With the implementation of public participation education in Vietnam has led to a rapid increase of many new universities. However, the increase of the quantity of universities is incompatibilities with the quality of education. Practical research show that a large number of students can not finding job after graduated, inflation qualifications, labor productivity is lower than other countries in the region. To meet the requirements of the strategy of training high-quality human resources, the quality of education is at the centre of the need for innovation in the universities (especially public universities) in which the most important element is the quality of teachers. Policy development teaching staff has been mentioned in several different documents including the Law on Higher Education 2012. In reality, the implementation of faculty development policy have not achieved results desire, lecturers in universities today are limited in both quantity and quality, yet compatible with the requirements set out by education development Strategy 2009-2020 period and requirements of the renewal of the country. This paper uses the available data of the Ministry of  Education and Training and relevant documents combined the qualitative research methods which  reviews of the practical and propose policy solutions to complete the development of faculty in Vietnam universities in the present context integration.

Key words: training faculty; faculty development policy; higher education; developing teacher staff.

The historical trajectory of public policies in sub-Saharan Africa is marked by three main moments: the centrality of the state in the planning process, the extroversion of public policy steering models, and the recent participation of the civil society in the Co-production of public goods and services. The coming into play of the African Union (AU) in 2002 marks a major turning point because the “supranational” institution intends to build a common frame of reference for the development of African states around pan-African ideology. The failures of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the recurrent crises on the continent have long hidden the production of Community policies through the many regional institutions. In the education sector, Ten-Year Education Plans for Africa (1996-2006, 2006-2015) and the African Union Continental Strategy for Africa (2016-2025) are Strategic action of the African Union in this field. The present contribution attempts to analyze, through constructivist and interactionist theories, the complex processes of shaping references and common policies in education by the Pan-African institution. This approach forces us to rely on two points. First, to analyze the real influence of international organizations and international conferences on the formulation of regional educational policies in the African Union. Then we will decrypt the different transfers of public policies between the regional sphere and the national territory of implementation, cases will be taken here from Cameroon. In order to enrich the analysis we opt for a transversal analysis of educational policies, from primary to university level.

The concept of Social Mobility is defined and explained by various scholars in different contexts. Marxian and Weberian theories on social class and status serve as a basis for understanding social mobility theory as they define the individuals’ position in society through various forms of grouping. Social mobility is understood as “any transition of an individual from one position to another in a constellation of social group and strata” (Sorokin 1928). The mobility of society across generations depends on several factors as individual economic success, property possession, environment in which individuals grow and family background. Hence, there is a link between parents’ and children’s social positions. It can be argued that parental educational background can affect youths’ occupational destination. According to a scholar who wrote about social groups, social mobility is defined as “any change in social position, such as occupational changes where persons move up or down the occupational scale” (Bogardus 1924).

The impact of global trends and globalisation of education planted expectations of different teaching and learning experience and a hunger for enhanced mobility of initiatives. Newly emerging trans-border higher education institutions across the globe offer different opportunities for host countries although they experience hindrances in the areas of management and academic affairs. The transnational education in countries in transition, namely, in post-Soviet space continues to challenge the educational structure and governmental approaches of host countries with Soviet legacy of educational system. State owned institutions in post-Soviet Uzbekistan operate within the framework set by the government and have little or no autonomy over academic and administrative affairs. Higher education state institutions appear to be ineffective due to obsolete system and underdeveloped and limited curriculum. With emergence of International Branch Campuses in the country, some institutions started to consider reviewing their methods of teaching following the example of IBCs practices in the country. 

The concept of social mobility is studied within various classifications and two major aspects of the social mobility are intragenerational and intergenerational mobility. This study seeks to investigate the influence of transnational education, namely, International Branch Campuses’ (IBC) on intergenerational social mobility of young people in example of IBC graduates in Uzbekistan attempting to seek for an answer to How competitive are the IBCs in promoting social mobility among the youth in Uzbekistan? With emergence of IBC educational institutions that offer international milieu of academic standards and quality, the number of graduates is increased and new opportunities are created for young people in the country. These institutions are more attractive in contrast to local state owned institutions with their market oriented, diverse curriculum, access to exchange programs, diversity in staff and students. The study of intergenerational social mobility youth in this research involves background investigation on employability of graduates of international branch campuses as WIUT, MDIS, Inha University and Turin Polytechnic University in Uzbekistan in comparison to local institutions as Uzbekistan State World Language University, University of World Economy and Diplomacy.     

International Universities in China and Uzbekistan: The Quest for Legitimacy and Impact on National Educational Policy

TransNational Education (TNE) or Cross-border Higher Education has become a salient phenomenon in the internationalization of higher education worldwide.  The development and rise of International Universities (IUs) are a significant mode of TNE provisions cross-border.  The objective of this paper is to understand the legitimacy of such IUs in the context of dominant Centrally Controlled countries such as China and Uzbekistan. Countries that have had or have a strong Centrally planned and controlled Higher Education sector and one that is facing strong global competition and internal stress factors in coping with the transitional changes to a global labour market.

