Financing public higher education in developing countries

The financing of education has emerged as a major topic of discussion among policy makers in recent years. There is evidence that in many developing countries, governments can no longer continue to increase spending on education at the high rates characteristic in the 1960s and 1970s. The macroeconomic environment has worsened, and there is keen intersectoral competition for public funds. Thus unless educational development moves away from its present heavy dependence on public funds, the expansion of education would be frustrated. One policy option is to increase the private financing of education. In this paper, we evaluate the potential effectiveness of loans schemes as a cost recovery instrument in higher education. Essentially, loans permit students to finance the cost of their education from future income. So the effectiveness of loans would depend on the relation between costs and students' future income. It also depends on the incidence of repetition, dropout, and default, as well as on whether or not a grace period is incorporated in the loan scheme. Our simulations show that in Asia and Latin America, the potential rate of cost recovery is substantial under what appears to be bearable terms of repayment. In Francophone Africa and Anglophone Africa, however, loans schemes are unlikely to perform as well, but they would still permit a shift toward greater private financing of higher education.     

Financing education in developing countries: A comment on G. Psacharopoulos et al.'s proposal

The policy package proposed by Psacharopoulos et al. in Financing Education in Developing Countries: An Exploration of Policy Options regarding how developing countries should finance education is briefly examined. It is found wanting. By seeking to provide a solution applicable to all developing countries the authors ignore the specific national requirements to which policies have to respond. Cost-recovery and decentralization may not in every case lead to greater efficiency and equality. Also, cost-recovery and greater efficiency have the potential of entrenching inequality.     

The role of counselling in developing countries: A reply to Soliman

Counselling, and in particular school counselling, is evolving very slowly in developing countries because of failure to place it in the mainstream of the school curriculum. If counselling is to perform any role in the social and economic development of these nations it must be able to influence the goals and priorities of schooling as well as suggest new methods of teaching. In this way, counselling would lead to adoption of school curriculum promoting not only intellectual development but also personal and psychological development. By so doing all the perceived obstacles to counselling's growth would disappear.     

Financing training in developing countries: The role of payroll taxes

In most developing countries, the major programs of vocational training and manpower-skill development are financed from general government revenues. Increasingly, however, earmarked payroll taxes are employed to finance training. This paper summarizes international experience with these payroll taxes, drawing the distinction between the more traditional revenue raising schemes on the lines of the Latin American model and the newer levy-grant schemes.Drawing upon experience of payroll taxes in advanced economies it discusses the incidence of these taxes in developing countries and presents an economic rationale for their growing use, as part of a reverse social security scheme. It concludes that the desirability of using payroll taxes to finance training, compared to other alternatives available to developing country governments, is likely to be contingent upon the stage of a country's development.     

Global measurement of the quality of education: A help to developing countries?

Global measures of the quality of education that are used in the context of international competition between educational system innovators are detrimental to the quality of education, especially in developing countries. Such measures are likely to support developments towards the standardization or globalization of curricula. In the development of global measures developers typically are looking for what is common to cultures instead of what is unique. If such measures start playing an important role in accountability and certification processes, curricula will be adapted to the measures. The resultant global curricula may hamper learning and as a consequence will not contribute to a binding of cultures but to isolation and feelings of inferiority.Alternative measures are suggested which meet global standards and may be used for comparative purposes. They can be a great help in the process of changes in educational systems determined and controlled by Third World countries themselves.

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Zusammenfassung Weltweite Maßstäbe für die Verbesserung der Qualität der Bildung, die im Zusammenhang mit dem internationalen Konkurrenzkampf zwischen den Innovatoren von Bildungssystemen angewandt werden, beeinträchtigen besonders in den Entwicklungsländern die Qualität der Bildung. Solche Maßstäbe unterstützen wahrscheinlich Entwicklungen zu einer Standardisierung oder Globalisierung der Curricula. In der Entwicklung weltweit gültiger Maßstäbe befassen sich die Organisatoren typischerweise mit den Gemeinsamkeiten in den Kulturen anstatt mit deren Eigenheiten. Wenn solche Maßstäbe in Verantwortungsbereichen und Benotungssystemen an Einfluß gewinnen, werden die Curricula an die Maßstäbe angepaßt. Die daraus hervorgehenden weltweit angewandten Curricula könnten eine Beeinträchtigung des Lernens zur Folge haben und führen dadurch nicht zu einer Beziehung zwischen den Kulturen sondern zu Isolation und Minderwertigkeitskomplexen. Es werden alternative Maßstäbe vorgeschlagen, die dem globalen Standard gerecht werden und zu Vergleichszwecken herangezogen werden können. Sie können eine große Hilfe im Veränderungsprozeß des Bildungssystems sein, das von den Ländern der dritten Welt selbst kontrolliert und bestimmt wird.

