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Nix the BRICs? Competitive and Collaborative Forces in the Ostensibly “Blocalized” Higher Education Systems

Comparative studies on higher education in the BRICs have been few and far between. There are even fewer scholarly publications in the field that have engaged all five countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Some scholars follow the original abbreviation coined by Tim O’Reilly, an influential Goldman Sachs economist, that included the first four countries, the “BRICs,” and some others, like us, follow the subsequent political developments of a larger bloc that includes South Africa. While various research teams investigate various aspects of higher education development, this editorial focuses on the relevance of what could be termed as “blocalization” in higher education from the viewpoint of internationalization and emerging competitive-collaborative perspectives in the BRICS. In the early 2010s, two scholars on opposite coasts of the US, Carnoy in and Philip Altbach in Boston College, each teamed up with their peers in Brazil, Russia, India, and China to shed light on transformations in the higher education systems of the multinational bloc (see Altbach, Reisberg, Yudkevich, Androushchak, & Kuzminov, 2013; Carnoy et 2013). Their studies revealed a number of seemingly shared challenges, e.g., massification, systemic resource asymmetries, quality assurance problems, shortcomings in academic governance and the academic profession. However, the studies also identified some unbeatable advantages of the BRICs higher education systems, including a desire by the national governments to invest more in national flagship institutions, in order to make them engines for global competition. These advantages stood out in stark contrast at a time when Western competitors were struggling with the fallout of the global financial crisis, and introducing