University Expansion in the BRIC Countries and the Global Information Economy

Abstract

Massive higher education expansion in the world’s four largest developing economies — Brazil, Russia, India, and China, known as the BRIC countries — is having a significant impact on the world supply of university graduates, including greatly increasing available cadres of engineers and computer scientists. This expansion may change the locus of future development in the global knowledge economy. If the BRICs can train large numbers of highly qualified engineers and scientists, the poles of technological innovation could shift away from the United States, Europe, and Japan — or, at the least, become increasingly shared between these old centers and the new.