This paper addresses the following questions:

·       What are the important legitimacy factors for international universities (IUs) in China and Uzbekistan?

·       What strategies do international universities use to gain legitimacy (social acceptance and support) from different stakeholders.

·       The impact of such IU’s on the development of National Educational Policy.

This study combines Scott (1995)’s institutional theory and Suchman’s (1995) legitimacy definition to understand legitimacy factors for IUs in China and Uzbekistan, as well as to explore the strategies IUs use to gain legitimacy in these two countries.  Institutional theory has been widely used to understand organizations and organizational change. Scott (1995) provides a definition of institutions:

Institutions consist of cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior. Institutions are transported by various carriers---cultures, structures, and routines---and they operate at multiple levels of jurisdiction. (p.33)

Scott (1995, 2001) suggests using three pillars of institutions as an analytical framework to understand the adoption of structures, practices and beliefs that conform to normative expectations for legitimacy (Wilkins, 2011). Each of the three pillars provides a basis for legitimacy.  Institutionalists view legitimacy not as a commodity to be possessed or exchanged, but “a condition reflecting cultural alignment, normative support, or consonance with relevant rules or laws” (p.45, Scott, 1995).

Three institutions from China and one from Uzbekistan were selected as case studies for this research.  The three Chinese institutions represent different categories of international universities: Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University (China), an independent institution with a legal status that does not require reasonable return, partners are government agencies, and has operated for more than five years; New York University Shanghai (China), an independent institution with a legal status that does not require reasonable return, partners are government agencies, and has operated for less than five years; University of Nottingham Ningbo (China) an independent institution with a legal status, partners are a private higher education institution and businesses in China. The Uzbekistan institution is Westminster International Universities in Tashkent (WIUT) a state/public institution that has an exclusive partnership with the University of Westminster (UK).  WIUT was chosen as it is representative of similar International Universities in Uzbekistan, of a similar status. In addition, one of the authors of this paper is one of the key people of WIUT’s establishment and development.

In recent decades, world is moving towards globalization in economic, cultural and political macro areas as a result of great revolution that took place in the age of communications, and also due to the world tendency to the formation of global village. Governments have changed their growth and development models in order to maintain and strengthen their global economic position and they all follow a unit objective which is highly skilled and professional workforce in a society which could play a key role in attaining economic growth. Therefore, skill development has allocated a great attention in development discourses in the recent years. In Iran, like other parts of the world, some problems such as job deficiencies, skill shortages, ignorance of the local needs, regional development programs, and skill mismatches highlighted the importance of skill development issue more than ever. Management of this area is highly complex due to the intersectoral nature of skill development and the need for compatibility of education and training policies with the labor market, industrial and economic policies. Thus an appropriate functional model is required to help government in decision making process. This article tries to present an inclusive functional framework for Iran’s skill sector by reviewing the functional components in this area. Thus a systematic approach has been used to clarify the meta-systems of national skill system including sustainable development objectives and socio-economic development subsystems; and also three interconnected subsystems which are education system, labor market, goods and services market. Three major functions of national skill development system and its impacts as decent work, productivity and competitiveness improvement are also explained by detail. Beyond introducing the functional model of skill system, by diagnosing the Iranian one, some parameters to empower the Iranian skill system are introduced.

Keyword: Education and Training, Labor market, Sustainable Development, National Skill System, Socio-economic Development

With the expansion of the Bachelor - Master - Doctorate (BMD) system, the whole world, from the university, lives a harmonization and a convergence of educational processes. This system, which promotes the professionalization of teaching, facilitates learner empowerment and promotes scientific innovation, also seems to increase the ability of the university to conceptually articulate the link between being - know - and having and then knowing - have - and power, thus making the university the predilection of all the struggles of globalization originally deported to the markets.

In Africa, from 2003 onwards, in Dakar, Senegal, Africa integrates the need for harmonization of national higher education systems by linking to the BMD system, which is generalized In Europe with the Bologna process since 1999, and which led to the creation in 2010 of the European Higher Education Area.

Cameroon, a developing country with high levels of unemployment among its graduates, recognizes the importance of an efficient system of higher education and research in order to build an emerging economy by 2035. Inspired by a Sectorial Strategy for Education and a Law on the Orientation of Higher Education, he has undertaken to adapt higher education and research to the changes of the world. As a result, the country has embarked on the creation of business incubators, the multiplication of innovation centers and technological sectors, thanks, among other things, to its Program of Support to the Technological Component (PROACT) of Higher Education.

