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This report seeks to explore some of the reasons Sweden developed an independent school sector dominated by for-profit schools by drawing on prior scholarship and reports as well interview material from Swedish school entrepreneurs, researchers, and prior public representatives that helped create and implement the Swedish voucher program. This report is based on a descriptive qualitatively-oriented, research approach drawing on archival material, public data, and information gathered from interviews with key informants. The implementation of the Swedish voucher program appears to have been propelled by an appetite for change, and quest for greater diversity among educational providers, that had taken root in political parties on both the left and right. Today, however, the situation looks rather different as debates regarding inequality, segregation, grade inflation, and the notion of "vinster i välfärden" (profits in welfare services) have shifted the perception and opinions regarding school vouchers, and for-profit voucher schools in particular. We do not want to speculate what is going to happen, but it seems feasible to assume that future for-profit school entrepreneurs will have to operate, and be willing to accept, a very different public and political climate when it comes to the role of for-profit providers in the Swedish school sector. If the U.S. desires to increase the number of for-profit school entrepreneurs it will require substantial revisions of many formal as well as informal institutions. The current formal institutions in most U.S. voucher systems, which typically limits who can participate combined with lower per-pupil voucher payments, would need to be altered in order make this calculus attainable and attractive enough to spur action. The following are appended: (1) Methodology; and (2) About the authors.

In her April 2010 NILOA paper, "Opening Doors to Faculty Involvement in Assessment," Pat Hutchings called for institutions to involve students in assessment, citing the potential to increase faculty engagement. In Curtis and Anderson (2020), the first author interviewed numerous partnership experts in both the United Kingdom and the United States regarding student-faculty partnerships and the extent to which students currently engage in the assessment process. Findings from the study make it clear that there currently exists little student-faculty partnership in assessment at the program- or system-levels. Combining existing research on partnership and the expert responses from the Curtis et al. study, we present a framework, based on prototyping, for developing student-faculty partnerships in program-level student learning outcomes assessment.

The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 (E2030) project's overall goal is that of looking to the future in terms of how school curricula should evolve given the technological advances and other changes that societies are now facing. Towards that end, the E2030 project centres on the idea that education needs to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values they need to become active, responsible and engaged citizens. Mathematics is considered a highly relevant subject for achieving the above stated goals, as such it requires further and more detailed analysis. As a result, it has been chosen as one of the E2030 project's subject-specific analyses. The project has been named the Mathematics Curriculum Document Analysis (MCDA) study as per the request of participating countries. This working paper presents the findings of the MCDA study, which involves participants from 19 countries and jurisdictions.

Prior research shows reduced criminality to be a beneficial consequence of education policies that raise the school leaving age. This paper studies how crime reductions occurred in a sequence of state-level dropout age reforms enacted between 1980 and 2010 in the United States. These reforms changed the shape of crime-age profiles, reflecting both a temporary incapacitation effect and a more sustained, longer run crime reducing effect. In contrast to the previous research looking at earlier US education reforms, crime reduction does not arise solely as a result of education improvements, and so the observed longer run effect is interpreted as dynamic incapacitation. Additional evidence based on longitudinal data combined with an education reform from a different setting in Australia corroborates the finding of dynamic incapacitation underpinning education policy-induced crime reduction.

Over the past two decades, public higher education has become widely recognized for its contribution to socio-economic adjustment. This paper probes its evolution in two large and affluent democracies, the United States and Germany, whose higher education systems represent distinct ideal types. The analysis argues that public authorities in both countries have liberalized their systems to spur innovation in the provision of higher education. Yet a broad convergence in associated market expansion has coincided with divergence in its modes and consequences. Tracing how the two countries' policy regimes have created path-dependent trajectories of reform, the paper contends that the institutions associated with each state's inherited role in higher education--"enabling" in the US and "constitutive" in Germany--have empowered different social groups to shape state action. Under the influence of investors and managers, institutional drift and conversion have pushed public higher education toward corporatization in the United States. In contrast, interventions by faculty and students have moderated the effects of institutional displacement and layering on the German system's stratification. Given the sector's growing importance, this analysis carries important implications for the comparative study of capitalist evolution. [A bibliography is included.]

