International Higher Education, Summer 1999

News of the Center for International Higher Education

In October, the Center will coordinate a week-long seminar for senior administrators at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Fifteen deans and directors will have an opportunity to learn firsthand about American higher education. An intensive series of discussions and visits to Boston-area universities will highlight the program. This will be the second time the Center has coordinated an Amsterdam seminar. Philip G. Altbach and Karen Arnold, head of BC's higher education graduate program, are coordinating the program with the help of Kevin Sayers, a doctoral student in higher education.

The Center's World Wide Web site has been improved by the addition of an interactive index to all of the issues of International Higher Education. All of the issues of IHE are included on our website, and the new index permits immediate access to articles through a subject-based index. The index was put together by Yoshikazu Ogawa and Dave Engberg, both graduate assistants in the Center. The website is also an excellent way of accessing information from many sources on higher education worldwide.

Work on the Inventory of Higher Education Programs and Centers is mostly complete. This major guide to the field of higher education worldwide will be published by the Center and will be posted on our Website. Dave Engberg has been mainly responsible for coordinating work on this project. So far, more than 100 responses have been received worldwide.

The Center has been awarded a $5,000 grant by the International Education Research Foundation, Inc., to pursue work on the directory of higher education research centers, journals, and related publications.  


Center to Explore African Higher Education
The Center for International Higher Education will develop a major handbook on African higher education. With funding from the Ford Foundation and coordinated by Damtew Teferra, a doctoral candidate in higher education at Boston College, the first comprehensive analytical sourcebook on African higher education will feature analytical chapters on all sub-Saharan African countries as well as theme-based essays on key topics relating to African universities. The authors of the chapters will be selected from among key African researchers on higher education.

This volume will be especially valuable since there is very little data and analysis available for many African countries. Because both the research community and available data concerning African higher education are limited, it will be a challenge to develop this book.

The work of editing the book will be done at the CIHE. A distinguished group of senior African higher education experts will advise the project. The Association of African Universities will lend its expertise to the project. The Center will publish an edition of the book that will be made available to the African research community. In addition, a commercial edition will be published. It is expected that the project will take two years, including the translation of some chapters from French into English. The project's main coordinator, Damtew Teferra, has experience in publishing in Ethiopia and is currently completing his doctorate in higher education.