This dissertation is a collection of three essays that consider the role of national and global political, economic, and social forces in educational expansion and attainment. The first essay engages the prevailing theories of global educational expansion and argues that existing explanations neglect the possibility that individual political leaders may act in autonomous and unexpected ways to expand educational opportunities, particularly for marginalized groups. The second essay empirically models the expansion of educational attainment as a function of national political and global economic institutions, using a global data set of countries from 1960-2010. The third essay examines the relationship between children's transnational migration experience and their educational outcomes, specifically completed years of schooling and their likelihood of dropping out of school.
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