America’s brain drain

For decades, America has stood as the world’s premier destination for advanced education and research. This “brain gain” has fueled American scientific leadership, underpinned sustainable economic growth, and cemented our reputation as a hub for discovery and invention. Yet, in 2025, the U.S. advantage faces unprecedented threats—not only from global knowledge rivals like China, India […]

Russia’s Untapped Potential: Beyond Hacking

Russia is not an education superpower. What if it were? This may not be an idle question as the country seeks to bolster its international position–no less under a Trump Administration–and to counteract the perception of either being a state-sponsored hacker or geopolitical bully. Domestically, Russia’s persistent de-population trend over the past quarter century coincides with a global shift […]

China’s Next Act: From Hollywood to Harvard?

This article was published in Edsurge on March 21,2016. Could China buy America’s top universities? When this question appeared on Quora a few years ago it was quickly dismissed as unworkable from a governance perspective. But the ambition behind the question remains: If Chinese investors could, they would. What else might China acquire from America’s […]

Central Asia’s New Silk Road: Game Changers

“No need to listen for the fall. This is the World’s end.” — Rudyard Kipling, Kim During a long, cold flight to Almaty in the late 1990s I sat sleepless reading Peter Hopkirk’s landmark history of the region, “The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia.” My colleagues and I were about to spend the […]

Edunomics Focus: Pushing into Asia's Education Frontier

With so many emerging market economies and currencies on the boil, it might be counter-intuitive to explore investing in markets that are even less developed. But in the realm of education, there are increasingly compelling reasons to do so. Within Asia, so-called Frontier Markets began as a classification for financial portfolio investors and the indices that […]

Edunomics Focus: Pushing into Asia’s Education Frontier

Where are Asian Households Spending Their Money? (Hint: Education)

By 2030 Asia’s emerging middle class is expected to account for over 60 per cent of total world spending and, if past history is any guide, a significant part of family budgets will be spent on education. But what exactly? A recent survey by MasterCard profiled 16 markets in the Asia-Pacific over 2012-13 and asked families how […]

What Multinationals Can Teach Universities Expanding into Emerging Markets

Universities have been around for centuries, and for good reason: they move glacially, if at all. If you were look at a list of the leading American companies in 1920 and try to determine how many have survived to the present day, that number could be counted on both hands. This is not the case for Universities. They […]

Why Asia’s Real Competitive Race Will Be Brains, Not Arms

In late 2012 the governments of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia followed a long line of Asian countries in calling for the end of “cheap labor.” This was on the back of China’s tumultuous labor issues at Foxconn and elsewhere, which signaled a push toward higher wages and the need for economic “re-balancing.” Yet developing Asia’s […]

Chinese Education Companies: IPO Bombs but Cash Rich

With the exception of New Oriental (NYSE: EDU), nearly every IPO of a Chinese education company has bombed since 2006 and most within the past four years, losing a range of 7% to 77% for investors. Let’s leave aside for the moment the problems with US-listed Chinese companies en masse and focus instead on cash on hand […]