Getting into Varsity: Comparability, Convergence and Congruence ...

Introduction

Alison Wolf

As more and more young people worldwide enter higher education, its influence on everyone's lives becomes pervasive. In a world of small elite universities, a degree certainly mattered and was the gateway to certain key professions. But a large part of the labour market operated without reference to higher education and its formal qualifications. That is no longer the case—and the change has come far faster in today's developing countries than it did in the first century of Western industrialisation.

These changes have made university entrance a process of enormous importance to successive cohorts of young people and their families and therefore one of increasing visibility and political importance. All around the world, politicians, commentators and universities themselves are facing similar pressures and are engaged in seemingly endless discussions on whether and how best to alter university entrance procedures in pursuit of one objective or another. Yet they do so, to an alarming degree, without reference to other countries’ practices and experiences.