Higher Education in the Developing World: Changing Contexts and Institutional Responses (review)

Much has changed since the end of the Cold War. Under autocratic governments, there was little need to explain higher education policy to the public. Policy consisted of edicts of intent and orders for administrative action. Mechanisms for public debate did not exist. The performance of educational institutions was not open to public scrutiny. Data on expenditures, faculty performance, and program effectiveness were unknown. The curriculum was imposed by ministerial mandate; goals in the teaching of history, humanities and the social sciences were decided unilaterally. If problems occurred, no official could be held accountable.

New democracies have emerged in South Africa, Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia. With democracy, the exigencies of university management shift. The effectiveness of universities is increasingly open to public scrutiny, and higher education policy is the subject of heated public debate. In a democracy, policy requires public ex ante awareness and consensus over issues such as criteria for admission, faculty conduct, tuition and fee structures.

Higher Education in the Developing World provides an excellent overview of this arena. The authors are among the "A Team" of higher education in developing countries: Jamil Salmi, Bruce Johnstone, Olga Bain, David Plank, Robert Verhine, Darrell Lewis, Halil Dundar, Gerard Postiglione, Jairam Reddy, and John Weidman. Getting them to contribute to the same volume is a coup.

The editors and Salmi, the senior author of several World Bank policy papers on higher education, provide the general introduction. Their overviews cover the global shifts in labor markets, changes in technology, and pressures for expansion and increased equity and efficiency.

The section devoted to the relationships between government and higher education institutions is among the best. D. Bruce Johnstone and Olga Bain's article covers the many unprecedented changes in the Russian Federation with its transition toward privatization, decentralization, and autonomy. Plank and Verhine tell the extraordinary story behind Brazilian student, faculty, and administrator resistance to institutional autonomy. In Brazil coverage and class sizes are low, unit costs are high, and the federal government cannot get universities to take more responsibility for their own affairs, evidently because students, faculty, and administrators fear that with autonomy would come the obligation to increase efficiency, which would challenge traditional privileges. In essence, the self-interest of university stakeholders overrules the public good.

Chapman provides a similarly interesting picture of Laos. The one university in Laos is required to teach in the national language but can't balance its budget. The government then allows the university to open night courses in English that become so popular they threaten to overshadow the regular university and create two unequal systems.

Lewis and Dundar argue interestingly that, when free of private cost, higher education can often be more discriminatory against the poor. This issue is important in areas of the world, including Western Europe, where policies still assume that low fees mean higher equity.

Other sections cover accountability, quality assurance, autonomy, and new roles for academic staff in the context of rapid enrollment expansion and fiscal sustainability. In general, this book provides an excellent illustration of why one must concern oneself with developing countries.

One reason is sheer size. About half of the students in higher education are enrolled in developing countries, with the number expected to grow by about one third by 2015 (World Bank, 2000). In Latin America the enrollment rate climbed from 17% to 19%; in the Arab states from 11% to 15%, and in East Asia from 5 to 10% (UNESCO, 2000, p. 116). But no country better illustrates mass higher education than China in which the enrollment rate grew from 2% in 598 institutions in 1978 to 14% in 3,111 institutions today. In terms of size, higher education in China is second only to the United States (Chen...