The Australian government has formulated policies for welding the country's higher education into a unified national system as an efficiency measure. Actually, the system will not be unified; institutions will achieve standing through intense competition over scarce resources. The sectoral rivalry and institutional imitation rampant under the…

The Soviet Union's planned development of Russia resulted in a high degree of forced uniformity in schools that has dampened students' curiosity and teachers' enthusiasm for improving education. Russia would like to emulate some well-developed U.S. practices, including K-12 testing systems, guidance counseling, student-motivation strategies,…

Focuses on the fiscal implications that revenue-centered budgeting can have for programs in speech communication and related disciplines. Discusses implementation at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, in terms of service courses, equipment, class size, cocurricular programing, and off-campus offerings. (SR)

Discusses the role of the library director as entrepreneur, defined as one who shifts economic resources from areas of lower productivity to areas of greater yield. The importance of this role during a time of austerity is highlighted, and six examples of directors acting as entrepreneurs are presented. (Contains 12 references.) (KRN)

Higher education must look to itself, not just government, to improve teaching, training, and learning. It must empower individuals to achieve their goals better within society's context, explore how it can do that more effectively, and go outside academe to assure public interest, resources, and programs supportive of its work. (MSE)

Uses Michigan school district data and canonical regression analysis to investigate the effects of communities' socioeconomic characteristics in the production of high school education. Although socioeconomic characteristics have significant effects independent of school resources, these effects are difficult to ascertain. Parent educational…

Interviews with 59 Mexican-American children (aged 9-12) and their mothers, plus a resource allocation task completed by the children, revealed that mothers with more ethnic knowledge and ethnic preferences had children with stronger ethnic identity and that children with stronger ethnic identity displayed greater concern for peers' resources and…

This critique of the "West Review" (Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy, 1998) raises objections to the Review's recommendation that Australia's higher education program offerings should be decentralized and funded based on student preferences, as well as to the recommendation that research activities be centrally…

Presents a framework to describe typical constraints that program evaluators face. The framework encompasses the usual evaluation costs and other factors that impede data collection or the implementation of strong evaluation designs. These are characterized as internal/substantive or external/political. (SLD)

Describes a study to determine the effects of decentralized governance and finance structures on resource allocation to and within schools. Using a common methodology and set of questions, authors analyzed data on school-based budgeting in Chicago, Fort Worth, New York, and Rochester. School-based budgeting occurs at the margins, encourages…

At Linkoping University, medical education focused on problem-based learning was introduced, with an unchanged budget, but a new method of resource management. The point system for teaching and administrative tasks gives better control of resources and increases departments' motivation to participate. (SK)

Demonstrates that popular assertions regarding the social benefits of additional higher education are dubious. Reveals four decisive factors: presumed economic growth; changes in graduates' and nongraduates' relative earnings; differences between the marginal and average student; and belief in scale economies. Unless economic growth favors…

The first of three articles that develop a framework for county-based prevention-resource-allocation algorithms based on the aggravated need for substance-abuse-prevention services estimated at the county level. Algorithm development is based on (1) statewide student drug survey, and (2) a set of social indicators routinely published by agencies…

Describes a methodology for course development based on instructional systems design that is geared toward organizational training, including assessment, course design, research, resource allocation, instructional design, training program development, implementation, training program description, and program evaluation. (LRW)

Uses a systems framework to analyze the creation of student support services for distance education at Regents College: electronic advising, electronic peer network, online course database, online bookstore, virtual library, and alumni services website. Addresses the issues involved in converting distance education programs from print-based and…