Through a historical and comparative analysis of international education policy development in Canada and the U.S., this paper will map the similarities and differences in the two countries. It will highlight the contributions and challenges of the government's involvement in international education (IE) in the two federal states and in particular, explore the implications of the changing contexts, rationales and approaches for international education to the federal role in higher education. It will conclude with observations on the differential impact of the federal government's role in international/higher education on the higher education systems of the two countries and thus contribute to our understanding of how national specificities and characteristics outweigh the commonly stated policy rationales, approaches and outcomes for international education. [A bibliography is included.]

Recent changes in education and training policy in England continue to focus on creating a 'demand-led' system in an environment where public funds are dwindling and where more responsibility is being devolved away from central government. This raises questions about governance of the system, among others, and the roles that key system actors are expected to play. This paper broadly discusses education and training system policies that focus on workforce development in England and the US, especially with regard to the role of further education colleges (community colleges in the US), employer engagement, and local workforce development bodies. The focus is on governance at the post-secondary level, as the main interest is skills development after compulsory education. The US and England share a number of features and problems that affect the education and training system, such as lack of employer involvement, the lower status of sub-baccalaureate education and training providers despite their central role in delivering vocational education and training programmes, and insufficient links between education and training provision and the labour market. The most striking differences between the American and English systems are the governance and authority structures, which are stronger in the US and afford greater scope for strategic planning by states and between states and the federal level. The experiences of community colleges in working with employers to provide workforce training may be worth further investigation as further education colleges further develop this type of provision. The US experience is less instructive with regard to quality assurance or increasing employers' engagement with education.

This study uses the PIAAC data to examine the relationships between education system characteristics (e.g. early tracking and vocational education orientation) and distributions of adult numeracy skills. It also investigates the effects of postponing the tracking age and easing university access for students on a vocational track on the average skills and different percentiles of the skills distribution. Correlational analysis suggests that education systems with more students enrolled in vocational tracks have on average higher levels of numeracy skills and more compressed skills distributions between the 50th and 90th percentiles. Further analysis suggests that postponing the tracking age among 14 European countries does not have a significant effect on the average skills of the population. However, it increases skills for individuals at the 10th, 20th, and 30th percentiles of the skill distribution. Expanding university access is associated with an increase in numeracy skills, particularly for individuals at the bottom three deciles of the distribution.

In this paper, we survey the UK-based literature on school structures and school autonomy to identify settings in which alternative and more autonomous school arrangements can improve the educational attainments of pupils in the bottom tail of the achievement distribution. We also present new evidence on the effect of school academies on the age-16 GCSE attainment of students of different abilities up to 2009, before the Coalition Government changed the nature of the Labour academy programme. Within the UK education system, academies enjoy substantial autonomy in terms of management of their staff, taught curriculum, length of the school day and other aspects of their day-to-day functioning. Our results show that schools that converted to academies between 2002 and 2007 improved their overall age-16 GCSEs results by further raising the attainments of students in the top half of the ability distribution, and in particular pupils in the top 20% tail. Conversely, we find little evidence that academies helped pupils in the bottom 10% and 20% of the ability distribution. Finally, we find little evidence that late converters (2008 and 2009) had any beneficial effects on pupils of any ability. We conclude our research by comparing the experience of UK academies to that of US charter schools and Swedish free schools, and by providing some insights into the reasons why UK academies did not serve "the tail" as is the case for some US charter schools. An appendix presents Table 1: Academies and GCSE Performance--Teh Effect of Academy Conversion on Pupils of Different Abilities.

The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), on behalf of career and technical education (CTE) professionals in the United States, advocates for clearly focusing American high schools on the goal of preparing every student for full participation in a spectrum of college opportunities, meaningful work, career advancement, and active citizenship. Leaders are called upon to make needed changes in school culture, instructional strategies and organizational priorities that will support this new purpose. The people at ACTE strongly believe that CTE courses and instructional methodologies have an important place in the redesigned high school of the 21st century. In their view, there should no longer be an artificial split between academic coursework and CTE studies, nor should exposure to career- or interest-based coursework be delayed until late in high school or college. Rather, they believe that all coursework, with clearly articulated standards and expectations, can help build in students the mix of skills, aptitudes and attitudes they will need for success after high school. This paper reviews the challenges and current efforts in high school redesign, and offers a number of recommendations about what elements should be included in the efforts to reinvent the American high school for the 21st century. (Contains 26 endnotes.)

