News of the Center and the Program in Higher Education

Editorial work on The Past and Future of Asian Universities, edited by Philip G. Altbach and Toru Umakoshi is mostly complete. The Johns Hopkins University Press will publish this volume, which features essays on 12 Asian countries and was funded by the Toyota Foundation and the Japan Foundation. The Center's women's higher education initiative continues. Graduate assistants Francesca Purcell and Robin Helms are currently completing collection of data for our questionnaire on women's universities worldwide. We plan additional activities as well. For the past seven years, the CIHE has hosted the editorial office of the Review of Higher Education, one of the main journals in the field of higher education. The RHE is edited by Philip G. Altbach, with BC professors Karen Arnold and Ted Youn serving as associate editors. Roberta Bassett is the managing editor. Our term of editorship ends in January 2004, and the editorial office will move to the University of Houston. The journal's publisher is the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Our bibliography on private higher education in international perspective is also nearing completion. This project is cosponsored with the Program on Research in Private Higher Education (PROPHE) at the University at Albany. Alma Maldonado-Maldonado is the coordinator of this project at CIHE, assisted by Hong Zhu. We expect to publish a book based on this bibliography by the end of 2003. PROPHE will continue the project with a website and additional research. CIHE and PROPHE copublished Glenda Kruss and Andre Kraak's edited volume, A Contested Good? Understanding Private Higher Education in South Africa, in July as a contribution to international awareness of the growing phenomenon of private higher education. This book was distributed to several hundred key readers worldwide. It is available, from the CIHE, without cost to colleagues in developing countries.

Philippa Thiuri, a native of Kenya, joins the Center as a graduate assistant. She will also be working on her doctorate in higher education administration. Other graduate assistants working with the CIHE in 2003–04 include Hong Zhu, Alma Maldonado-Maldonado, Roberta Bassett, Robin Helms, Francesca Purcell, and Laura Rumbley. Francesca Purcell was awarded a School of Education research scholarship to pursue her dissertation research in the Philippines. Her work relates to women's higher education in the Philippines. Alma Maldonado-Maldonado, who is writing her dissertation on Latin American higher education research networks, has been appointed assistant professor in higher education at the University of Arizona, beginning in 2004. Jef Davis, who is working on his doctoral dissertation and previously served as a CIHE graduate assistant, has moved to Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Damtew Teferra, the editor-in-chief of the new Journal of Higher Education in Africa, also serves as a research assistant professor at the CIHE. He has recently returned from Africa, where he was a keynote speaker at conferences in South Africa and Ethiopia.

CIHE director and Monan professor of higher education, Philip G. Altbach, will be a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong in December 2003. He will also speak at a conference at Xiamen University in China at that time. Dr. Altbach will participate in a conference on doctoral education sponsored by the UNESCO European Center for Higher Education in Bucharest, Romania, in September. He is also a member of an OECD advisory group, which met in Paris in June. He is working with Dr. James Forest, a former CIHE graduate assistant and currently an associate dean at the United States Military Academy at West Point, on a major higher education reference volume to be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. American Higher Education in the 21st Century, coedited by Philip G. Altbach, Robert Berdahl, and Patricia Gumport, has appeared in a Chinese-language edition published in Taiwan.

The CIHE continues to be the home for the RoutledgeFalmer Dissertation Series in Higher Education, a major book series that publishes many of the best doctoral dissertations in higher education. Several Boston College dissertations have been published in the series, including James Forest's thesis on the role of teaching in comparative perspective, Rev. John Chen's dissertation on the history of Beijing's first Catholic university, and Damtew Teferra's thesis on scientific communication in African universities within the context of external support and national needs.

The CIHE continues to receive its core funding from the Ford Foundation, with additional support from Boston College.

The Africa Higher Education Reference Handbook is now available
Indiana University Press has published African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook, edited by Damtew Teferra and Philip G. Altbach. This 864-page volume has essays on 54 African countries and 13 themes--including academic freedom, HIV/AIDS and higher education, and financing, among others. It includes a bibliography of books, articles, and dissertations relating to African higher education. This is the most comprehensive source on this topic and will be of interest to anyone concerned with the future of African universities. A limited number of copies are available without cost to scholars based in Africa and others who are involved with higher education. Please request copies from Dr. Damtew Teferra (e-mail: teferra@bc.edu). The book is available for sale from Indiana University Press, 601 N. Morton St., Bloomington, IN 47404-3797, USA. The price is $89.95.

Books available from CIHE
Several CIHE books remain available without cost to persons in developing countries. Please contact the Center if you wish to receive any of these books. These publications include:

International Higher Education remains available on the Center's website. We have updated our index so it is possible to find all past articles printed in IHE--the index is organized by topic and country for easy access.