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The problems, policies and debates on the quality and access of research cannot be decoupled from higher education in an educational system like that of India where the impact of primary, secondary and higher education is sequential. The article traces the idea of education from the early Greek and Indian philosophers, the university tradition of India during the British rule which laid the foundations of modern Indian education, to the present-day globalized world that offers transnational education with a large number of private players in the fray. The changing contours of the concept of education, that is, what is to be taught and how it is to be taught, direct us in valuing education for the future by properly placing it in the socio-economic context. This is accomplished by critically examining various strands of literature that deals with the value of education from its economic valuation as a quasi-public good to Amartya Sen's concept of education as a tool to widen social choices. The article then analyzes the problems plaguing higher education in the Indian context that include: a lack of pluralism in student and faculty profile; openness to travel across disciplines; maintaining the highest quality and integrity in research and learning, including publishing and handling of archives; the woes of mushrooming private institutes; and inadequate financial resources that severely demoralize ambition. Consequently, the article concludes with suggestions for reform to improve equity, access and excellence by applying the highest values of academic standards through rigour, dispassionate research, meticulous training and alternate sources of funding for acceptable standards of infrastructure and access to resources.

"We Kept Our Towns Going: The Gossard Girls of Michigan's Upper Peninsula" by Phyllis Michael Wong is a book that documents the working lives of women employed in the Gossard plant, an undergarment factory in North Michigan. The book traces the history of the factory from its establishment in 1920 to its closure in 1976, exploring its impact on the community and the rise of labor consciousness among its employees. Wong uses oral histories from former workers to provide a personal perspective on the factory's history and its connection to larger historical events such as World War II and the unionization of industrial workers. The book will appeal to readers interested in women's working-class history, workplace democracy, and labor studies. [Extracted from the article]

Making Choices, Making Do: Survival Strategies of Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great DepressionThe Fruit of Her Hands: Jewish and Christian Women's Work in Catalan CitiesWomen, Work and Activism: Chapters of an Inclusive History of Labor in the Long Twentieth Century Women's labour history is often studied as a subset of working-class or social history by focusing on the identity of gender cross-cutting labour questions. The third feature is that the book foregrounds women's labour activism as an important framework within global labour history reorienting the scholarship to re-examine this aspect more closely. [Extracted from the article]