In this report, the authors examine the extent to which states' current (or planned) accountability systems for elementary and middle schools attend to the needs of high-achieving students, and how these systems might be redesigned under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to better serve all students. In their view, states can and should take four steps to ensure that the needs of high achievers are prioritized under ESSA: (1) For the first academic indicator required by ESSA ("academic achievement"), reward schools for getting more students to an "advanced" level; (2) For the second academic indicator expected by ESSA ("student growth"), rate schools using a "true growth model," i.e., one that looks at the progress of individual students at all achievement levels and not just those who are low-performing or below the "proficient" line; (3) Include "gifted students" (or "high-achieving students") as a subgroup, and report their results separately and (4) When determining summative school ratings, make "growth for all students" count for at least half of the rating. Based on these four design features, the authors rate states' current (or planned) accountability systems using a rubric and the most recent publicly available information. This rubric is the basis for two sets of ratings: one for the thirty-nine states (plus the District of Columbia) that calculate summative school ratings (or intend to) and one for the eleven states that don't take this step (or don't plan to). The ratings suggest that the overwhelming majority of current (and planned) state accountability systems provide schools with few incentives to focus on their high-achieving students. In fact, the analysis presented herein indicates that just four states--Arkansas, Ohio, Oregon, and South Carolina--have truly praiseworthy systems when it comes to focusing attention on these students. The results also highlight the specific areas where states need to improve. Only four states (Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon) base at least half of a school's rating on "growth for all students," and seven states and the District of Columbia assign no weight to this measure. (Eleven states don't calculate summative school ratings.) Given that student growth is the best way to evaluate schools' impact on student achievement--and the best way to signal that all kids matter--this finding is extremely alarming. Just five states (Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Wyoming) include high-achieving or gifted students as a subgroup and separately report their results. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia rate (or plan to rate) schools' achievement using a model that gives extra credit for students who achieve at an "advanced" level, such as a performance index. Unfortunately, draft regulations published by the Department of Education appear to disallow such indices, and those fourteen states may be required to resume measuring academic achievement via proficiency rates alone. For this reason, the authors have one major recommendation for the Department of Education: All states to rate academic achievement using a performance index. Such an allowance is both consistent with ESSA and in the best interests of students. The Department's final regulations should encourage performance metrics that account for the achievement of all students. [Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr.]

The Indiana Choice Scholarship Program has the potential to be the largest school voucher program in the country. Though the authorizing legislation capped enrollment in the program at 7,500 for its first year (the 2011-12 school year), that cap was increased to 15,000 for this year, and will be removed for all subsequent years. With careful management, the program has the opportunity to infuse the Hoosier state with a level of choice previously unrealized across the nation. However, without some careful planning and thoughtful consideration of salient program design details and the informal market infrastructure necessary for the program to thrive, the Indiana Choice Program will not be able to reach its full potential. Private school choice in the United States, writ large, has not sparked the types of systemic changes that advocates envisioned when the first choice plans were enacted. Though the gold-standard analyses of choice programs have found positive results, they have been modest and mostly confined to the students participating in the program. When Milton Friedman first made the economic argument for school choice in the 1950s he envisioned choice and competition increasing quality and decreasing cost for education in both the public and private sector, as it has in the private markets of innumerable goods throughout history. However, it appears that for a variety of reasons, choice has not sparked the supply side responses that the economic models predicted. Why has this happened? Why has choice failed to live up to its hype? In short, functioning choice markets do not simply emerge from the ether. They must be cultivated, both on the demand and supply sides. Too often, advocates have pushed an "if you build it, they will come" program design that has neglected many of the necessary conditions for markets to function. Strong program design can establish the playing field on which choice and competition can drive change, but without the support of institutions and organizations within states, the innovative capacity of any program will be greatly curtailed. In this way, the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program can serve as an interesting case study in the cultivation of choice markets. The newness and enormous potential of the program offers a unique opportunity for a meaningful conversation on school choice markets, both how to design them and how to ensure that they function. By examining both program design and the emergence of the institutions and organizations that are necessary to make markets work, the Hoosier State can be used as a model for the potential for choice programs around the country. (Contains 9 footnotes and 2 footnotes.)

