Education

While students flock to ivy-covered buildings on college campuses across North America to attend classes in ornate lecture halls and pull all-nighters studying in their dorms, higher education leaders and experts say the postsecondary education landscape is changing in the 21st century.

For the best-known universities in North America, Europe and even parts of the Middle East, endowments often contribute a substantial amount of money toward day-to-day operations, scholarships, student financial aid programs, faculty research and special projects. For the most part, endowments are created when a university receives a gift, usually cash or securities, with the intention of perpetually financing the university. The donor usually places restrictions on how the university can spend the gift. 

Pearson PLC, the multibillion-dollar education company in London, England, is selling trophy assets as it focuses on increasing its dominant position in the education industry. John Fallon, who became the company’s chief executive officer in 2013 after years of building its education business overseas, is overseeing Pearson’s steady transformation. The company anticipates massive growth in the educational digital frontier -- in 2014, for example, 11 million students in the U.S. took the company’s tests on mobile phones, tablets or laptops.

There are more students attending universities in China than any other country. Many, many more. In June, 2015, a total of 9.42 million Chinese students wrote the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (Gaokao), a prerequisite for entrance into almost all higher education institutions at the undergraduate level in China. Gaokao is a very stressful, multi-day standardized test that is administered once a year. In comparison, the U.S. administers its university entrance exam, the SAT, seven times a year, easing the pressure on students, who have the option of writing it more than once a year. The Gaokao score is the primary tool used to determine whether the test taker can attend university, and more importantly, which particular university.