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A number of reasons have been proposed for the poor quality of higher education in the Arab world, including the poor incentive structures of public higher education institutions. The expansion of private higher education has been hailed as an important part of enhancing incentives and thus improving education quality. However, it is not clear whether the practices of private higher education institutions differ from those of public institutions. This article explores whether private provision improves the quality of higher education, as measured by pedagogy, accountability, and student perceptions of quality. The analysis focuses on commerce and information technology programs in Egypt and Jordan. The results indicate that pedagogy, accountability, and student perceptions of quality do not vary systematically by type of higher education institution in these countries and that expanding the role of private institutions in higher education is therefore unlikely to automatically improve educational processe...

In recent years sub-Saharan African states, including Malawi, have adopted the Education for All (EFA) goal of universal, fee-free primary education (UPE). The EFA process is often linked to the expansion and sustainability of universal rights, democratic processes, and political systems. The EFA policies have also been tied, discursively and in practice, to officially democratic or democratizing elections. In fact, many international EFA declarations claim a relationship between UPE and political democratization. In official documents, UPE is contrasted with, and judged inherently more democratic than, colonial, elite-creating, limited-access education systems, and UPE is also envisioned as creating an environment in which political democracy can flourish. For example, the World Bank (2001, 8) claims that “broad and equitable access to education is . . . essential for sustained progress towards democracy, civic participation, and better governance.” The purported egalitarian and democratizing effects of EFA are regularly touted in arguments made for international support of EFA. At the same time, measures of good governance and political democratization are increasingly included among the aid criteria considered by international donors. And yet, despite the supposed linkage between EFA and political democratization, there have been few empirical studies of the effects of EFA on democratization, or vice versa. The research reported here explores the case of UPE and political democratization in Malawi, a country in central eastern Africa. Malawi offers analytic opportunities to examine the relation between EFA

Sustained expansion of formal schooling worldwide over the twentieth century indicates the depth to which mass schooling has become politically institutionalized within society (Garnier and Hage 1991; Fuller and Rubinson 1992). Here we examine the countertrend of contraction of higher education in the German Democratic Republic (official name of former East Germany, hereafter the GDR). We argue that it was caused by a complex shift in socialist ideology, an important change in the makeup of the political elite over the course of the nation’s history, and the inability of the society to fully develop the idea of education as an individual civic right versus the more limited idea of a collective necessity. Underpinned by the practice of manpower planning, these factors resulted in a rupture between higher education and society that led to contraction of enrollment rates (Farrell 1997). The politically motivated contraction of enrollments in higher education clearly diverges from a larger world trend (Schofer and Meyer 2005). Full enrollments in primary schooling, achieved in economically developed nations during the first half of the twentieth century, were followed by steady growth in secondary school enrollment rates in the second half of the century. In Third World nations this same pattern has occurred, lagging only a few decades behind the growth in enrollment in wealthier nations (Baker and Holsinger 1996). Extensive analyses of this growth show similar trends across most nations regardless of political, social, and economic conditions. Demand created by this expanding secondary enrollment is leading to a pattern of widespread growth in enrollment rates in higher education (Windolf 1992; Windolf and Haas 1993; Ramirez 2002).

In the fall of 2000, children who attended approved private kindergartens in Taiwan became eligible for annual vouchers of NT$10,000 (New Taiwan dollars). By providing public funds for vouchers, Taiwan’s government reversed its previous hands-off approach to private preschool education. Previously, most government spending on early childhood education was used to support public kindergartens. In 2000, only 30 percent of preschool-aged children attended public kindergartens. Most attended private kindergartens, which received few public subsidies. By subsidizing private preschool tuition, vouchers were intended to narrow the growing inequalities in education choices between wealthier and poorer families. Government officials justified vouchers on the grounds of “rationalizing the distribution of resources” and “lessening the economic burden on parents.” In addition, scholars and private kindergarten entrepreneurs hailed the voucher reform as an integral step in the modernization of preschool education. Vouchers were claimed to enable parental choice and school competition and to improve children’s welfare. Preschool vouchers were rapidly integrated into Taiwan’s ongoing education reform, which had been initiated in the mid-1990s. How can we understand the rise in the use of preschool vouchers in Taiwan? The emergence of vouchers seems puzzling because the concept of vouchers did not originate in Taiwan, nor did the more general neoliberal idea of education privatization. Most parents have preferred to send their children to public kindergartens, which charge lower tuition fees and are seen to provide more reliable service. In 2001, an opinion poll showed that nearly 80 percent of interviewees agreed that the government should make it possible for every child to enter public kindergarten. The support for

L'article analyse les tendances actuelles en matiere de politique de l'enseignement superieur en Afrique du Sud et explore les transformations de ce secteur dans la periode post-apartheid dans un contexte de reforme mondial repondant aux logiques du neo-liberalisme et aux exigences des regles de la concurrence economique mondiale...

L'objectif principal de cette etude est de demontrer et de justifier les implications politiques chinoises en matiere d'investissement dans la formation des enseignants et la consideration de ce processus en tant que mecanisme permettant d'ameliorer la qualite de l'enseignement. Malgre tout, les interrogations subsistent sur l'efficacite de ce systeme et sur la rentabilite de ce choix...