Higher education systems in Europe are currently undergoing profound transformations. At the macro-level, there is an increase in the number of students enrolled, subjects of study offered, and university missions that have gained legitimacy over time. At the second level changes are evident at the level of university governance. New Public Management reforms have put into question the traditional mode of governance that was based on the interplay of strong state regulation and academic self-governance. Under the current regime, new actors like accreditation and evaluation bodies or boards of trustees are emerging. At a third institutional level, profound changes can be observed at the university level itself. The university as an organization is transforming into an organizational actor, i.e. an integrated, goal-oriented, and competitive entity in which management and leadership play an ever more important role. In the following paper empirical evidence for social inclusion, new modes of governance and the organizational actorhood of universities will be presented. Furthermore, I will outline an agenda for comparative research. Although the United States is in all three respects a forerunner of what we are observing in Europe, the label "Americanization" is misleading. Instead, a global frame of reference as well as national path-dependencies need to be taken into account. (Contains 3 figures.)

Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers and the promotion of competition, are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school than those from more advantaged families. Because these policy initiatives do not directly address the educational challenges experienced by disadvantaged students, they have contributed little--and are not likely to contribute much in the future--to raising overall student achievement or to reducing achievement and educational attainment gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Moreover, such policies have the potential to do serious harm. Addressing the educational challenges faced by children from disadvantaged families will require a broader and bolder approach to education policy than the recent efforts to reform schools. (Contains 2 tables, 3 figures and 20 footnotes.)

There is strong interest in broadening engineering education, bringing in more liberal arts content as well as additional subjects such as economics, business and law, with which engineers now have to be familiar. There are also cogent arguments for balancing against what is now the almost exclusively quantitative nature of the curriculum, adding more elements that relate to the actual practice of engineering, and structuring engineering education so as to provide multiple and later entry points, which should enable more informed career choices and make engineering attractive to a more diverse range of the population. Many have also sought a change in the level of the professional engineering degree from the bachelor's to the graduate level, which would logically, and probably also necessarily, accompany these changes. However, progress towards such changes in the United States has been marginal, in large part because incentives on the micro- and meso-scales do not match those on the macro-scale. On the other hand, there is much more substantial change in other countries, driven in part by the Bologna process. For the United States to be the last to change would be counter to the goal of retaining higher-functioning engineering jobs in the U. S. What needs to happen in order for the U. S. to change is evaluated. (Contains 37 endnotes.)

In the midst of the global recession, how have national governments viewed the role of higher education in their evolving strategies for economic recovery? Demand for higher education generally goes up during economic downturns. Which nations have proactively protected funding for their universities and colleges to help maintain access, to help retrain workers, and to mitigate unemployment rates? And which nations have simply made large funding cuts for higher education in light of the severe downturn in tax revenues? This essay provides a moment-in-time review of the fate of higher education among a number of OECD nations and other countries, with a particular focus on the United States, and on California--the largest state in terms of population "and" in the size of its economy. Preliminary indicators show that most nations have not thus far resorted to uncoordinated cutting of funding for higher education that we generally see in US state systems. Their political leaders see higher education as a key to short-term economic recovery, long-term competitiveness, and often their own political viability--particularly in nations with upcoming elections. Further, although this is speculative, it appears that many nations are using the economic downturn to actually accelerate reform policies, some intended to promote efficiencies, but most focused on improving the quality of their university sector and promoting innovation in their economies. One might postulate that the decisions made today and in reaction to the "Great Recession" by nations will likely speed up global shifts in the race to develop human capital, with the US probably losing some ground. The Obama administration's first stimulus package helped mitigate large state budget cuts to public services in 2009-10 and to support expanded enrollments largely at the community college level. But it was not enough to avoid having universities and colleges lay off faculty and staff, reduce salaries and benefits, often eliminating course offerings that slow student progress towards a degree, or making sizable reductions in access in states such as California. States have very limited ability to borrow funds for operating costs, making the federal government the last resort. "In short, how state budgets go, so goes US higher education; whereas most national systems of higher education financing is tied to national budgets with an ability to borrow." Without the current stimulus funding, the impact on access and maintaining the health of America's universities would have been even more devastating. But that money will be largely spent by the 2011 fiscal year (Oct 2010-Sept 2011), unless Congress and the White House renew funding support on a similar scale for states that are coping with projected large budget gaps. That now seems unlikely. The Obama administration announced its proposed 2011 budget in February, including $25 billion in state aid targeted for Medicaid. This is a modest contribution to states that face projected cumulative budget deficits of $142 billion in 2011, and there is uncertainty regarding the final federal budget. This is because Obama's proposal will be debated and voted on in a Congress increasingly focused on stemming the tide of rising federal budget deficits. Without substantially more federal aid to state governments, many public colleges and universities will face another major round of budget cuts. There is the prospect that higher education degree production rates in the US will dip in the near term, particularly in states like California that have substantially reduced access to higher education even as enrollment demand has gone up. (Contains 49 footnotes and 4 figures.) [A version of this paper was presented at the Beijing Forum, University of Peking, November 7, 2009.]

