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Pulitzer Center Update July 5, 2017

Privatizing Education in Africa

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The fastest growing chain of schools in the world is a highly controversial for-profit company...

Students at a Bridge International Academies school in Liberia. Image by Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times. Liberia, 2017.
Students at a Bridge International Academies school in Liberia. Image by Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times. Liberia, 2017.

Educating the Poor for Profit

Peg Tyre

They think of themselves as venture philanthropists. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and other titans of Silicon Valley have made a big bet on Bridge International Academy, a for-profit chain of low-cost private schools that is proliferating like wildfire in Africa and Asia. As grantee Peg Tyre reports in a feature for The New York Times Magazine, Bridge’s mission is to educate 10 million of the "bottom billion"—children of families who live on less than $2 a day. But what do developing nations lose when they surrender one of the primary functions of the state—the education of the next generation—to a foreign corporation.

Krystle Lewis, a grad student at Texas State University, helps recover unidentified bodies of possible migrants who tried to make their way to the United States in Falfurrias, Texas. Image by Carolyn Van Houten. United States, 2017.
Krystle Lewis, a grad student at Texas State University, helps recover unidentified bodies of possible migrants who tried to make their way to the United States in Falfurrias, Texas. Image by Carolyn Van Houten. United States, 2017.

Give Them Back Their Names

Aaron Nelson

Each year, hundreds of bodies are found along the US-Mexico border. They carry no IDs. Grantee Aaron Nelsen reports on the extraordinary efforts of forensic anthropologists and immigrant groups to identify the dead and bring closure to families.

From left to right: Marwan, 16, from Mauritania by way of Morocco, Khalid, 15, from Ethiopia and Amar, 15, from Eritrea, in a Mölndal youth asylum center. Each is awaiting asylum. Image by Amy Russo. Sweden, 2017.
From left to right: Marwan, 16, from Mauritania by way of Morocco, Khalid, 15, from Ethiopia and Amar, 15, from Eritrea, in a Mölndal youth asylum center. Each is awaiting asylum. Image by Amy Russo. Sweden, 2017.

A Change of Policy

Amy Russo

Once heralded as a model of progressive immigration policy, Sweden has made an about-face. CUNY Hunter College student fellow Amy Russo, writing for Foreign Affairs, explains what went wrong.

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