<p><font color="#33711E"><strong>Day 3 – Session 5C: Commercialization of Higher Education</strong></font></p>
Queen's Park 5, 08:30 - 10:00
08:30 - 08:50
5.C.1. Resolving the Tension between Access and Profit: Private Higher Education in Oman
David Chapman, University of Minnesota, USA
Thuwayba Al-Barwani, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Hana Ameen, Ministry of Higher Education, Oman
Over the last 30 years, Oman has been one of the fastest growing higher education systems in the world, a growth financed mainly by national oil revenues. While oil revenues currently account for about 90 percent of the national budget, recent projections estimate that these oil reserves will be largely depleted within the next 15 years. In response, the Government of Oman (GoO) has launched an aggressive campaign to expand its education system in recognition that developing an alternative economy will depend heavily on a highly trained citizenry. The challenge is enormous since 40 percent of the population is below the age of 15. The GoO has aggressively expanding for-profit private higher education, which is permitted to charge tuition fees. This expands access to education while avoiding the need to change the policy of free public higher education. At the same time, it creates a potential conflict between the desire of stakeholders in private universities to make a profit and the desire to raise the quality of education. To investigate this tension and ways to resolve it, the authors conducted interviews with 46 educators, government officials, and college or university shareholders. This paper reports on the results of the study and discusses the implications of accommodating increased access to education through expansion of for-profit private higher education.
Download the presentation (pdf, 80kb)
08:50 - 09:10
5.C.2. The Role of Far Eastern University in Meeting the Needs of the Future
Violeta Jerusalem
Far Eastern University, Philippines
The Philippines has an enormous growth opportunity in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Information Technology (IT) services industries. By 2010, it is expected that the workforce for this industry will grow to 920,764 employees (from 237,175 in 2006). With such rapid industry growth, if no long-term skills development programme is implemented now, the demand for skills will be far greater than the available labour pool can supply. Owing to this rapid industry expansion and the growing influence of globalization, it is crucial for the BPO industry and the Government of the Philippines to partner closely with educational institutions to build a skilled workforce. In turn, colleges and universities need to respond to the challenge by developing the appropriate curricula, training programmes and resources for their students so they are ready and skilled enough to meet this industry demand. This paper examines the role of Far Eastern University (FEU) in meeting the demand for skilled employees. For FEU to mould its graduates to meet the BPO industry demands, it is now critical to assess its existing curriculum, programmes and resources in terms of how they relate to these demands. This paper discusses how FEU is responding to the emerging challenges and showcases the university's improvements.
Download the paper (pdf, 100kb) and presentation (pdf, 3mb)