This paper traces the history of two reform movements organized more than two decades ago to improve teaching and learning in U.S. colleges and universities: the teaching reform movement, led by the liberal philanthropies, and the accountability movement, led by the states and, later, the regional accreditors. The paper concludes that the teaching reform movement helped to dislodge research as the accepted center of academic life and helped to spread progressive education methods throughout academe. Both of these changes are consistent with continuing low levels of student effort and limited student learning in college. The accountability movement, by contrast, has had little impact thus far due to frequent changes in accountability and institutional assessment mechanisms, and the tendency of universities to comply only minimally with the demands of accreditors for increased accountability and institutional assessment. (Contains 18 notes.)

In the United States, developing "human capital" for both economic and social benefit is an idea as old as the nation itself and led to the emergence of world's first mass higher education system. Now most other nations are racing to expand access to universities and colleges and to expand their role in society. Higher education is growing markedly in its importance for building a culture of aspiration and, in turn, the formation of human capital, the promotion of socioeconomic mobility, and the determination of national economic competitiveness. This paper outlines a convergence of approaches toward building what I call "Structured Opportunity Markets" (SOM) in higher education--including diversified providers and expanding enrollment and program capacity. Increasingly, higher education systems in developed and developing nations, and in some cases, supranational entities such as the European Union and emerging cooperation among nations in South East Asia, will move to most if not all of the components of SOM, in part influenced by a global process of policy transfer. Those nations and regions that do not pursue major components of SOM will be compelled to present rational arguments in both domestic and international forums as to why they are not adopting some aspects of the model. The paper concludes by arguing that while the US offers structural and operational models for many evolving national higher education systems, the EU offers important insights on how to pursue higher education reform in the modern and increasingly competitive global context. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

What to do about persistently low-performing schools is a pressing challenge for policymakers and educators across the nation. Schools that fail to make "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) for five consecutive years under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) must be "restructured". The 3,500 schools in the United States currently in restructuring are pursuing a variety of different strategies, but little research has been done on their implementation or effectiveness. The state of Hawaii has chosen to partner with outside organization in forty-four of its ninety-two restructuring schools--a much greater level than mainland states--and its unusual procurement and accountability frameworks for managing these partnerships offer unique insights to states considering a similar approach. This paper looks at the support mechanisms that Hawaii has put into place to facilitate partnerships with these "diverse providers" and at how restructuring schools may have benefited from those arrangements. (Contains 6 figures.)

This paper analyzes households' response to the introduction of intra-district school choice and examines the impact of exercising this choice on student test scores in Pinellas County Schools, one of the largest school districts in the United States. Households react strongly to the incentives created by such programs, leading to significant changes in the frequency of exercising alternative public schooling options, as well as changes in the composition of the "opt out" students. However, using "proximity to public alternatives" as an instrument for opting out of the "assigned" public school, the author finds no significant benefit of opting out on student achievement. Also, the author finds those who opt out of their default public schools often perform significantly worse on standardized tests than similar students who stay behind. Results suggest that the short-run detrimental effects of opting out are stronger for students who opt out closer to the terminal grade of the school level, yet weaker for "disadvantaged" students, who typically constitute the proposed target of school choice reforms. (Contains 5 figures, 14 tables and 33 footnotes.)

This paper examines how higher education can contribute to Africa's transformation, reviews the challenges and priorities for higher education institution building, and introduces a proposed partnership program among African and U.S. higher education institutions to strengthen African higher education. In July of 2007 the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) and the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in partnership with Higher Education for Development (HED), and the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) came together to form an initiative to strengthen African higher education capacity in science end technology for development in partnership with U.S. institutions of higher education. At this stage, the Initiative has identified several broad goals and capacity building priorities based on initial research and stakeholder consultations with leaders in Africa and the United States. The primary goals of the Africa-U.S. Higher Education Collaboration Initiative are to enhance and empower higher education institutions in Africa and the U.S. to contribute more effectively to African development and transformation and to increase the competency of U.S. higher education institutions in global affairs related to Africa. (Contains 2 tables and 11 footnotes.)