This policy orientation is reinforced by the Cameroon Country Strategy Paper 2010-2014 of the African Development Bank (ADB), which recalls that Higher Education constitutes the fifth pillar of the Global Competitiveness Index of the Economies and positions itself as The first factor in the efficiency of economies.
The objective of this paper is to show how Cameroon, despite important structural and functional constraints, tries to make the creation of technological sectors and business incubators, the response to the crisis of socio-professional integration of Graduates of its higher education system.

Key words and expressions: higher education system, LMD, harmonization, crisis, socio-professional integration, technology sector.

Empirical evidence suggests that quality of research is mediocre in most of the institutes of higher learning in India. None of the Indian University has found a place in the first 200 universities in the various world university ranking surveys. It is in this backdrop that the present study has been conceived. The study aims to assess the role of the major regulatory body, namely, the University Grants Commission in regulating and promoting quality research in higher education in India. The assessment takes into consideration: (i) various research schemes introduced by the UGC for institutions, faculty members and students and (ii) regulations adopted by the UGC for maintaining standards of M.Phil/Ph.D programmes.

The UGC funds around 20 schemes for promoting research in higher education. Major include University with Potential for Excellence; College with Potential for Excellence; Centres with Potential for Excellence; Special Assistance Programme (SAP); Major and Minor Research Projects for Teachers; Cultural Exchange Programmes; and Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Fellowships for Students. For regulating quality research at M.Phil/PhD level, the UGC has adopted UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Awards of M.Phil/Ph.D. Degree), Regulations 2009 and 2016. Efficacy of these mechanisms in regulating and promoting quality research has been examined in this study.

The paper is based on primary and secondary data. Primary data has been collected through questionnaires from 200 students enrolled in M.Phil and Ph.D. programmes and 40 officials comprising incumbent and former deans, chairpersons, directors, co-ordinators, principal investigators of research projects funded by UGC, professors of various departments of Panjab University (PU) Chandigarh. PU has been selected as a case study on the basis of its highest ranking among Indian institutes of higher learning in World University Ranking Surveys and also being one of the oldest universities in the country. It is relevant to mention here that the PU in its overall ranking score earned maximum marks from research indicators specially research citation.

It has been found that the UGC has not been effective in regulating and promoting quality research through various schemes. Absence of quality assurance mechanisms to check the quality of research work, lack of clearly stated procedure for assessing the performance of the schemes, delay in receiving grants, lack of awareness about the schemes and not promoting inter-disciplinary collaborations constrain quality of research.

The analysis of the data suggests that compliance to most of the UGC Regulations, 2009 and 2016 is satisfactory. The responses of students to the efficacy of these Regulations of the UGC are mixed at best. But the officials opined that these regulations have not fully succeeded in achieving the desired objectives.

The UGC’s role in promotion and regulation of quality research through various schemes can be improved by adopting measureable quality assurance mechanisms for the research work undertaken in the form of publishing of research in high impact factor/H indexed/blind peer-reviewed journals of repute, patents and policy relevance as outcomes of research. Other major policy prescriptions in this regard include timely disbursal of grants, promoting inter-disciplinary approach in schemes, strong and clearly stated system of monitoring the progress of research and organizing information dissemination workshop about the schemes.

For improving the quality of research at PhD level, the UGC must ensure that the institutes evolve mechanisms in admission process to ascertain research aptitude of the students, impart rigorous training to students about research methodology and writing quality research term papers/synopsis/papers/thesis, encourage students to undertake research having contemporary and social relevance, conduct mid-term review of the progress of M.Phil/Ph.D thesis by outside experts, put in place mechanism to check plagiarism and set up grievance redressal machinery to look after complaints of researchers.

Keywords: Quality, Research, University Grants Commission, Efficacy, Regulation, M.Phil/Ph.D, Panjab University

Accountability has frequently been highlighted as a key towards better education outcomes. However, current research on education accountability falls short in at least three dimensions. First, the emphasis is still largely discipline and control, with the equally important aspect of support and recognition fairly under-explored. Second, those which do study the latter kind of accountability mainly focus on short-term interventions. Long-term supportive interventions are not yet systematically studied. Finally, to the extent that transparency matters for accountability, studies so far highlighted more the static aspect of providing information, rather than the dynamic aspect of how such information is communicated among different stakeholders.

This paper intends to fill in the above-mentioned gaps by presenting, as a case study, recent reforms to improve education accountability in Beijing’s government middle schools. In particular, it zooms into three long-term supportive practices that involve all major stakeholders: training and career development for teachers, that for principals, and inter-stakeholder communication. Beijing’s experience freshly illustrates how a previously centralized apparatus is striving to match the needs and incentives at the grass-root level, as well as the merits and limitations within the top-down approach.

