Project
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Message from the Project Director, D. Bruce Johnstone
All scholarly projects have life spans, and the International Comparative Higher Education Finance and Accessibility Project, housed in the Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education at the University at Buffalo, is no exception. The core grant from the Ford Foundation, which has supported the Project since 1999 concluded in August 2008, although the extensive Project library and Website as well as many of the activities associated with the Project continue with the support of the University at Buffalo’s Graduate School of Education and income from consultancies.
While I have officially retired from the University, I continue as ICHEFA Project Director, and with my writings and consultancies. Further continuity of the work on cost-sharing, student financial assistance, and the other dimensions of higher education finance in international perspective is being provided by Pamela Marcucci, Project Manager of ICHEFA, as she continues to maintain the Project website at
http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/org/IntHigherEdFinance
and the extensive project library within the University at Buffalo Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education. In addition, we continue to advise and consult on cost-sharing and student financial assistance as we have on a recent two-volume report on cost-sharing and student financial assistance reform in Morocco, on a recent World Bank report on higher education finance in Africa and several additional technical assistance projects in Romania and the United Arab Emirates.
Since the year 2000 when the project was initiated with funding from the Ford Foundation, the University of Buffalo’s International Comparative Higher Education Finance and Accessibility Project has produced:
- The most extensive body of theoretical and policy-oriented literature on higher educational finance and "cost-sharing,” including some 45 up-to-date country studies on the Project Website at <http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/org/IntHigherEdFinance>.
- Key papers on higher education finance, cost-sharing, tuition fee policies, and student loans translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish.
- Two books (and a third on the way): D. Bruce Johnstone, Financing Higher Education: Cost-Sharing in International Perspective published by Sense Publishers and Pamela N. Marcucci, International Higher Education Finance, An Annotated Bibliography, published by the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, plus many book chapters and monographs.
- An annotated library of resources (presently over 500 pieces) on the topics of higher education finance, tuition policies, student financial assistance, student loans, and related topics, mainly in international comparative perspective.
- Ph.D. graduates from some 15 countries trained in higher education policy analysis, including doctoral dissertations and other student publications dealing with aspects of higher education finance and cost-sharing in Morocco, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Latvia, China, India and the United States.
- Further capacity building through fellowships for visiting scholars and advanced graduate students from Argentina, the Czech Republic, Chile, China, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Mongolia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, the Ukraine and Vietnam.
- Successful conferences in Buffalo, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Prague, Moscow, Wuhan and Arusha, Tanzania on the technically complex and politically contested concept of "cost sharing" in East Africa, Central Europe, Russia, and China.
So, we will continue our interest and our work in higher education finance, and especially in tuition and financial assistance policies world wide.
D. Bruce Johnstone
Project Director
May 2009