"India's primary education glass is two-thirds full, one-third empty ... The result is that many of the huge returns to primary education are foregone. . . . India's low average educational attainment has not yet reached the critical threshold where benefits are greatest and high economic growth rates are sustained.... At the current rate of growth of schooling, some of the largest states will not reach an average of 4 to 5 years of primary education until well into the next century" (World Bank, p. 1). "No matter how one looks at it, the state of elementary education in India is dismal. ... The fact that elementary education in India remains far from universal is no secret. Yet, the enormity of the problem is often underestimated. . . . India's success with higher education ... has even created the impression that we are doing just fine" (PROBE Team, p. 8). The quotations above capture the perspectives of two recent books on the condition of primary education in India today. The necessity and enormity of the task of achieving widespread primary education in a country with over 100 million children of primary-school age makes this a topic of critical interest to educators in India and elsewhere. Either book by itself leaves the reader with a partial picture; together they produce a more complete and realistic understanding of the challenge of Education for All in India. Each of these books tries to balance the depressing reality of the educational experience for millions of rural children with careful cataloging of progress made and examples of successful interventions from various parts of India. Both books draw heavily on Indian research and scholarship, reflecting the substantial capability of both the research and the policy communities in India today. They differ radically, though, in the "voice" chosen to convey the message and in the kinds of information used to represent reality. The World Bank's Primary Education in India speaks at the macrolevel with the numbers, percentages, and computer projections of economic analysis. The Public Report on Primary Education (PROBE) portrays the reality of primary education at the village level as lived and narrated by pupils, teachers, and parents in rural communities. Primary Education in India provides a solid overview of the state of primary education in India, an extensive set of statistics on education for the fifteen major states, and a strong analysis of both the costs and financing of education. A major strength of this book is the extensive use of recent field research by Indian scholars, both

tion devoted to the first decades of change and such innovations as the Literacy Campaign or the combination of study and work, however, the pace of research and reporting on Cuban education has slowed. The recognition of past progress remains crucial for understanding the challenges facing the Cuban schools in the current period as well as where educational reformsincluding diminished access to higher education-fit in Cuba's strategy for survival in the new world order. The official commitment to education re

Past efforts and available resources have made basic education possible in Latin America for the majority of children, helped to extend the years of schooling, provided early and preschool education, facilitated educational access for disabled children, and improved the chances for the poor, migrants, girls, and indigenous children to attend public schools. In addition to increasing the equality of educational opportunities, schools have also improved their overall capacity to retain students and even promote them to higher education. Nevertheless, the equality, quality (including effectiveness, equity, and efficiency), and relevance of educational provision continue to be critical issues, especially now that Latin American states are financially pressed. Elementary and secondary schooling continue to be segregated by class, with the poor attending public schools, while middleand upper-class students are largely educated at private institutions. With few exceptions, preschooling-decisive in shaping the cognitive structure of children-is not widely available for the region's poor, while illiteracy (especially among women) also continues to plague the efforts of educational planners. This illiteracy and the rural educational conditions, particularly among indigenous groups, continue to be pressing issues, with adult education remaining at the top of the policy agenda. Popular education, an indigenous paradigm of nonformal education developed in the region, is facing serious challenges in the context of postmodernism and post-Marxism in Latin America. Teachers' training, their political views, and their technical skills continue to be central for educational reform. Current social, political, and economic changes in Latin America underscore the pace, texture, and scope of educational development, quality, and relevance. In this context, educational planners, children, youth, parents, and communities must deal with the implications of stagnant economic growth during the 1980s, the growing external debt, increasing fiscal constraints, and both the intended and unintended impacts of structural economic adjustments and neoliberal

More than ever, national economic development depends on skilled personnel. This is exemplified by the spectacular economic performance of Japan and other newly industrializing countries since the 1950s. Elsewhere, governments in less developed countries have also recognized the necessity of investing heavily in training for skills. In aggregate terms, approximately one-quarter of total public expenditure on education and training was devoted to vocational training in Latin America and Africa during the 1960s and 1970s.1 The development of efficient and effective national education and vocational training systems hinges critically on cost-effectiveness assessments of investments in different types of education and training. However, the bulk of the research undertaken by education economists to date has focused on the calculation of social and private rates of return to investments in primary, secondary, and university-level education. In part, this is due to the overall importance of investments in general education. Yet it is also that the heterogeneity and complexity of vocational training activities makes them more difficult to evaluate. Research on the economics of vocational training has concentrated on the academic versus technical secondary school debate which has been fairly decisively resolved in favor of general academic education.2 Another important issue has been the cost-effectiveness of alternative ways (or modes) of training skilled manual workers. In simple terms, the key question here is whether this training is best done by schools, at public or private training institutions after school but before the start of formal employment, or on the job in the form of supervised apprenticeships. During the last 15-20 years a strong consensus has emerged on this issue, namely, that on the job, nonformal training is invariably far more cost

Taiwan is an interesting case in understanding education's contribution to economic growth. Until the 1950s, Taiwan was similar to other poor Third World countries. Since then, it has been transformed into one of the few newly industrialized countries in the world. Its annual growth in total domestic product during this period averaged 9 percent, and its gross domestic product per capita increased from approximately $100 to $6,000.1 Its economic structure shifted emphasis from agricultural to industrial production in less than 3 decades. Moreover, this "economic miracle" took place in an international environment in which Taiwan had to compete with established industrialized countries for a share of the world market in spite of limited natural resources and heavy population pressure. This impressive economic growth also took place in a nonWestern cultural setting and in a country that had been colonized until the end of World War II.

