Procrustean Decisions in Higher Education Admissions

Knowledge is becoming more and more critical for national competitiveness, so is higher education. Developing countries have less opportunities to keep in pace with the rest of the world by providing quality higher education. Moreover, some face significant challenges in terms of equity and fairness of admissions. This paper presents comprehensive analysis of Georgian higher education admissions policy, which has been declared to be the most successful outcome of the ongoing education policy reform in this post-soviet state. The policy has adopted the Procrustean approach; every year, a significant portion of the applicant pool gets mutilated to fit the size of higher education system which is annually changeable. In 2007, the policy has deprived 61% of the registered applicants the right of higher education. This paper was finalized in summer 2007. To date, however, equitable access to higher education remains to be an education policy challenge which few policy makers agree to admit. Policy makers, researchers, and students will find this book contributes significantly to their own policy analysis, practice, and discourse.