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Résumé Les mesures globales de la qualité de l'éducation auxquelles on a recours dans le contexte de la concurrence internationale entre les novateurs des systèmes d'éducation nuisent à la qualité de l'éducation, surtout dans les pays en développement. Elles tendent à renforcer la normalisation ou la globalisation des programmes d'étude. Lorsqu'ils conçoivent ces mesures globales, les responsables cherchent généralement ce qui est commun aux cultures plutôt que ce qu'elles ont d'unique. Si pareilles mesures commencent à jouer un rôle important dans les processus d'évaluation et d'homologation, les programmes d'étude devront en tenir compte. Les programmes d'étude globaux qui en résultent peuvent entraver l'apprentissage et ne contribueront donc pas à un rapprochement des cultures mais à l'isolement et à des sentiments d'infériorité. On suggère des mesures de rechange répondant aux normes globales et pouvant servir à des fins de comparaison. Elles peuvent être d'une grande utilité pour le processus de changement dans les systèmes d'éducation des pays du Tiers Monde déterminés et contrôlés par eux-mêmes.

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I thank Bill Loxley (IEA headquarter, The Hague) and Hetty Kook (University of Amsterdam) for their comments on an earlier version of this article. This article was partly written when I still worked in the Institute for Educational Research in the Netherlands (SVO).     

Research on education in the developing countries

Developing countries are in a major educational crisis. Educational opportunity has expanded but quality has been sacrificed. In some instances the quality of education has become so low that one might do well to question whether the costs of expansion do not outweigh the benefits. Research on education has not prepared the developing countries to meet the crisis at hand. The article mentions three examples—in pedagogy, in curriculum and in ‘deschooling’ theory—where educational research has not been helpful. On the other hand, the article points to several areas where there has been useful work, and where new work might make a substantial contribution in the years ahead.     

Policies for teacher education in developing countries

This chapter discusses the context of the 1990 s in which teacher education policy has been formulated. The focus is on three of the areas that are pushing for change: a conceptual shift from teaching to learning, a focus on effective school results, and the implementation in many countries of systemic education reforms. Though reference is made to conditions and constraints affecting teacher education in developing countries, the discussion emphasizes policy in the Latin American region. Consideration is given to conditions for implementation and sustainability of what appears on paper as interesting policy orientations. The importance of networking and interchange is seen as an important factor for broadening policy formulation and learning from experiences in teacher education reform.     

Training and education of teachers in higher education in developing countries

The article describes our experience and experiments in helping to develop a training programme for academic staff at Universiti Sains Malaysia and the model of staff training associated with this programme. This is used as a basis for proposals for a more general scheme of staff training for universities in the South East Asian region, a special feature of the proposals being the use of distance teaching and of individualised learning materials in teaching and learning in higher education. The ultimate aim of the scheme is to make the region independent of outside assistance.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Open University Conference on The Education of Adults at a Distance, Birmingham, 19–24 November, 1979.     

A case for rethinking inclusive education policy creation in developing countries

This article presents a critical analysis of the development and implementation of the 2014 inclusive educational policy in Samoa. While Samoan culture is traditionally founded on inclusive social practices, rather than reflecting these practices in their policy, Samoan policy developers have been under pressure to adopt or borrow policy from other countries. The findings of this intrinsic case study highlight the complexity of formulating inclusive education policies for small developing countries and why policy developers borrow from other developed countries. The theoretical framework used to analyse observation data in this study is based on the notion that national process of development is a powerful influence in educational policy. The authors argue and advocate for the existing but overlooked strengths of the local knowledge community capacity when policy is borrowed from other countries, and how the findings of the case study contribute to future attempts at policy development. We found that the draft policy needs to and does reflect Samoan culture, values and vision. However, adopting foreign practices such as the individual education plan and placement rules is not relevant to the Samoan context. The identification and development of inclusive education beliefs, skills and practices in schools is a priority.     

University science and agriculture education in developing countries

The need for science and agriculture education in developing countries is at least as great as that in industrially advanced nations. To determine whether or not developing countries are devoting adequate resources to university level science and agriculture studies, a number of developed and developing nations were examined. Both student enrolments and awarded degrees in science, agriculture and non-science fields of study were used as criteria for determining the extent of resources being devoted to tertiary science and agriculture education. Generally, the developing countries showed similar enrolment patterns by area of study to the developed ones, although some countries clearly emphasize science and agriculture more than others. Similarly, the pattern for awarded degrees showed that developing countries produced equal or higher percentages of science and agriculture degrees relative to total degrees when compared with developed countries. Nevertheless, when evaluating science and agriculture study on a per capita basis, developing countries produce far fewer graduates than developed countries, due to the relatively restricted access to university study found in underdeveloped nations. It was concluded that the need for more science-based graduates cannot be met alone by greater percentages of students studying science but rather by large increases in the total numbers of students studying at the university level.