anthony welch
New Century Scholar
Media Profile
"Research and analysis is needed to provide greater insight into how individual characteristics, social structures and public policies interact to create unequal access to higher education for women, racial and ethical minorities, individuals with disabilities and those of lower socioeconomic status."
The University of Sydney’s Professor Anthony Welch is the recipient of a New Century Scholarship in the 2007-08 Program, Higher Education in the 21st Century: Access and Equity. Professor Welch, former Head of Policy and Practice, School of Policy and Practice in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, joins thirty-five other scholars selected this year as New Century Scholars.
Professor Welch will carry out his project, The Implications for Access and Equity, of the Growth of Private Education in SE Asia, at Boston College.
“Within the overall 2007-08 theme of Higher Education in the 21st century: Access and Equity, my project will address the theme of resources and policies that provide greater access to higher education. My proposal begins with one of the key dilemmas faced by many systems of higher education, with specific effects on access and equity in higher education – the increasing mismatch between spiralling demand and limited state capacity,” explains Professor Welch.
“How specific systems of higher education respond to this tension says much about what priority is attached to higher education within the nation-state. But increasingly, policies regarding access can no longer be framed exclusively within national borders; nor are resources for higher education limited to the national context.”
Professor Welch’s project follows on from, and draws on the previous year’s theme of Global Challenge and National Response. “It is explicitly comparative and also draws on my long-standing experience within the proposed region of analysis,” explains Professor Welch.
A distinctive feature of Professor Welch’s project is its geographical focus – it deals in detail with the highly dynamic, very diverse, but too-little-studied region of South East Asia. “Explicitly comparative in focus, my project examines how the states of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are grappling with the need to expand access to higher education, in an era of significant financial constraints, globalisation, and the ‘knowledge economy’.”
Professor Welch has a M.A. and PhD in education from The University of London and has authored and edited a number of publications on this topic, including Blurred Vision: public and private education in Indonesia (2006), The Professoriate, Profile of a Profession (Ed. 2005) and co-edited (Mok, K-H and Welch Eds) Globalisation and the Re-Structuring of Education in Asian and the Pacific (Palgrave 2003).
The Fulbright New Century Scholar Program is an innovative global initiative within the venerable tradition of the Fulbright Program, a cornerstone of U.S. public diplomacy and international education for over half a century. By building on the strengths and worldwide design of the Fulbright Program to extend its mission and outrearch, the New Century Scholars Program is in a unique position to create new models for collaborative thinking among scholars of many different nationalities about the challenges and possibilities for humankind in the 21st century.