Philip G. Altbach is an American researcher on international higher education issues and is the J. Donald Monan SJ professor of higher education at Boston College

Boston College

Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

, where he also directs the Center for International Higher Education

Center for international higher education

The Center for International Higher Education, established in 1995, is a global resource for information and analysis about higher education. Located at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, the Center also sponsors selected research projects...

. His academic career includes service as a lecturer on education and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University (1965–1967), assistant to associate professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison (1967–1975), where he was affiliated to the Department of Educational Policy Studies and the Department of Indian Studies; and professor in the Department of Educational Organization, Administration, and Policy in the Graduate School of Education, State University of New York at Buffalo, where he also established and directed the Comparative Education Center. At SUNY, he was also an adjunct professor in the School of Information and Library Studies and the Department of Sociology. In 1994, Altbach moved to Boston College and founded the Center for International Higher Education.

Early life

Philip Altbach was born in Chicago in 1941 and was educated at the University of Chicago (AB, 1962; AM, 1963; PhD, 1966). While an undergraduate, he was the national chairman of the Student Peace Union (SPU), one of the largest American student activist groups at the time. He was responsible for bringing the peace symbol to the United States from Britain and popularizing it in 1960.

Career

Altbach has held additional academic appointments, including visiting associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 (1981), visiting professor in the School of Education and visiting senior scholar at the Hoover Institution

Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....

 at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 (1988–1989), senior associate of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1992–1996), Fulbright research professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Bombay, India (1968), and senior Fulbright scholar in Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

 and Malaysia (1983). In 2006–2007, Altbach was the Distinguished Scholar Leader of the Fulbright New Century Scholars program. He holds guest professor appointments from two universities in China, Peking University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He created and directed the Bellagio Publishing Network, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, a forum devoted to improving book publishing in Africa from 1992 to 2000.

He has had fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the National Science Council of Taiwan, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Altbach received the Howard Bowen Distinguished Career Achievement award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education in 2009 and the Lifetime Career award from the Higher Education Group of the Comparative and International Education Society in 2010.

Altbach serves as chair of the International Advisory Committee of the Graduate School of Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Shanghai Jiao Tong University or SJTU), sometimes referred to as Shanghai Jiaotong University , is a top public research university located in Shanghai, China. Shanghai Jiao Tong University is known as one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China...

and is a member of the advisory committee at the State Research University-Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia.

He has served in several editorial positions. He edits International Higher Education (1994-current), and is associate editor of the American Education Research Journal (2008–2011). He has been editor of the Comparative Education Review (1978–1988), editor of the Review of Higher Education (1996–2004) and North American editor of Higher Education (1976–1992), and was a founding editor of Educational Policy (1985–2004), which he currently serves as associate editor. He has edited several book series in the fields of comparative and higher education for such publishers as Pergamon, Praeger, Garland, Routledge, the State Univ. of New York Press, and Sense.

In 2008, Altbach was asked by UNESCO to prepare a report on world trends in higher education for the 2009 World Conference on Higher Education. This work reflects his research focus on higher education trends in global perspective. He has also researched the academic profession, student political activism, and patterns of educational colonialism. His work on “center periphery” theory as it relates to higher education is well known.

Major publications

Philip G. Altbach has written or edited more than 50 books. Among these are:

• Philip G. Altbach, Liz Reisberg, and Laura E. Rumbley, Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution (Rotterdam, Netherlands: SENSE and UNESCO, 2009)
• Philip G. Altbach, Tradition and Transition: The International Imperative in Higher Education (Rotterdam, the Netherlands: SensePublishers, 2007)
• Philip G. Altbach, Comparative Higher Education; (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1998)
• Philip G. Altbach, Student Politics in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997)
• Philip G. Altbach, The Knowledge Context: Comparative Perspectives on the Distribution of Knowledge (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1987)
• Philip G. Altbach, Publishing in India: An Analysis (New York and New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975)
• Philip G. Altbach, Student Politics in Bombay (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1968)
• Philip G. Altbach, ed. Leadership for World-Class Universities: Challenges for Developing Countries (New York and London: Routledge, 2011)
• Philip G. Altbach and Jorge Balán, eds., World-Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2007)
• Philip G. Altbach, Robert O. Berdahl, and Patricia J. Gumport, eds., American Higher Education in the 21st Century: Social, Political and Economic Challenges, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999, 3rd revised edition, 2011)
• Philip G. Altbach and Toru Umakoshi, eds., Asian Universities: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Challenges (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2004)
• Damtew Teferra and Philip G. Altbach, eds., African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2003)
• Philip G. Altbach, ed., The Decline of the Guru: The Academic Profession in Middle-Income and Developing Countries (New York: Palgrave, 2003)
• Philip G Altbach, Patricia J. Gumport, and D. Bruce Johnstone, eds. In Defense of American Higher Education, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001)
• Philip G. Altbach and Edith S. Hoshino, eds., International Book Publishing: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1995)
• Suma Chitnis and Philip G. Altbach, eds., Higher Education Reform in India (New Delhi: Sage, 1993)
• Robert Arnove, Philip G. Altbach, and Gail P. Kelly, eds. Emergent Issues in Education: Comparative Perspectives (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1992)
• Philip G. Altbach, ed., International Higher Education: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1991) 2 vols
• Philip G. Altbach and Kofi Lomotey, eds., The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1991)
• Philip G. Altbach, ed. Student Political Activism: An International Reference Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishers, 1989)
• Philip G. Altbach and Gail P. Kelly, eds., New Approaches to Comparative Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)
• Philip G. Altbach and Gail P. Kelly, eds., Education and the Colonial Experience (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1984)
• Philip G. Altbach, Robert Arnove, and Gail Kelly, eds., Comparative Education (New York: Macmillan, 1982)
• Seymour Martin Lipset and Philip G. Altbach, eds., Students in Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970)