For more than a decade, the Government of Hong Kong has instituted a policy of school decentralization aimed at devolving authority to all stakeholders, including the representatives of School Sponsoring Bodies, principals, teachers, parents, and community members. This study examines the relative contribution of two dimensions of school…

Purpose: This paper aims to identify and compare the nature of decentralization that has emerged in three important Asian societies after a decade of their involvement in the decentralization movement. Design/methodology/approach: Data from the first cycle of the program for international student assessment were analyzed to investigate educational…

Yusef Waghid (2006) in his response to Martin Hall (2006) argues that Martin Hall offers a better way of making sense of some of the conceptual and pragmatic links between academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Nevertheless Waghid critiques Hall's uncritical treatment of prominent theoretical positions for his claims, which Waghid thinks…

This paper offers reflections on the role of the agricultural university in developing nations by analyzing in turn the factors that contribute to stagnation of these universities. It first takes up the policy conditions that govern the broad outlines of the agricultural university mandate such as the university's relationship with the ministry of…

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…

Charter schools are created and managed by an entity composed of parents and/ or teachers, community and/or business leaders, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses. Many people believe that charter schools can provide a high quality education without the regulatory constraints of the conventional public schools. This digest reviews…

This longitudinal multi-method study assessed changes in institutional autonomy at 30 community colleges in one state. Six years after legislated changes intended to increase autonomy and create a uniform fiscal operation system had been implemented, the study found that changes in autonomy in selected fiscal, personnel, and operational matters…

On January 31, 1996, Pioneer Institute Executive Director James A. Peyser delivered an address to the Boston Economic Club, in which he proposed radical reforms to the structure of public education. This publication contains an edited transcript of the speech. The speech argues that after 30 years of stagnation and decline, only fundamental…

This essay, one in a series about the priorities of the professoriate, seeks to explore variations on standard tenure practices that might be advantageous to the interests of both faculty and the institutions by proposing three modifications to traditional policies. The first, tenure by objectives, involves reconfiguration of the probationary…

This paper, one in a series about the priorities of the professoriate, is premised on the belief that academic tenure in higher education, if not doomed, is likely to play a diminishing role in the employment of college and university professors in coming generations. The paper argues against the belief that institutions of higher education have a…

This book presents essays inspired by an October, 1988, conference on recent changes in the relationship between public policy and higher education. The essays appear in five sections, the first of which, titled "Looking Backward: The Historical Context of Public Policy and Higher Education," serves as a retrospective and prospective examination…

A conceptual framework is presented for discussing teacher autonomy in a historical perspective against the background of a profound decentralization in the Swedish educational system introduced in the early 1980s. The way teachers use a broadened space of action cannot be fully understood unless a distinction is made between private and…

One of a series of studies related to the Delphi research project: "Policy Instruments for Higher Education in the Western Europe of the Future", this paper presents the issue of internationalization of European higher education through three types of data. First, analysis of present European Community (EC) initiatives on education…

The report of the Independent Commission on the Future of the State University of New York is presented, based on public hearings, review of staff studies, visits to the 18 campuses, and interviews with personnel at the State University of New York (SUNY), other colleges, and state officials. Major findings include: SUNY is the most overregulated…

This report proposes a curriculum model for education of students in the age group of 10 to 14 years in Scotland. It also proposes a policy of autonomy within guidelines so that secondary schools and their associated primary schools can develop new partnerships for collaborative planning of curriculum, pupil care, learning support, assessment,…