scholarly journals Development of Higher Education in Albania: The Case of the Public University Libraries in Efforts to Build Digital and Electronic Services for the Academic Community

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Haska Erena
Author(s):  
Eugenia Harja

The public university education in Bacau, represented by “Vasile Alecsandri” University from Bacau has developed over the past two years not only in terms of student numbers, but as human and material resources available to them. After the number of students per teacher, public higher education from Bacau is situated on the second place after Iasi, the number of teachers representing 1% of the country. The structure by scientific degrees of teachers has improved in the last year, reaching over 36% professors and lecturers and 144 PhDs. Over 55% of the teachers are younger than 40 years. The material basis has improved both quantitatively and qualitatively by putting into use a new building, bringing an additional 27 classrooms and 11 seminar rooms and providing the conditions of modern higher education.


Author(s):  
Néstor Horacio Cecchi ◽  
◽  
Fabricio Oyarbide ◽  

For those of us who have been going through the public university for decades, a clear tendency in most of our institutions to rethink their senses, their missions, their functions, in sum: their must be. In these times and these contexts in which deep inequalities are made visible with absolute clarity, these tendencies to construct new meanings acquire a particular relevance. We understand that public universities in the exercise of their autonomy and as members of the State, must assume a leading role with a contribution that contributes to guaranteeing rights, in particular, of the subalternized sectors. This critical positioning is inescapable to consolidate the social commitment of our higher education institutios. This compelling transformative intention has a valuable background. In this sense, we warn that both in Argentina and in some of the countries of the Region, tendencies to consolidate, systematize, institutionalize processes of emancipatory articulation in their relations with the territory, organizations and social movements have been reproduced for some years, many of them, through curricularization processes in its different meanings. These experiences, dissimilar by the way, find the need to settle, to institutionalize themselves through various conformations that in some cases converge in Educational Social Practices or similar names, with different, unique formats, but with different meanings as well. That is why we propose to display, analyze, make visible some of the salient characteristics of these processes, the regulations, their singularities, similarities, the multiplicity of their feelings, in sum, their metaphors.


Author(s):  
Marianne Robin Russo ◽  
Kristin Brittain

Reasons for public education are many; however, to crystalize and synthesize this, quite simply, public education is for the public good. The goal, or mission, of public education is to offer truth and enlightenment for students, including adult learners. Public education in the United States has undergone many changes over the course of the last 200 years, and now public education is under scrutiny and is facing a continual lack of funding from the states. It is due to these issues that public higher education is encouraging participatory corporate partnerships, or neo-partnerships, that will fund the university, but may expect a return on investment for private shareholders, or an expectation that curriculum will be contrived and controlled by the neo-partnerships. A theoretical framework of an academic mission and a business mission is explained, the impact of privatization within the K-12 model on public higher education, the comparison of traditional and neo-partnerships, the shift in public higher education towards privatization, a discussion of university boards, and the business model as the new frame for a public university. A public university will inevitably have to choose between a traditional academic mission that has served the nation for quite some time and the new business mission, which may have negative implications for students, academic freedom, tenure, and faculty-developed curriculum.


Author(s):  
Alexa Nicole Anthonie

This paper explores the South African Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector in relation to calls for decolonisation that have emanated from higher education institutions (universities) and basic education institutions (schools). Both the public and the academic community have echoed these institutions’ calls for transformation through protests and articles in academic journals and the popular media. Apart from two articles in the popular media the silence on decolonisation and TVET has been deafening. A key phrase during the #FeesMustFall protests was “the missing middle,” referring to those students who were too rich for NSFAS bursaries but too poor to afford university fees. I argue that the TVET sector is a different missing middle in that it is missing from debates about decolonising education in South Africa. Through a document analysis of TVET related legislation, I argue that it is too “high” for basic education and too “low” for higher education. By drawing on Jan Blommaert’s notion of “voice” and Gayatri Spivak’s notion of “the subaltern,” the paper considers why there has been such silence on decolonising the TVET sector.