Indigenous groups are often associated with poverty and so are low levels of education. Guatemala and Bolivia are the two Latin American countries in which the ethnic part of the population is proportionately greatest, with Bolivia being more schooled than Guatemala. So the author tried to determine how levels of ethnicity and education affect the level of worker earnings. His investigation was based on data from household surveys in the two countries. He found that, other things being equal, indigenous people who acquire more human capital enjoy greater economic rewards than those who acquire less. Just giving ethnic groups basic education is bound to improve their position. This finding was supported by both within country and cross-country evidence: indigenous people fare better in Bolivia (where there is more education) than in Guatemala (where there is less). One possible (although controversial) intervention is to provide schooling in the child's first language. Such an intervention has been successfully implemented on a small scale in Guatemala. Bilingual programs also exist, on a small scale, in Bolivia.

The World Bank's policy paper on vocational and technical education and training has been 5 years in the making, during which the Bank has produced a long list of background papers as spin-offs and base materials. These-along with the paper itself, with its long string of referencesare valuable contributions to the rapidly growing international literature on vocational training policies. Its recommendations are packaged as policy options. The order of priority is evident from the sequence in which the options are presented: "Strengthening Primary and Secondary Education," "Encouraging Private Sector Training," "Improving Effectiveness and Efficiency in Public Training," and "Training as a Complement in Equity Strategies." It is, in fact, general education and private-sector training that are given pride of place in this paper.

Economics of education as a field began in the early sixties and has exhibited remarkable growth during the last three decades. These two books capture and reflect much of this history. Mark Blaug, perhaps the preeminent economist of education today, brings together a collection of some of his most-noted work over a twentyyear period (1965-85). The articles chronicle his changing perspective on educational policy, research methods, and, perhaps most important, the state of the field. A very interesting and self-critical introduction highlights "The Education of an Economist," part of Blaug's title, by reflecting on the progression of his thinking over his career. The book edited by George Psacharopoulos brings together eightyeight articles by fifty-four well-known authors, with some revisions, from the 1985 ten-volume International Encyclopedia of Education, edited by Torsten Husen and Neville Postlethwaite. The economics of education was one of twenty major areas in the encyclopedia, and Psacharopoulos was responsible for commissioning these studies. Reprinting these articles in a separate volume increases their utility enormously since they were previously scattered throughout a very expensive reference work. Advertising for this volume bills it as an examination of "the state of the art of the field," offering "the first truly comprehensive review of its field." Slightly more modest, the editor, in his preface, sees it as "a reasonably complete review of the stock of knowledge on the economics of education as of the mid1980s" (p. xvi). To assess these two books is to assess the field, but, of course, my look at the economics of education can only critically examine a few of its dimensions. My biases are signaled by my title. I find myself shocked at how little substance there is to the field as defined here, how little it changes, how superficially controversies are examined, and how challenges

Far-reaching changes have begun to unfold in South Africa, and the decade of the 1990s is destined to present many tough but exciting challenges for all South Africans. Most important among these changes was the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and other black political organizations on February 2, 1990. This bold reform move on the part of the South African government set a process in motion that commentators have called the "normalization of South African politics." One important reflection of this normalization is that all groupings across the political spectrum are now vigorously engaged in a public debate about what should follow apartheid's racist policies in the political, social, economic, and educational spheres. Vocational training and technical education are two policy issues that are beginning to receive increasing attention. This is partly due to the fact that the state has already begun to take the reform initiative in these spheres. New state legislation was introduced in June 1990 that allowed black trade unions to be represented on the industrial training boards that control all training activities.' Previously, apartheid legislation restricted membership of these boards to state officials, representatives of the business sector, and the white trade union movement. This reform move has caught the progressive oppositional groupings such as the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the National Education Co-ordinating Committee (NECC) by surprise. Vocational training and technical education policies have in the past not been a priority issue for these groupings. Struggles to oppose the most coercive and repressive of apartheid's practices have occupied much of their time. This new context, however, has presented a fresh challenge to these groupings and to the academics concerned with these issues: what vocational training and technical education policies should be implemented in a postapartheid South Africa? One organization that has begun to debate these questions seriously is the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), which launched a very impressive vocational training

At the 1979 regional meeting of ministers of education of Latin America, the participants signed the "Mexico Declaration," launching the Principal Project (Proyecto Principal) for Latin America and the Caribbean.' This plan outlined three main objectives for the development of education: (1) the elimination of illiteracy, (2) the extension of basic education from 8 to 10 years, and (3) the improvement of the quality of basic education. To finance activities to implement these objectives, the declaration proposed increasing educational expenditures toward the ambitious goal of 7-8 percent gross domestic product (GDP). Why were the Latin American delegates subscribing to the same objectives 11 years later at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand? Perhaps the answer is the same one that explains why the Latin American caucus at Jomtien lobbied so effectively to include in the declaration a reference to the trade-offs between the debt burden and the achievement of universal basic education.2

Because resources for most governments of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)1 are tight and economic recovery is slow, there is strong interest in assessing what this means for the educational subsector. Moreover, as part of the economic stabilization process, many countries have cut public expenditures. This reduction has important implications since over 80 percent of primary and secondary school students in Africa attend public schools. Although the deceleration does not affect all African countries, the trend in most is sufficient cause for concern. For instance, average annual per capita expenditure growth on education was 2 percent for the period 1975-79 but declined by more than 3 percent per annum between 1980 and 1985. Most recent studies on education in lesser developing countries (LDC) of Africa pertain to resource mobilization for the subsector.2 These examinations stem from a general concern that declining public expenditures (sometimes recurrent) will lead to decreased delivery of education if private resources do not augment public resources. Our concern is that per capita public expenditure alone is not a sufficient index for assessing this. Equally important are the quality of expenditure, as represented by the expenditure mix; system wastage, as represented by process indicators; the performance of students in some standardized examinations; as well as an understanding of internal efficiency mechanisms and community effort. Other studies, such as those of the World Bank, Bruce Fuller, and D. Landau have dealt with similar questions.3 In particular, Landau found, contrary to his expectation, a weak correlation between public expenditures

