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This paper analyzes and compares two 1994 reports on the state of higher education in developing nations, the World Bank's "Higher Education: The Lesson of Experience" and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) "Policy Paper on Change and Development in Higher Education." It examines the assumptions, diagnosis, and prescriptions of each report, noting that both stress the importance of linking higher education with economic development, an important role for government, the building of policy consensus among the various stakeholders in higher education, and institutional reform and autonomy. While both reports stress the importance of linking higher education with economic development, the UNESCO document is clearly much more optimistic in its expectations that higher education can face more complex demands in the social, cultural, and economic spheres. In the World Bank report it is noted that universities should adapt to a competitive market situation, whereas the UNESCO report underlines a more complex idea of institutional adaptation to various demands. Whereas the World Bank report states that basic education should be the priority of developing nations, the UNESCO report refuses this kind of tradeoff within the educational sector, the paper concludes. Contains 10 references. (MDM)

Changes in values and practices in Mexican higher education in the 1990s are examined, including economic recovery from the 1980s, new funding mechanisms, curriculum development, increased support for research and graduate study, and institutional restructuring. The trend is viewed as moving away from the social welfare model of higher education toward a model focusing on economic development. (MSE)

This paper explores efforts of Mexico and the United States to obtain a significant return on their investment in postsecondary education. The authors establish a context for comparison between Mexico and the United States and discuss the challenges and central policy dilemmas that each country faces in implementing the policy tools of evaluation and incentive funding. Compared to the United States, Mexico's system of higher education is less developed both administratively and academically. Following a 20-year period of enormous growth and a decade of fiscal and political neglect, the Salinas administration initiated a strong proactive set of policies in the 1990s that were novel and in contrast to prevailing academic culture in Mexico. In the United States, while similar trends were experienced, these occurred in a large and decentralized system with much experience in institutional planning and evaluation and the changes occurred over a longer time period. The growth of performance assessment and conditional or incentive funding as policy instruments in both countries results from the use of these approaches as tools for government to direct or steer higher education. This paper explores how implementation has varied in the two countries and experiences and future directions for accountability and categorical funding mechanisms are explored. (Contains 14 references.) (JLS)

Changes in Mexico's higher education in the last two decades are examined, focusing on policy change since the late 1980s. Emerging processes and unresolved issues are identified. Two conflicting perspectives, that of traditional university governance with limited assessment and new policy demanding quality and accountability, are discussed. (Author/MSE)