Author(s):  
Mlamuli Nkosingphile Hlatshwayo ◽  
Innocentia Alexander

Universities in the Global South continue to grapple with the ethical demands of decolonising and transforming the public university and its episteme orientations. In this paper, we contribute to the emerging body of work in the Global South that attempts to make sense of the transformation and decolonisation discourses by exploring academics' understanding of decolonising curricula in South African higher education. Using purposive sampling, we interviewed eight academics from the school of education who teach in a research-intensive university in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We relied on the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu to think through the notion of a research-intensive university being a contested and structuring field constituted of various actors and agents who are struggling to make sense of, and understand the calls for, decolonising and transforming curricula. The findings suggest that, largely, academics understand the decolonising of curricula as a response to the need to tackle and theorise the Eurocentric thought in curricula and to re-centre African epistemic traditions and as well as navigate what they refer to as the confusion, ambiguity, and discomfort of decolonisation. We end this paper with some empirical and theoretical reflections on how exploring academics' understanding of decolonizing curricula is central to the broader project of achieving social justice in the Global South.


Author(s):  
Arpita Anshu Mehrotra ◽  
Hala Elias ◽  
Adel I. Al-Alawi

The aim of this chapter is to explore what instructors and student should have of knowledge sharing (KS) attitude and to investigate the benefits and barriers of KS in one of the Gulf Cooperation Council University. The purpose is to determine the outcome of KS and how the knowledge could develop the act of instructors and students and the college as an organization and to investigate the degree of KS in academic level at the public university. The students and instructors were asked about the extent to which they know of the significance of sharing their knowledge with others. The results show that a significant number of them are aware moderately. The chapter concludes that the majority tend to share knowledge with no boundaries. Three recommendations are drawn: raise people's awareness about the value of KS by seminars or workshops, raise the coordination between the students, and enhance this in their lives, and expand the level of communications.


Author(s):  
Ma Camino Bueno Alastuey

The adaptation to the European Space of Higher Education and to the new demands of the labor market has produced a shift in university education, which has changed from being teacher-centered to being learner-centered. Following this trend, at the Public University of Navarre, a blended course of English for Agriculture was created using the virtual platform WebCT. In this chapter, we forward a description of content organization and resources used, analyze students’ attainments and perceptions, and finally conclude with a reflection on the effect various organizations have produced in students, together with future trends in the use of WebCT in our context.


Author(s):  
Richard M. Freeland

The conditions of the golden age liberated Massachusetts State College from the forces that had restricted its development since the nineteenth century. In spurts of growth linked to demographic and political cycles, M.S.C. mushroomed from a limited-purpose college into a comprehensive university and from a single campus in Amherst into a multicampus system, with units in Worcester and Boston and a statewide president’s office. By the end of the period, UMass seemed finally to have joined its counterparts in western states as a full-fledged public university in the land grant tradition, with strong programs of graduate education and research built on a large undergraduate base and linked to public service activities of applied research and nondegree instruction. The evolutionary process remained incomplete, however, and Massachusetts was still Massachusetts. The state’s nonelite private institutions watched the public expansion nervously and organized to protect their interests. Other components of the public system, including the state colleges and a new network of community colleges, vied for support from an intensely politicized government still unsure of its role in higher education. Though the effort during the 1930s to transform Massachusetts State College into a full public university had ended in failure when the General Court shelved the enabling legislation, the university movement had gained important ground. In particular, by the end of the prewar decade, the loose coalition of students, alumni/ae, and organized labor that had kept the movement alive had stirred public interest and won support from the college’s trustees as well as its president, Hugh Potter Baker. Baker himself, with his roots in the scientific-technical traditions of land grant education, had been slow to endorse a broadened conception of his institution but once converted had become an eloquent and persistent advocate. Believing, despite his disappointment over the legislature’s inaction, that World War II would foster increased interest in higher education and create new opportunities for M.S.C., Baker used his annual reports during the war to reiterate the central arguments of the university movement: that, in comparison with other states, Massachusetts was not providing adequate support for public higher education; that demand for places at the college far exceeded enrollment capacity; that the region’s private institutions were not prepared to respond to the need; and that large numbers of Massachusetts residents were being forced to attend public universities in other states.


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