In the opening chapter of his much-commended book, Guillermo O'Donnell claims that the state in a capitalist society, whatever the political regime, is the guarantor of capitalist relations. Moreover, O'Donnell argues that capitalist relations tend to exclude the popular sectors from the fruits of development processes, especially in dependent and transnationalized social contexts. He argues that, in dependent, incomplete, and peripheral capitalism, formal institutional democracy, whenever achieved, has fallen short of guaranteeing a reasonable distribution of economic opportunities for all population sectors. Looking particularly at the experience of the Southern Cone countries that have followed in the 1950s and 1960s a

There has been a substantial convergence in the educational systems of many countries.' Starting with different educational backgrounds, political systems, and economies, both advanced and developing countries have developed similar educational ideologies, institutions, and curricula. One link among some common developments is vocationalism-the orientation of education around preparation for labor markets. In both advanced countries and LDCs, there has been a tendency to consider specific skill training, especially secondary-level vocational education, to be the principal manifestation of vocationalism. This conception is too narrow: every level of schooling, including the university, has become suffused with vocational goals, differentiated along vocational lines, and judged by vocational criteria. To understand the power of vocationalism, it is important to examine the full range of its consequences. In the first part of this article I will discuss different manifestations of vocationalism-understood as specific skill training-in both advanced countries and LDCs. The second section examines some larger consequences of vocationalism, especially its role in educational inflation and in defining the social roles of education. A finding common to many countries is that, despite claims of economic "relevance," vocationalized approaches prove to have little economic justification, fail to resolve the problems that they are designed to address, and generate new problems for education systems. The final section hypothesizes why, given these discouraging findings, vocational solutions to educational and economic problems continue to surface.

IN THE LAST THREE YEARS the most dramatic development in the economics of education has been the increasingly critical reevaluation of the traditional premises of educational planning. Specifically, the received wisdom that education can be planned in such a way as to become a significant force for economic and/or social development has been vigorously attacked. Two of the most noteworthy instances of this movement were the OECD Seminar on Methodology of Human Resources Planning in Developing Countries held in Paris in September, 1971 and the First Bellagio Conference, held in Bellagio, Italy in May, 1972.1 The revisionist stance represented by the opinions and conclusions expressed at these two meetings (as well as the increasing scepticism in the general literature)2 is especially significant in that several scholars have been required to recant their own previous enthusiasm for the education/development strategy. The purpose of the present paper is to review the reasons for the growing disenchantment with traditional macro-planning efforts in education and to anticipate what effect this disenchantment may be expected to have upon education and educational planning activities in developing nations. Finally, an attempt will be made to specify the type and extent of planning activities which remain viable and to encourage new directions for research and planning emphasis. While the present cynicism is a welcome relief from the earlier period of naive enthusiasm, by itself it offers nothing in the way of guidelines for rectifying the present situation.

histories of specific institutions or descriptive summaries on the amount of education women and girls received. That literature, as this bibliography underscores, was relatively small and lacking in analytic perspective. In the last decade studies of women's schooling in Western societies, especially the United States, have proliferated. There is now a substantial research literature on access to education, the formal and "hidden" curriculum of the schools, counseling practices, educational outcomes, and the relationship between education and women's roles in society and family life. Research on sex differentiation in education and its outcomes in the Third World, however, remains far less extensive. This bibliography reflects not only the newness of the study of women's education as a scholarly endeavor but also the relative paucity of research on the topic. In compiling the bibliography we were faced with some difficult choices about what to include. We decided to focus exclusively on women's education in the Third World. We defined the "Third World" in

It is clear from government documents that in the last 2 decades, postsecondary education institutions have expanded at a dramatic rate in many African countries, either to meet the need for using locals in high-level posts predominantly held by expatriates or to meet social demand. Studies now indicate that in most African countries, shortages of manpower are giving way to a surplus of university graduates at a more rapid rate than was originally envisaged.' The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), which sponsored many manpower projections in the 60s, is now arguing that "mismatch" between training and occupations can be reduced if qualitative dimensions (attitudes and expectations of students, graduates, and employers) are included in making quantitative projections. According to the principal investigator of the IIEP project, intake policies based on simple quantitative forecasts of needs cannot be implemented effectively if qualitative and attitudinal aspects of individuals and groups are ignored. Therefore he suggests that a structural mechanism (built-in monitoring system) for improved interaction between the higher education system and the labor market is desirable. This would allow continuous adjustment of the development of higher education in both quantitative and qualitative terms.2

Official commitment to universal education of girls is a dramatic innovation in Middle Eastern nations. Though a departure from centuries of practice, it was a relatively simple decision for government officials to make. In the late 1950s when the newly independent Tunisian government first voiced such a commitment, officials' faith in the attractiveness of schooling and in the power of education to transform society facilitated their choice. Despite substantial growth in enrollments over the past 20 years, Tunisia, like other nations, has found universal schooling an elusive goal. Rapid but incomplete expansion has generated serious, second-order policy problems, which are neither so clearly perceived nor so simply solved as the earlier task. Explored in this article are two such policy problems: persistent gaps in the drive for universal enrollment and the provision ofjob-related training. At the heart of each of these issues is the interaction between demand and supply. Popular demand is affected by cultural and socioeconomic factors as well as by previous experience, and governmental supply of services is constrained by costs, competing pressures, and incomplete information. In the following pages, I will examine the political issues and the government's response, similarities and differences in policy for boys and girls, and implications for understanding the effects of public policies on women.