Although there are many concepts and ideas proposed to reform mathematics education, especially in rural areas, the experience of actual reform embeds many ironies. In the United States, some researchers and educators try to change the role of mathematics in rural context. From a Thai outlook, however, the difficulty is that this role is not going to change if the U.S. continues (as seems likely) to place great emphasis on student achievement. In the United States, great effort is being devoted to improvement in mathematics achievement, operationalized as "raising test scores." The U.S. government also supports many national evaluation and assessment programs that report students' achievement comparing the United States and international countries such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) or the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In other words, learning and teaching styles might be changed, but the goals remain the same. This paper focuses on the role of place-based education in mathematics reform. The aim of place-based education is to enhance students' achievements in order to improve a community's quality.

Decentralization and an increased emphasis on community and parent participation represent significant education reform trends over the past decade. These reforms take place in the context of increased emphasis within Education for All (EFA) on improving education quality and outcomes and on strengthening accountability for results. They require that substantial information be available to local and regional stakeholders, school officials, and communities in order to increase transparency, establish a basis for accountability, and provide tools for effective management at the local level. Parents, teachers, school officials, and other stakeholders must be able to assess school performance and status. A number of countries are experimenting with school-level information systems known as "school report cards" to increase accountability and transparency. These systems have different formats and purposes, ranging from strict accountability systems that measure student performance to participatory diagnostic and management tools that support school managers. Efforts are relatively novel, and substantial evaluation information is not yet available. The purpose of this report is to present the various types of school report cards and information systems currently being used and establish a typology for understanding the range of audiences and purposes for such systems, as well as the continuum of cost and sophistication involved.

A major concern for policymakers around the world is how to design an entire system of education that provides high quality teaching and learning outcomes. This paper aims to make a significant contribution to this debate by looking closely at the middle part of education systems -- the regional, district, and sub-district level -- as a critical part of the 'machine' for quality teaching and learning at scale. This working paper is part of a joint venture between the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), Education Development Trust, and the Education Commission in researching and strengthening roles at the middle tier of education systems. This review sees the potential of these middle tier leaders as a cadre of change agents who work directly with schools and teachers, and who are dedicated to instructional change and professional learning. [This report was co-produced by the Education Commission.]

Supporters of free college in the US often point to countries that do not charge tuition to argue for the policy. However, international examples often illustrate that free-college policies entail unintended consequences. Ireland offers a particularly apt case study on that point. In the mid-1990s, Ireland abolished tuition for full-time undergraduates to expand access to higher education and address social inequalities (although financial and political pressures have since led policymakers to increase other student fees). At first glance, free college (known in Ireland as "free fees") appears to have been successful on some measures. Enrollment rates have grown, degree completion rates have remained high, and the share of workers with a college degree has tripled such that Ireland now has one of the highest college attainment rates in the world. However, several factors discussed in this paper may explain these positive trends better than Ireland's free-fees policy does. Overall, Ireland's experience demonstrates that a country can still struggle with many higher education challenges, much like those in the US, even after implementing free college. This suggests that free college in the US may be far less effective than many of its advocates claim unless policymakers adopt additional policies to increase access and maintain quality in the higher education system.

This paper examines the trend toward demanding increased accountability and efficiency by institutions of higher education in the United States and Europe and its implications for the relationship between government and the college or university. It notes that such factors as limited state resources, rising educational costs, and the growing demand for accessibility and equity have generated external pressures on higher education to become more accountable to its funding sources. Examples of specific reforms in the United States are mentioned, including performance-based funding, adjustments in faculty workload policies, and development of policies related to time-to-degree and faculty-per-degree ratios. Examples of reforms in Great Britain focus on the British Education Reform Act of 1988, which began the transition of power from local education authorities to the national government. Examples of the accountability trend from continental Europe are also provided. Discussion of societal demands and the accountability movement examines the effects on higher education of massification and limits on public expenditures. The paper concludes that higher education has evolved into a foundational component of national economic growth and reflects utilitarian views of higher education in which economic values are supreme and the quantification of fiscal resources are the true measure of value. (Contains 33 references.) (DB)

