Globalization: Effects and opportunities for higher education

To excel in today´s global marketplace, faculty and students must adopt new paradigms. Cultural skills and sensitivity are keys in the globalization of education. Globalization requires change. Traditional perspectives of higher education and professorial methods of instruction must adopt new paradigms. Areas beckoning for change include: foreign language understanding, pedagogical teaching styles, and academic leadership. This paper illustrate the importance of embracing change within these three subject areas via country profiles of those who have successful adopted a new paradigm of increased language diversity. In some cases, language requirements are driven by government initiatives. In other instances, parents or private schools are the catalyst. This qualitative survey of best practices in higher education, from a global perspective, will offer opportunities from what has proven affective in various continents. When change is embraced and paradigms shift, professorial teaching will be transformed to achieve new levels of academic leadership. Professors in higher education hold the key: to shape proteges in an environment that will enable the graduates of tomorrow to become effective global leaders: a quality which will not only be a value-added characteristic but is also a prerequisite for working effectively in the international markets of the world today. A historical progression of language and acculturation will lead readers from the past and into the future of global opportunities for higher education.