It is an old and widely held belief that education can contribute to economic development, but neither educators nor economists have a recognized theory of how it happens. Educators' expertise in curriculum development does not prepare them to identify types of education that will promote economic development, while economists' expertise in price theory has been less useful than many expected. Despite considerable refinement of their measures of the economic value of educational resources,1 economists are unable to advise educational policymakers reliably on how to change low-productivity communities into high-productivity ones. This article suggests that another kind of economic expertise-the theory of the effects of technology on institutions-can show educational policymakers how to contribute to economic development.2 It presents a fragment of a research project showing the economic function of education to be the transmission of technologically relevant skills. It uses the history of rural education in China, Mexico, Japan, and the United States to demonstrate that technologically appropriate curricula are a necessary part of development policy. Absence of discussion of existing conditions and obstacles to development reflects this intent and is not evidence of my ignorance of them. Technology is the total stock of human know-how that is applicable to physical phenomena. It is operational scientific knowledge, the body of techniques and tools capable of producing real income. It has grown cumulatively throughout human history and is clearly a continuing factor in human experience. Every community must apply some fraction of this stock to survive, while it must borrow or improve such know-how in order to develop.

The fundamental idea of development, writes Fred Riggs, is the increased ability of a society to shape its physical as well as human and cultural environment.' The institutions of a society, such as industry, health, transportation, government, and education, are its engines of development.2 At the focal point of the infrastructure that drives the complex development machinery is the administrative process. A basic problem in Third World nations is that costly attempts are frequently made to modernize productivity while still using traditional management structures and processes. The unfortunate consequences are that development programs are all too often ineffectual because of an inability to plan, organize, and execute realistic decisions as well as provide prompt services at appropriate times. Historically, such has been the case in Colombia. In the late 1960s, however, the Colombian president, Carlos Lleras Restrepo, and the minister of education, Octavio Arizmendi Posada, put into motion a major attempt at administrative development that would, they hoped, significantly upgrade the quality of administrative services supporting public education. Administrative development is defined as a qualitative improvement in the ability of organizational processes to more effectively and efficiently accomplish institutional goals. The objective of this study is to describe and analyze a decade-long effort at administrative development3 by which the Ministry of Education (MOE) struggled to bring order to a jumble of state educational systems that were functioning in a disorganized condition of semi-anarchy.4 Working within a conceptual framework, the study will examine the historical organizational and administrative problems associated with the public educational institution. The reform plan is then introduced, with a discussion

The current educational system in Nigeria has evolved out of the interactive forces of five learning processes, namely, the informal indigenous apprenticeship and Islamic systems on the one hand and the formal Christian, colonial (Western-style), and postcolonial systems on the other. What is most significant in this process of evolution is the transition from the narrow and elitist approach in educational planning that characterized the colonial era to the comprehensive and democratized system that now emphasizes self-reliance and cultural identity. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria stipulates that the "government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels." As far back as 1955 the Western Region of Nigeria had introduced free primary education followed by the Eastern Region, the Federal Territory of Lagos, and the Midwest Region.' However, of the 12 states established at the time, by May 1967 only Western and Lagos States had full-fledged free primary education. The military administration of the 1970s embarked on more elaborate educational programs aimed not only at making primary education free and compulsory but also at creating a new orientation for developing scientific, technological, and vocational education as a basis for the technological development of Nigeria. Then the civilian administration of 1979-83 made a verbal commitment to implement free education at all levels-primary, secondary, and tertiary. With the near collapse of the educational system in December 1983, the new military administration that emerged introduced a less liberal educational policy. What is clear from the experience of the last 30 years is that both the past civilian and the past military administrations endeavored to make budgetary allocations to sustain efforts aimed at providing free educational opportunities for the masses. However, what was not easily realized was that implementing free education even at the primary level could impose serious financial problems. Thus none of the past administrations in

The breakdown of legal authority in Uganda, precipitous over a decade, has undermined the viability of both public and private enterprises. Goods which used to be manufactured locally must now be imported. Products which used to be exported are now uncompetitive due, among other things, to an absence of spare parts and transport. No new roads have been constructed since the breakdown began; and most roads have fallen into disrepair. The number of operating hospitals and health services has shrunk; and veterinary services-dip tanks, inoculations, and so onhave had to be withdrawn from many rural areas because of scarcity of transport, pesticide, and medicine. Urban services (such as garbage collection or health inspection) are erratic; and even water supply has become a problem in areas where before it had functioned dependably. Normal business transactions are conducted with difficulty; courts function irregularly; commerical insurance is usually unobtainable. Industrial investments of the 1960s, both government and private, have incurred negative economic returns during the 1970s, as have investments in tourism and agriculture, particularly with respect to tea, sugar, and cotton. The breakdown of legal authority has created uncertainty throughout the economy.

The Republic of South Africa is one of the most racially heterogeneous countries of the world. It is also at the meeting point of many First WorldThird World and North-South problems. Whereas, in the past, South Africa has addressed these problems with the crude apartheid system, it has now become more subtle and, to many, reasonable in its approach. Manpower planning considerations now tend to override ideological considerations, and some black groups are being granted concessions. Perhaps the most important element in this changing situation is the suggested overhaul of the entire education system in South Africa. This paper sets out to examine the main propositions of the De Lange Report, to evaluate them in the light of various intellectual and value frameworks, to examine reactions to the report, and to predict what is likely to happen. The title of our paper is taken from a publication' produced 1 year after the De Lange Commission made available its recommendations for the future development of education in South Africa.

