This book discusses the concept of capacity-building for tertiary education through cross-border education, emphasising the critical role of quality assurance and trade negotiations.

Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don't learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability. This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back - particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past.

For the past 25 years UK Higher Education institutions have forged research and teaching partnerships with their counterparts overseas. Many of these links were funded by the British Government and managed by the British Council’s Higher Education Links Scheme. This book takes an informed and critical look at issues and trends in global higher education over the past twenty five years with an in-depth and often personal account of how these links were managed and led. Ten experts representing a variety of disciplines from areas such as conserving the natural environment, the promotion of human rights, and education and gender present an ‘insider’s’ view of their link, reflecting upon the successes and challenges in promoting research, developing institutional capacity at home and abroad, and the lessons they have learned. This book will be of particular interest to those working in higher education and international development generally; as well as students, researchers and professionals engaged in bilateral and multi-lateral development assistance programmes.

Deryn Watson CapBIT 97, Capacity Building for Information Technologies in Education in Developing Countries, from which this publication derives, was an invited IFIP working conference sponsored by Working Groups in secondary (WG 3. 1), elementary (WG 3. 5), and vocational and professional (WG 3. 4) education under the auspices ofIFIP Technical Committee for Education (TC3). The conference was held in Harare, Zimbabwe 25th - 29th August 1997. CapBIT '97 was the first time that the IFIP Technical Committee for Education had held a conference in a developing country. When the Computer Society of Zimbabwe offered to host the event, we determined that the location and conference topic reflect the importance of issues facing countries at all stages of developmen- especially Information Technologies (IT) development. Information Technologies have become, within a short time, one of the basic building blocks of modem industrial society. Understanding IT, and mastering basic skills and concepts of IT, are now regarded as part of the core education of all people around the world, alongside reading and writing. IT now permeates the business environment and underpins the success of modem corporations as well as providing government with cost-effective civil service systems. At the same time, the tools and technologies of IT are of value in the process of learning, and in the organisation and management of learning institutions.