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Governments recognise that careers guidance, underpinned by accurate labour market information, can help learners make post-secondary education choices that match their interests, aptitudes and abilities, and lead to rewarding employment. For this reason, they have invested in building linked education/employment information systems and other information resources which are displayed on websites targeted to learners and their families. However, researchers and governments agree that these efforts are often ineffective in informing learners' decisions -- access to information is not sufficient to provide effective support to student choice. Drawing upon the insights of behavioural economics, this paper examines how learners access and use information, and what this implies for the design of public study and career choice websites that aim to effectively support student choice. The report also takes stock of the career guidance websites in use in the majority of OECD countries, and sets out to provide actionable advice for policy makers to guide the design of effective information policy levers that support student choice.

The growth of private higher education has come as a surprise to most governments, which have tried to catch up in their regulatory and funding policymaking. In China, Malaysia and South Africa they have given legal recognition to previously disallowed private higher education and this has helped to fuel its subsequent growth. Some governments encourage private higher education in order to help to meet the rising demand for higher-level qualifications, and also to provide their "public service" counterparts with further challenges to improve their market responsiveness and overall efficiency and effectiveness. Such private entities tend to be highly reliant on income from tuition fees and similar student charges for their business models and lack the capability or funds to engage in research, a function increasingly confined in most countries (other than the United States) to well-established public universities. In the United States, reliance on tuition fee income and other student charges has led to persistent violations by for-profit providers, such as paying admissions tutors a commission to enrol students who have little or no ability to benefit from the education provided. This has led to a toughening of federal rules. In the United States, private institutions include some of the longest-established and most prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and this is also the picture in Japan and Chile. They possess large research and endowment funds and do not depend on tuition fees as their only or primary source of income. Long-established private universities of this kind have been rarely "for-profit", at least in a formal sense. Government regulation usually requires them to adopt a charitable-like "non-profit" structure in order to obtain tax advantages, even if they are business-like and quite commercial in their operations. These not-for-profit institutions cannot be organised to benefit private interests, their assets must be permanently dedicated to charitable purposes, and net earnings cannot be distributed to owners or shareholders. While international expansion of private higher education is occurring, most such provision is local, not least because local regulation and control remain significant barriers to such growth, even where individual countries' regulatory environment becomes more favourable. This paper explores different categories of private providers and their characteristics: not-for-profit private higher education institutions and for-profit institutions, including various types of for-profit institutions. (Contains 8 endnotes.)

A comparative analysis of enrollment influences in four countries is presented. From the enrollment histories of the 1970's in Belgium, France, Japan, and the United States several generalizations are drawn: (1) while demographic growth in young people produced difficult labor market conditions at all levels of educational preparation, college graduates in particular felt a decline in career prospects, a situation made worse by general economic depression after 1973; (2) total private demand for traditional or long university study ceased growing by mid-decade; (3) ability and socioeconomic factors in educational demand varied in the four countries; (4) educational and career demand from all ability levels has caused increasing meritocratic selection in programs with surest and largest career rewards; (5) for students with neither high ability nor high socioeconomic status educational demand has largely been diverted to shorter programs or non-university programs; (6) where the time and effort necessary for postsecondary study is variable and costs are low (France and the United States) the phenomenon of "discounting" occurs, or a reduction in the investment of student resources commensurate with lower anticipated career rewards; and (7) though a portion of educational demand can be accounted for by technological advancement, much of this is the product of the penalty effect, credential inflation, and the promotion of certain types of education to postsecondary status. These factors put into a different perspective the earlier vision of universal higher education: a significant proportion of young adults have talents best developed outside the classroom. A growing proportion of graduates will cause incentives for graduate careers to regress toward the mean, weakening the principal motivation to seek postsecondary education. In these four nations it is felt that the limits of mass higher education have been reached. (Author/MSE)

This paper, part of a series of studies on higher education in different countries, traces the origins of higher education in Belgium to the 1970's. From 1835-1876, Belgium universities were shaped by polarization bewteen Catholics and liberals, uncertainty about the basic institutional patterns in higher education, and the legislative intrusion of the state in higher education. The Higher Education Law of 1876 inaugurated a withdrawal of the state from the affairs of the universities, and the challenge of German Science placed an emphasis on research and scholarship. From World War I to 1960, the importance of the Flemish language increased in the universities, the principle of state financing of the private universities was established, and the state universities progressively won greater administrative autonomy from the state. The evolution and influence of higher technical education, the university expansion problem from 1960-65, the expulsion of the French from Louvain, the rebellion against the traditional university, and construction of the new order from 1969-71 are covered. Higher education enrollment stabilization in the 1970's, the difficulty of the first candidature, upgrading of technical education, the uncertainty of university-state relations, recurrent education, part-time university education, education for nontraditional students, and establishment of an open university are discussed. (SW)

The patterns of development of mass higher education in France and Belgium are compared. Student enrollment data, governmental measures taken to meet needs, and effects of the action within higher education are examined. Results of mass higher education in terms of its principal expectations and future prospects are also analyzed. France and Belgium are eighth and ninth respectively in the rate of increase in higher education from 1950 to 1965. In France the transition to mass higher education has led to a complete restructuring of the predominant sector of higher education, and the process is even now incomplete. Belgium has made this transition without significant alterations in the basic structure of its institutions. The cases of the two countries offer some suggestive material about the social consequences of different forms of system organizational structure in higher education. (SW)