Paraguay has an educational system which is comprised of four stages: primary school (6 years), the basic cycle (3 years), the baccalaureate (3 years), and higher education.' Official statistics show that 83 percent of 7-14-year-old children are enrolled in school, and young adults aged 20-24 have an average of 5 years of schooling. The 1975 budget of the Ministry of Education was 2.7 billion guarani (US$21.7 million at the official exchange rate of US$1.00 = 0125), or 14.7 percent of the total government budget and 1.4 percent of GNP. Countrywide averages, however, hide large differences in educational attainment within the country. For example, adults aged 2024 in Asunci6n, the capital city, have an average 7.7 years of schooling, while those in rural areas have only 3.7 years. This discrepancy may, of course, in part be attributable to migration of the best-educated rural youngsters to urban areas. Other data, however, reinforce the impression of large urban-rural differences in educational attainment. While 48 percent of grade 1 pupils in urban areas complete grade 6, only 15 percent of grade 1 pupils in rural areas do so. Last, for those pupils in grade 6, reading achievement of urban pupils is double that of rural pupils.2 Differences in educational attainment between urban and rural areas

The article entitled "General Education versus Special Education for Rural Development" (Elinor G. Barber, this issue) sets out to provide a long-overdue reaction to the decade-long emphasis on nonformal educational alternatives, particularly for rural learners. Yet, while a reassessment of the value of general formal education for the rural areas is badly needed, the article fails to provide a convincing argument in its favor. Instead, the article presents a confusing series of arguments buttressed by a bewildering array of research citations which miss the point of the argument. At first reading, the argument seems plausible, but a more careful reexamination of the logic reveals some serious flaws which leave the reader unconvinced of the merit of the basic thesis. Worse, the article provides policymakers with little in the way of realistic policy options with regard to rural education. The problems of the article can be usefully discussed under four general headings. First, the topic cannot be addressed without linking the various alternatives for rural education to the larger issue of the kind of development which will be enhanced by the choice of policy. There are clear linkages between the chosen educational strategy and its impact on the lives and options of the poorer segments of the population. Second, an examination of the situation existing in the many countries now operating under a policy of one system of primary education for all reveals a de facto dual system that perpetuates the inequities. Advocating an expansion of general education, as the article implicitly does, without addressing the realities, seems hollow in the light of the problems educational planners face. Third, the article confuses critiques of the failures of the formal education system in rural areas with advocacy of alternative approaches. In so doing, it fails to address the very real limitations of formal education in a rural context. Fourth, the article uses the terms formal education, basic education, and general education on the one hand as equivalent, and on the other hand, nonformal, practical, and vocational education as the alternative. The casual grouping of these terms as representative of two distinct policies creates considerable conceptual confusion, particularly among readers who are accustomed to the generally accepted meanings of these terms in educational literature.

It has been stated that when American higher education became universal, the question of who enters college gave way to the question, Who goes where to college?' We will show that in the French context the question of which institution to attend has long been of the utmost importance, although higher education in France has only recently become a mass phenomenon. Internal differentiation within higher education does not mean that the college-noncollege dichotomy has become obsolete: the whole system of education in France, it will be argued, became horizontally differentiated as it expanded vertically. Institutional differentiation fosters credentialism by generating an inflationary demand for degrees partially channeled into dead-end educational tracks. In the few institutions guaranteeing their graduates a life membership to industrial and governmental elites, enrollments have remained virtually unchanged since the forties. Yet they have been soaring in institutions with weaker links with the labor market.

Usually countries institute a ROSLA (raising of the school leaving age) by 1 year at a time; and they allow several decades between one ROSLA and another (e.g., England, 1947 and 1972). The law that has been passed recently in Greece (No. 309/1976) extends compulsory schooling from 6 to 9 years, with full effect from school year 1980-81. This paper is an attempt to trace the probable major economic implications of the discontinous Greek ROSLA.

The emergence of comparative education as a distinct area of scientific inquiry in educational studies is a twentieth-century phenomenon; in China, it has a shorter history and is only at an initial stage of development. In an age of internationalization, however, and during a new period when China is striving for modernization and unswervingly following a policy of opening to the outside world, comparative and international education has been attracting increasingly wide attention and interest in this old civilization. Deng Xiao-ping, one of the highest-ranking Chinese leaders, recently pointed out, "Education should face modernization, face the world, and face the future."' This is illustrative of the new orientation of Chinese educational development and of the role that comparative education is to play. The goal of Chinese educators is to build a socialist educational system that suits China's conditions. Yet we are fully aware that no nation can hope to develop in isolation and that rational, overall educational planning and policy can be effectively made only from a broad, comparative perspective. As problems in national educational development can be better understood and solved in the light of both positive and negative experiences of other countries, comparative education is now playing an important role in China.