After introduction, Section II describes the traditional governance hierarchy in Beijing’s basic education system. Section III summarizes how training, recognition and communications are organized, with a particular focus on how these practices match with stakeholder incentives. Section IV critically analyzes the potential tensions and inertia among different stakeholders in a reform dominated by top-level agencies. Section V concludes with policy implications.

The paper aims to examine the access of students with disabilities (SwDs) to higher education and barriers impeding the access with special reference to Panjab University (PU). PU was established in 1882 and it is the fourth oldest University in India. At present it has 78 teaching and research departments and has around 16000 campus students. The University was ranked number one among universities of India for two successive years in World University Rankings Surveys. The paper is based on primary and secondary data. The primary data was collected through a questionnaire from 62 SwDs out of 86 enrolled in regular courses. The access to higher education for SwDs was assessed in terms of their number based on norms of reservation (i.e. 3 percent), availability of scholarships, accessibility of infrastructural facilities and learning outcomes. Assessment of infrastructure accessibility was undertaken on the basis of indicators prescribed in ‘Harmonized Guidelines and Space Standards for Barrier-Free Built Environment for persons with Disability and Elderly Persons’ of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Learning outcomes were assessed on the basis of parameters namely marks scored in examination. The satisfaction of SwDs regarding their performance in examination as well as the behavior of classmates and teachers has also been studied.

Analysis reveals that the Government of India has been effective in introducing reservation to SwDs in admission, scholarships, grants to higher education institutions and disseminating information about scholarships and schemes through media. The field survey revealed that the PU has been following 3 percent reservation policy and offering financial assistance to SwDs. Notwithstanding these efforts, the overall access to higher education for SwDs is abysmally low i.e. 0.56 percent against the norms of 3 percent reservation. Field visits reveal that majority of surveyed buildings in PU do not comply with barrier free design guidelines. Transport services, pedestrian facilities and pathway, staircase, washroom have various obstacles that limit the mobility of SwDs in and around the University. In library, book issue and return counters’ height found to be slightly higher. The academic resources are highly inaccessible for visually impaired students due to absence of braille books and information technology. The study also highlights that the SwDs are not only facing physical and academic infrastructure barriers, they are also prone to indifferent behavior of teachers and fellow students in a couple of cases.

With a view to improve access to higher education for SwDs, it is suggested that government should increase the number and amount of scholarships per year, disseminate aggressively information about schemes by organizing seminars, workshops and conferences. In order to provide adequate access to SwDs, it is essential that government make all buildings accessible by religiously adopting barrier free design guidelines of the Ministry of Urban Development. For improving learning outcomes, institutes should make source of information accessible through the use of appropriate information and communication technology (ICT). Joining ‘sugumya pathshala’ (a one-stop-shop library for the blind, students with low vision or with any other print disability to access books in diverse languages from various libraries across India) and implementing the guidelines of Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India for conducting written examination for persons with disabilities are other major policy prescriptions for improving access to higher education of SwDs.

Keywords: Access, higher education, infrastructure, learning outcomes, students with disabilities, scholarships.

This research examines the effect of grants and regulation as policy tool, street level administration and implementation condition on policy performance in creativity education policy in South Korea applying the governance model Lynn, Heinrich, and Hill(2000) developed using both secondary administrative data and survey data gathered from 280 elementary school teachers.

South Korean education has been praised for both its role in economic development and its comparatively high international performance rankings (OECD, 2009; 2011a; 2013). However there are growing worries that the education system hinders the development of the students’ creativity which has been touted as the most important quality for the 21st century and has become a growing interest area within education circles as well as wider society. That is, Korean education system represented by one-sided lectures by teacher and student assessment by multiple choice questions may no longer be effective in the era of information technology and globalization. To solve the problems, with the inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak Government in 2008, CE(hereinafter referred to as CE)  Policy was introduced in order to foster globally creative humans throughout the elementary and secondary school levels. The aims of CE Policy are to stimulate the creativity of students by introducing teaching and learning methods such as discussion, experimentation, practice, and presentations. Another goal is to lessen the dominance of rote memorization and multiple choice tests by introducing more comprehensive student assessment including problem solving capability of student. Teachers are encouraged to use different educational methods for developing student creativity, and to foster the ability to solve problems creatively.

In South Korea, national level education policies are usually made through both changes in rules, such as curriculum and grants for detailed project implementation to achieve policy goals. The same is true for the CE Policy. In advance the government-funded development projects in CE Policy include the creative management grant and subject classroom facility grant. The other policy tool is to change the educational curriculum to fit CE including textbook amount adjustment, fewer subjects per a semester, and block scheduling system.

This research fits with the panel topic because this research analyzes the performance and the determinant factors, challenges of one of key educational policies at the national level in South Korea by the use of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.