Standards for academic and student support services (SSS) in distance education as identified by the University of Wisconsin System Administration Board of Regents were applied to the SSS provided by the Wawasan Open University (WOU). A student feedback survey conducted over 4 semesters confirmed that WOU's SSS had been positively received and…

The dilemma of providing effective education particularly in developing countries with limited resources and ambiguous calculations of rates of return due to unstable economies and labour market fluctuations makes it an absolute necessity to consider costs and benefits associated both with academic and vocational education. Through argumentation…

Many countries mandate affirmative action in university admissions for traditionally disadvantaged groups. Little is known about either the efficacy or costs of these programs. This paper examines affirmative action in engineering colleges in India for "lower-caste" groups. We find that it successfully targets the financially…

Purpose: To describe an exploratory study in which an online learning system was used to provide an intercultural experience for pre-service education students from New Jersey and Namibia. Design/methodology/approach: Pre-service education students from New Jersey and Namibia were enrolled in an online course in the fall of 2004. The following…

Assume that there are two types of knowledge, global and local. This paper considers a university in a developing country that allocates finite education resources to the delivery of these two types of knowledge. We provide the optimal resource allocation that maximizes social welfare. We show that, by imposing a minimum resource allocation to…

This article begins with an introduction to the context and general situation of transnational higher education (TNHE) in Asia, especially in East and Southeast Asia. It then examines development of TNHE in some selected Asian countries from different perspectives and provides a detailed description of TNHE in China. The article concludes by…

Most investigations into the effects of funding changes on higher education systems have been carried out in developed economies. This article focuses on the Thai higher education system, applying theoretical arguments and empirical analyses to the case of a newly industrialising country. One goal of the Thai higher education funding reform is to…

This article was originally presented as a position paper at the Symposium on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Social Development held in Jakarta by the ASEAN Foundation Collaboratory (May 2006). Its main premise is that, while there is growing use of open and distance learning (ODL) in formal and nonformal education and training…

The development of human capital has been identified as the most important component of all the factors employed in production economics. Since independence in 1960, Nigeria has placed great emphasis on training and education for human capital formation. However, the education process as the primary means of developing human resource has failed,…

Course management systems (CMSs) currently drive educational delivery in most developed countries. Their absence in higher education in most developing countries creates a digital divide between first- and third-world students. Meeting the needs of higher education in Ghana therefore depends on identifying the factors that should inform the choice…

The Open University of Indonesia (Universitas Terbuka, UT) has over 450,000 students distributed across a vast, diverse archipelago. UT will play a central role in meeting the requirement that over 1 million primary teachers earn four-year postsecondary degrees by 2015. While the Open University has considerable capacity in print-based and…

Institutional research (IR) in Latin America is experiencing dramatic growth due, in no small measure, to the need for quality assurance in educational institutions developing trained workforces for emerging economies. Quality can be assured only where it can be measured, and that is at the core of institutional research in countries to the south…

This article is a compilation of the views of 16 PhD students and the author on Steven Klees' 2007 article titled, "A quarter century of neoliberal thinking in education: Misleading analyses and failed policies." The students and the author have taken Klees' article as a stimulus to try and explicate the anatomy of the decline of the…

Now in its fourth decade, Supplemental Instruction (SI) is an internationally acclaimed academic support model. Communication and critical thinking skills developed through collaborative learning are the hallmarks of the program. SI has enjoyed thirty-some years of robust success in the world of the academy. It has proven itself to be an…

The article traces the policy history of Kenya over more than 40 years (1963-2006) in order to tease out the tensions between the key themes of its own national agenda and the priorities of its principal development partners. The national concerns with the education-and-employment connection and with the orientation of schooling towards skills for…