What can one say about a massive, 10-volume encyclopedia featuring articles of varying length on topics from accountancy to Zambia? The scope of the enterprise is itself impressive--there are 1,448 articles. Of these, 160 are descriptive surveys of national systems of education. Compiled with the advice of an international editorial board, the encyclopedia has contributions from more than 1,100 experts from at least 100 countries. The coverage of this undertaking is fairly comprehensive: there are articles on the various subjects as they relate to education; on the national systems of education; on the specific academic disciplines and their contributions to an understanding of education (e.g., anthropology of education); on a range of educational institutions in many countries; and on statistical, psychological, and curricular matters as they relate to education. The collection is truly comprehensive in its coverage and will be a benchmark for the study of virtually all aspects of education for some time to come. There are many extremely useful features in this encyclopedia. Virtually every article has a selected but generally well-chosen bibliography, usually in several languages and with international coverage. Some of the longer theme essays have bibliographies that run for several pages. There is an excellent, cross-referenced index system. Many of the articles point to related essays elsewhere in the encyclopedia. In addition, volume 10 consists of a massive cross-referenced index that will provide the reader with guidance concerning related topics. Many of the articles are accompanied by tables, graphs, and charts, thus providing added insights into the subject matter. Most of the country essays, for example, have several graphics portraying the structure of the educational system, patterns of growth, and so forth. The articles are, in general, up-to-date and provide fairly current statistical information. It may be worthwhile to indicate the main organizational framework chosen by the editors in order to provide an understanding of the underlying rationale for the encyclopedia. Six main clusters of educational themes were identified: (1) human development; (2) educational policy, planning, and the economics of education; (3) the conduct of education (including

The unprecedented expansion of higher education that took place during the last 2 decades in both developed and developing countries is a well-established fact. In developed countries, enrollments in postsecondary education increased by 8.2 percent a year between 1960 and 1970. The slowdown recorded in these countries during the early seventies still allowed for a 4.3 percent yearly increase between 1970 and 1975.1 In developing countries, enrollments in higher education have increased by 10-11 percent a year since 1960, and there is no sign as yet that the trend is leveling off. These rates-which were once considered as signs of tangible accomplishments-have now become a cause for concern. The reasons for the shift in attitudes are many. First, the "employment problem" of highly educated manpower-once the privilege of a few emerging economies-has now spread throughout some of the most industrialized countries. Whether it is due to an oversupply of graduates from the education system or to the slackening demand for those graduates resulting from the low economic growth of the seventies succeeding to the high growth of the sixties is debatable. But the imbalances are there, thus raising doubts about the urgency of more educational growth. Second, the frustration felt over the narrow, quantitative approach toward educational expansion that prevailed during the sixties has led researchers and policymakers to introduce qualitative considerations into the picture. Increasingly, the content and structure of higher education are questioned. Its overall impact on societies is being investigated. In rich countries, traditional divisions among disciplines are broken, new streams are set up, and innovations in curricula are recorded. In poor countries, a recent trend criticizing the mere transplantation of foreign models and the replication of rich countries' standards is emerging. According to this trend, a more important objective of higher education is to make universities serve as agents of economic development. A few promising experiments designed to achieve this goal are already taking place in a number of developing countries.2

A 20-year effort to expand schooling in the Third World has largely succeeded: in 1960 there were 144 million pupils in developing country (excluding the People's Republic of China and Korea) primary and secondary schools, and in 1976, 335 million; university-level enrollment increased from 2.6 million to 12.5 million in the same period.' Even in relative terms, the figures are impressive: 46.8 percent of 6-11-year-olds in developing countries attended school in 1960 and 61.8 percent in 1975.2 Yet schooling was supposed to do much more than expand. Twenty years ago, "experts" implied that educational growth not only would contribute forcefully to economic development3 but would also equalize opportunities between social classes and income distribution4 and develop a more employable labor force. It may be that additional schooling in labor force did increase productivity--indeed there is some reason to believe that it has.5 But at the same time, the absolute number of illiterates in the Third World has increased;6 the poorest 50 percent of the population remained essentially as poor as before; income distribution, if anything, became more unequal;7 and open unemployment increased.s Poverty has been transferred more and more from rural to urban areas, while rural areas have continued to remain desperately poor. It is tempting to argue that the increased education brought to Third World populations was not relevant to the development of their societies

Since the Soweto student uprising in 1976, interest in the education of blacks in South Africa has grown appreciably within the United States. Of particular interest is the Reagan administration's high profile on this issue. Both Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger have stated that the upgrading of black education in South Africa is of priority to U.S. foreign policy.' The first step toward implementing this policy objective was taken by sending an official delegation from the Agency for International Development (AID) to South Africa in November 1981 to test reactions to the administration's plan for a multimillion-dollar educational aid program aimed at blacks within South Africa.2 Simultaneously, Crocker was playing a major role in the organization of a closed conference at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs at Georgetown University on the topic "Furthering Higher Education of Black South Africans: How Can the United States Best Help?"3 Subsequently, Eagleburger unveiled a package of educational initiatives that included

The prevalence of mass education is a striking feature of the modern world. Education has spread rapidly in the last 2 centuries, becoming a compulsory, essentially universal institution. It has even expanded greatly in the poorest countries. Unesco estimates that about 75 percent of the children of primary school age in the world are enrolled in something called a school (1980 data).' For the developing countries, the mean figure reported is 68 percent. Although the richer countries have long since reached virtually universal enrollment, the fervor for education in the poor countries may be even stronger.2 Mass education is clearly no longer the prerogative of boys: the World Bank reports that elementary enrollment ratios for girls are as high as those for boys in developed countries, and they are only slightly lower than the ratios for boys in developing countries.3 In both rich and poor countries, secondary education has expanded to the point where it is obviously to be considered a mass form of education as well. The day is not far off when at least some type of secondary schooling will be widely available in countries where it was completely absent a few decades ago. Another way to gauge the universality of education is by the fact that about 19 percent of the world's population are students, nearly all of them in mass educational institutions. For most people, education may be the most important element of their social status, and their educational background will have a greater direct impact on their overall life chances than any other element but nationality. In the first part of this article, we consider a number of lines of explanation of the rise of mass education that have emerged over the past 2 decades. Two general sociological themes characterize these theories. First, there has been a tendency to see vertical or lateral social differentiation

Higher education, the top step of the learning ladder, is often found at the bottom of the list when priorities for educational spending are considered. The most common prescription for economic development is injections of basic, and especially vocational, education. Indeed, it is difficult to rationalize expenditure on another university when a high proportion of the country's population is illiterate and a considerable number of university graduates are unemployed. Given this setting, the purpose of this paper is to take a close look at the socioeconomic rationale for higher-education provision in developing countries. This is done by reviewing the costs and benefits associated with investment in higher education as a whole and especially in different postsecondary subjects.' Particular attention is paid to the possible existence of returns to scale from university expansion, and a distinction is made between the incidence and the duration of graduate unemployment.

Questions of nonformal education, deschooling, and in general problems relating to schooling in the Third World have been at the forefront of discussion in recent years. The following two articles place in sharp contrast two of the major streams of argument concerning an aspect of this debate: the issue of rural education. Elinor Barber questions many of the recent efforts to provide special educational programs for rural areas, while David Evans argues that traditional schooling has been proven not to work effectively for rural populations. We hope that these articles will contribute to sharpening the debate. Editors

about the nature and impact of formal management education, it is fair to suggest there has been relative disinterest and neglect in addressing this theme from a comparative perspective. After all, can very much really be learned from the experiences of other countries? Was not extended postsecondary education for management a U.S. innovation? Have not many European and other programs often sought U.S. cooperation and assistance? Do not many foreign nationals eagerly enroll in U.S. business schools?

A recent 16-month, grass-roots-level field study in a disadvantaged dry zone area of Sri Lanka confirmed the fact that education is highly prized by villagers, even by those for whom the chances of receiving a salaried job in the modern sector are remote at best. The detailed results of the study, which investigated why some village schools are functioning more effectively than others, as well as the extent to which reciprocal schoolcommunity development takes place in disadvantaged villages, are reported elsewhere.2 An additional, unexpected finding emerged from the inquiry of what parents want and expect from schooling for their children, namely, that many parents do not perceive education solely as an opportunity for their children to climb the social ladder out of a life of poverty. They see as well the broader value of education as the enrichment of life through knowledge and the production of desirable character traits in children. A review of the results of Sri Lankan research and data from empirical studies in disadvantaged or remote areas of other developing countries unearthed a number of similar findings. Such findings were sufficient to justify reexamining the relevance education debate and adding a new dimension. The reason for the past failure of rural relevance education programs is indeed, as many studies have shown, because parents do not accept a special agrarian-oriented curriculum for their children. They prefer the same kind of general education urban children have and not one relevant to farming or practical trades. However, the new perspective to be pointed out here is that parental desire for a general curriculum

Education is generally considered one of the most important influences in moving individuals in developing countries from traditionalism toward modernity. In fact, Inkeles indicates that the amount of formal schooling a man has had emerges as the single most powerful variable in determining his modernity score.' This modernity test is not a test of what is learned in school but, rather, "a test of attitudes and values touching on basic aspects of a man's orientation to nature, to time, to fate, to politics, to women and to God." Education provides individuals with the necessary skills which enable them to influence actively the economic and the political structure of a society. The level and extent of men's and women's education in any society determines-to a great extent-the degree of participation in the country's economy. In developing, nonagricultural countries, education is a most significant variable in providing women with access to a wider variety of role repertoires and the opportunity for active participation in the economy of the country. In her study of women in the work force of Islamic countries, Youssef indicated that one of the factors which accounts for low female participation in the nonagricultural labor force is low educational level." Furthermore, El-Sanabary concludes that women's education is lagging behind men's education in all the Arab states and that the potential of women is therefore underdeveloped and underutilized.4 Compared with the wide focus of the previous studies on Moslem women in Arab states, this study concentrates on the education of women in the small Persian Gulf sheikhdom of Kuwait. Although the education of women in Kuwait started later than in other Arab countries, it moved ahead of education in these countries.5 In addition to the better educa

Education, as a major channel and access to social and institutional roles in Japan, is well documented.' In fact, the very preponderance of formal educational credentials as a prerequisite for success in Japanese social and economic life has been singled out as a source of extreme dysfunction in Japanese society.2 Yet, it remains a fact that access to education and especially certain selected sectors and institutions in Japan's educational structure is a sought-after goal of most Japanese families regardless of social class, geographic origin, and, as we shall see, caste status. The study that follows was conducted in Japan and concentrated on the political organizations and educational demands of a persistently isolated and discriminated-against group, the burakumin. Termed "Japan's invisible race" by Wagatsuma and DeVos, this group remains today, in many respects, a discrete subgroup in Japanese society, outside the pale of the majority and as such lacking the social and institutional connections so vital to individual mobility.3 Although official policy prohibits discrimination against this group or any other, and although the educational system is theoretically open to all, statistically, the burakumin have not participated and been represented in the upper levels of Japanese education and have consistently been the underachievers at the lower levels (as well as problem students, dropouts, etc., at least as identified by Japanese educational authorities). For this and a variety of other reasons, there is a fairly long history of active political organization and mobilization of burakumin to gain access to preferred institutions in Japanese society and to seek an end to official