This paper examines the development in China of junior colleges (JCs) and adult higher education institutions (HEIs) and compares them to their community college counterparts in the United States, focusing on what China can learn from the American experience. It notes that higher education in China has expanded rapidly in recent years, with the number of colleges and universities more than doubling between 1977 and 1995 and enrollment increasing by a factor of five. According to the Ninth Five-Plan for Educational Development and the Long Range Development Program Toward the Year 2010, enrollment is expected to increase from 2.57 million students in 1995 to 4.5 million in 2010. To accommodate the increase, the Chinese government does not plan to expand the number of institutions but rather have the JCs and HEIs expand their current scale of operations by increasing enrollment. It is recommended that the Chinese government establish specific policy guidelines for further developing JCs and HEIs, that educational leaders be granted more autonomy to operate their institutions, that JCs and HEIs consider more open admissions policies, articulate transfer arrangements between JCs and HEIs and four-year institutions, and ensure that JCs and HEIs are properly funded. (Contains 11 references.) (MDM)

U.S. and European models of delivering secondary education were examined to identify ways of improving Latin American and Caribbean secondary schools and easing Latin American and Caribbean students' transition from school to work. The following delivery options were considered: (1) separate job training from formal secondary education; (2) move technical education to the postsecondary level; (3) create tracks within formal secondary education; (4) develop a single national curriculum with electives; (5) build academics into vocational subjects; (6) blend office technology into academics; and (7) maintain a few elite secondary technical schools that are closely linked with industry. The following were among the conclusions that emerged from the analysis: (1) the traditional structure of secondary education is obsolete; (2) because of the diverse situations and cultural traditions existing in the countries of Latin American and the Caribbean, there is no single model of secondary education that can be recommended for all countries in the region; (3) many new alternatives include a progressive separation of vocational preparation from academic streams; (4) regardless of their level and regardless of whether they have ties with academic studies, the most successful technical schools are closely tied to industry; and (5) in all cases, more emphasis must be placed on solving problems rather than on memorizing facts and theories. (Contains 17 references) (MN)

This study examined the role of faculty participation on strategic change within higher education. An open-ended questionnaire was completed by seven individuals from Singapore and the United States who had had experience with higher education strategic planning and change as both faculty and administrators in Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the United States. It was found that all of the respondents agreed on the necessity of involving stakeholders, particularly the faculty, in strategic change. Many also pointed to the difficulty of getting quality participation from faculty, due to the fact that faculty often have a narrow perspective, that faculty participation involves a large commitment of time, and that faculty are often reluctant to address complex issues or problems. Respondents emphasized the negative impact of overly hierarchical and bureaucratic organizational structures, which were more typical in Singapore than elsewhere. The comments also emphasized the impact that organizational culture, planning processes, reward structures, and institutional mission can have on faculty participation in strategic change. Suggestions for encouraging and improving faculty participation were also offered. (Contains 32 references.) (MDM)

This is an analysis of the findings from three comparable national studies of current change in the provision of initial teacher education. These three studies are: the Mode of Teacher Education (MOTE) survey, covering England and Wales; the Research about Teacher Education (RATE) Project, covering the United States; and the Study of Initial Teacher Education (SITE), covering Australia. Each of the studies examines comparable issues and identifies a range of common policy strategies being pursued by the respective governments. There appears to be a global move toward educational reform. Many countries are dismantling centralized educational structures and replacing them with systems having local institutional autonomy and control. These are often linked to an increased emphasis on parental choice and competition between institutions for students. These changes are leading to a market model of educational services. There is more encouragement of the growth of different types of schools, responsive to local needs and particular communities and interest groups. This trend is also linked to growing notions of cultural pluralism as schools shift from a modern to postmodern model. (Contains 39 references.) (JLS)

This document contains four reports on technology and further education (FE) that Lynton Gray and Ann-Marie Warrender prepared for the Further Education Funding Council's Learning and Technology Committee. The first report, "Main Themes from Learning & Technology Committee Press Surveys," examines three themes that were identified during a review of British press coverage of the role of information/learning technologies in FE: technological developments, organizational changes and learning applications. "Learning and Technology in American Community Colleges," which is based on materials presented at an American Association of Community Colleges convention, discusses the following topics: technology and teaching, distance learning, technologies and the Internet, and industry and student-centered learning. "Multimedia and Education," which is based on materials presented at an Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education conference, examines the following topics: technology for teachers, breaching the technological barriers, the impact of national initiatives, publishing and multimedia, and Canada's Open Learning Agency. "Learning Technologies in Industrial Training" explains the uses of information and learning technologies by a small sample of British companies in their own training programs. The implications of the four papers for reform of FE are summarized in a final section titled "Evidence for Action." (MN)