhancement of global health. The series—“Patterns of Potential Human Progress”—is inspired by the UN Human Development Report, the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and other initiatives to improve the global condition.

The foundation for the book is a large-scale computer program called International Futures (IFs), developed over three decades and based at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures within the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. The forecasts are long-term, looking 50 years into the future, thereby anticipating the needs of the global community to think well beyond the MDGs. Analyses in volumes in the series draw on deeply integrated representation of a wide range of human development arenas including demographics, economics, education, socio-political contexts, agriculture, energy, and the environment.

Advancing Global Education presents the most extensive set of forecasts of global education participation and attainment levels to date—providing and exploring a massive, multi-issue database and proposing a scenario for accelerating educational attainment throughout major world regions and 183 countries.

Questions the IFs model allows readers to explore about global education include: