Commonwealth of Learning - The scope and demand for Tertiary Education and current resources available to Commonwealth Member States

Senior Officials Technical Working Group Meeting
Proposal for a New Commonwealth Tertiary Education Facility (CTEF)
Marlborough House, London
19-20 May 2008

The scope and demand for Tertiary Education and current resources available to Commonwealth Member States

Professor Asha Kanwar and Sir John Daniel
Commonwealth of Learning

When senior officials met to discuss the proposal for a CTEF in London on 12th October, 2007, the Commonwealth of Learning was tasked with the responsibility of developing a paper on 'The scope and demand for Tertiary Education and current resources available to Commonwealth Member States'.

In this paper we will first consider the scope of and the demand for tertiary education in the Commonwealth (CW) and then the current resources available for the purpose. In the process, we will look at some key issues in Commonwealth Tertiary Education (TE) and their policy implications to justify the establishment of a dedicated tertiary education facility.

I. SCOPE OF TERTIARY EDUCATION IN THE COMMONWEALTH

A way of assessing the scope of tertiary education in the CW is to first define it, as such a definition will outline what is subsumed under the term and what may legitimately be seen as its operational domain.

Fifty years ago, tertiary education and higher education were used interchangeably. Today, tertiary education includes higher education, teacher training, vocational training at the post-secondary level, trade qualifications and industry exams.

According to the Wikipedia: 'Tertiary education, also referred to as third stage, third level, and post-secondary education, is the educational level following the completion of a school providing a secondary education.... Higher education is normally taken to include undergraduate and postgraduate education, while vocational education and training beyond secondary education is known as further education.'

Tertiary Education is formal, non-compulsory, certifiable and post-secondary, covering qualifications at levels five and six of the ISCED.¹ Tertiary Education Institutions (TEIs) include universities, polytechnics or institutes of technology, teacher training colleges and professional institutions among others.

Accordingly, tertiary education is a generic term that includes all the fields of education and training beyond the secondary level. It should, however, be noted that the term is not used in the same sense in every Commonwealth country. Denotative overlaps among the terms 'higher', 'further' and 'tertiary' continue to persist in the contemporary literature on education/training. Would it be appropriate for CW countries to agree on a common definition of this term? Because of the variations across the CW, in this paper, we will use 'tertiary education' as a cover term for all types of education and training beyond the secondary level.

II. DEMAND FOR TERTIARY EDUCATION IN THE COMMONWEALTH

The following chart² gives a glimpse of the growth of Tertiary Enrolments in the different Commonwealth regions.

Table 1: Gross Enrolment Ratio (%)*, Tertiary Education

	1980	1997	2004
Sub-Saharan Africa	1.7	3.9	5
Latin America and the Caribbean	13.7	19.4	28.6
East Asia and Oceania	3.8	10.8	19.6
South Asia	4.3	7.2	9.7

Source: World Bank EduStats

*The gross enrolment ratio is the total enrolment at a given educational level, regardless of age, divided by the population of the age group that typically corresponds to that level of education. The specification of age groups varies by country.

It is clear that the demand for tertiary education is rising. Governments and policy-makers are aware of this impending surge and policies and plans are being developed to meet this challenge at the national level, but there are issues that need collective solutions. The key issues are outlined below.

1. Access and Equity

There are more entrants to higher education today than at any time in the past. Higher education has, in fact, evolved from an elitist pursuit into a mass system. By 2020, 40% of the global workforce will be knowledge workers, with a need for tertiary qualifications. The World Bank, which in the eighties and nineties privileged basic education, is now of the view that for countries to achieve sustainable economic development, the Age Participation Rates (APRs) in Tertiary Education (TE) must be in the region of 40 to 50 %. Can existing institutions cater to the rising demand? Dhaka University could only enroll 10,000 of the 80,000 applicants in 2,000, while in Kenya only 9,000 of the 40,000 qualified students can be accommodated in the public university system.³

With access to Tertiary Education being less than 10% of the relevant age group in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa, this key concern is being addressed by most developing countries. Malaysia plans to raise its APRs to 40% by 2010. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago plans to see an APR of 60% by 2015, while the Jamaican government expects to raise the APR in tertiary education to 30% by the same time. By 2020, Barbados would like to see one university graduate in each family. In 2006 India's Knowledge Commission called for the number of Indian universities to grow from 350 to 1500 by 2015.⁴ India has since announced the establishment of one central university for each of its 28 states and the intention to raise the APRs to 15% by 2012. Can such plans and projections be implemented successfully?

If the UPE Goals are to be achieved by 2015, the number of teachers must be increased on a priority basis. An additional 18 million teachers are required globally of which 4 million each are needed in SSA and India alone.⁵ However, in East Asia and the Pacific, the teaching force can be reduced due to the decline in the school-age population.⁶ All the twelve Caribbean Commonwealth countries need to enhance access to teacher training, as they are severely hit by the overseas recruitment of their teachers. How do we prepare such a large number of teachers in so short a time?

Tertiary level technical and vocational training will assume increasing importance as the focus shifts from theory to practice and to the applications of knowledge. Oceania has the highest regional GER average in post-secondary TVET while Africa has the lowest⁷. How do we fill such gaps?

Table 1
Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics database, 2005

Some countries in the developing Commonwealth grapple with the issue of identity politics and have put in place measures for 'affirmative action'. In South Africa, the University of Cape Town uses a differential point system for different races as an entry requirement. While 'open' applicants need 43 points and Indians 41, the black and coloured students need to obtain only 34. Malaysia implemented 'affirmative action' by reserving student and staff positions for ethnic Malays in the early 70's, sunsetting the provision for 2003.⁸ Reservations in Indian tertiary education based on social and economic considerations are perhaps the most complex and problematic of such actions. Honouring the importance of such 'affirmative action', how may we maintain and improve the quality of tertiary education/training uniformly throughout the Commonwealth?

Policy issues:

Access and equity are both interdependent variables that interplay within national systems around two key elements: (i) adequacy of the provision within the given national system, and (ii) fair and equitable distribution of the available provision among the different economic, social, religious and ethnic sections of the community.
Developing nations have to come to terms with the reality that their national tertiary education provisions seldom measure up to their own national development needs, and more often fall far short of the domestic demands made on the system. They need guidance and advice for making their plans realistic and their implementation successful.
Policy makers are thus left with the difficult task of not just ensuring the necessary investments (allocation of internal resources), but more importantly, in securing the necessary physical and intellectual resources that can promote and sustain viable tertiary education systems of acceptable quality.

2. The New Tertiary Learner

The characteristics of the twenty-first century student have changed. Half the world's population (6.5 billion) is under twenty with two billion teenagers in the developing world. In countries such as Malaysia and Pakistan, approximately 65% of the population is under the age of 30, while over two thirds of the TE students in Singapore are over the age of 25.⁹ Today a TE student may be anywhere between 18 and 50 years of age. Then there is the traditional young learner between 18-24 years.

There are relatively more women in TE today. Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania offer incentives for women candidates by offering lower admission cut-off points even as female enrolments in Africa compare unfavourably with other developing regions. In Bangladesh, women account for 34% of all enrolments in public and 17% in private institutions.¹⁰ On the other hand, in Brunei Darussalam, women at the tertiary level outnumbered males by 32% in 2004 and the trend continues.

Obviously, the 'new tertiary learner' belongs to a very diverse constituency and has a range of needs that cannot be catered to by the traditional institutions that we have known so far. As a consequence, there is an emergence of new institutions such as corporate universities, virtual institutions, offshore providers, twinning and franchise arrangements, dual and multi-modal institutions. We have witnessed the growth of more new institutions in the last twenty-five years than previous generations have seen over the whole nine hundred year history of higher education, as we know it.

Further, for the same reasons, there has been a phenomenal growth in distance education in the developing Commonwealth. India alone has 13 open universities and 126 dual mode institutions and the distance learning system caters to 25 % of all tertiary enrolments. While research shows that there is 'no significant difference' between distance education and traditional classroom instruction in relation to student outcomes, there is still a perception barrier to be overcome, in order for this mode of education/training to be utilized to its fullest potential universally in the Commonwealth.

Policy issues:

Traditional means of institutional provision can no longer respond to the needs of this vastly diverse constituency. National systems have to evolve a multiplicity of delivery systems that would include i) part-time education, education and training at the work place, ii) mechanisms for accreditation of prior learning/experience and other initiatives that do not disrupt work, family life and living conditions.
Technology-enabled provisions naturally offer viable solutions. Given the huge disparities that exist among the developing countries in the availability of, and access to, modern technologies, the need to devise a variety of systems and methods appropriate to national needs and environments becomes imperative.

3. Cross-border Education

In 1975, there were 600,000 international students globally. This figure quadrupled to 2.7 million in 2004. Existing unmet demand opens the door for cross-border tertiary education and there are at least 50 providers, registered and unregistered, in Jamaica alone (Brandon 2003, George 2005). The number of cross-border providers in India increased from 27 in 2000 to 114 in 2004. With limited facilities and an infrastructure broken down by 11 years of Civil war, Sierra Leone can potentially be an attractive destination for cross-border providers. There are already some such providers in the country, such as the little-known St Clement's University, an offshore company registered in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, which offers courses in Management, Information Technology and Development Studies.¹¹

National governments are grappling with the issue of 'diploma mills', on-line providers and the recognition of foreign qualifications. Because of South Africa's stringent requirements for both local and foreign providers, the number of foreign providers there fell from 38% to 4 % between 2000 and 2002. While India started with a more liberal policy, it is now becoming more restrictive. One of the reasons could be the fact that over 30% of these providers are not recognised or accredited in their countries of origin. An equal number of their Indian collaborators are not part of the formal higher education system either.

Of the 47 countries that have made commitments to education as on February 2006 under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), seven are Commonwealth Member States. Only Lesotho and Sierra Leone have made commitments to all five sectors: primary, secondary, higher, adult and other. Many CW governments do not have a process or mechanism in place for dealing with this complex phenomenon.¹²

Policy issues:

Recent experience with cross-border education has been mixed. While there have been several cases of world-class institutions extending their facilities and reach to many developing countries, there have also been instances of these countries being turned into a 'market' for commercial exploitation.
The consequent disenchantment with cross-border education in several countries has led to the unavoidable need for intervention by international organizations and agencies to devise and develop methods for supporting and strengthening cross-border education of acceptable quality and standards.
Can a central CW body identify internationally comparable standards by which the quality of programmes and qualifications can be determined? Is there a need for a CW transnational qualifications framework to encourage mobility among students and/or citizens of the CW?

4. The Rise of Private Providers

Many countries have broken state monopoly on higher education by encouraging private investment in educational enterprise. While economic liberalism and democratic idealism have supported this development, it has generated a great deal of 'sound and fury' regarding the role of the state in providing TE, which is seen as primarily a public good. In India, the number of privately managed institutions is increasing, especially in professional disciplines. In Africa, one third of the approximately 300 universities are private. The net result will be that within the next two decades, private, for-profit provision, already estimated at $350 billion worldwide, is likely to account for a larger proportion of higher education in the developing countries than it now does in the industrialised world.¹³ Like cross-border education, the emergence of private provision for tertiary education is due to two key factors-i) the exponential rise in the demand for tertiary education and ii) the inability of the State to meet this demand.

The following table indicates the phenomenal increase in private provision in three CW countries.¹⁴

Table 2

Policy issues:

State regulation of education, especially higher education, and private provision have always been contentious issues in most developing countries. The apparent conflict between private capital and public policy still remains a major roadblock to educational expansion. What role does the State have in regulating private provision?
Though the potential of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) is often invoked, very little seems to have been achieved on the ground. Can new and workable models of such initiatives be evolved through international consultations and sharing of experiences among countries and international agencies and organizations?
How does the quality of private provision compare with public institutions? What role do they play in national development? How are issues of equity addressed? What is the difference between private for-profit and not-for-profit institutions? What data do we have on enrolments and the subjects of study? Why is the best research still coming from public institutions?

III. RESOURCES FOR TERTIARY EDUCATION IN THE COMMONWEALTH

Usually, while contemplating the resources for tertiary education, we focus on the more obvious monetary aspect of the issue, which certainly deserves primary importance. Recent experiences, however, indicate that there are other resources, human and institutional which, though not monetary in nature specifically, have significant financial implications for the development of tertiary education in all the developing countries of the world. Here, we will first touch upon the issue of funding tertiary education and then a few issues¹⁵ that link with resources in the final analysis.

1. Funding Tertiary Education

Generally, in the developing CW countries, tertiary education has received limited funding from the State. India allocates less than 20% of its public spending on education to the tertiary sector. However, it has recently announced an eight-fold increase for the 11th Plan period (2007-12). While African countries also affirm the importance of the tertiary sector, currently most of the funds in education are allocated to the expansion of the primary and the secondary sector. The following chart presents comparative details of the percentage of the GNI spent per student at three different institutions:¹⁶

Table 2: Comparative Expenditure per student/GNI per capita

	Number of students	Expenditure per student	Country GNI per capita^b	Expenditure per student/GNI per capita
Harvard University^a	18,995	120,032	43,560	2.8
IIT Bombay	4,600	4,635	730	6.3
University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania	4,816	3,239	340^a	9.5

a: Excludes medical school expenses and medical students
b: The World Bank's official estimates of the size of economies are based on GNI converted to current U.S. dollars using the Atlas method. GNI takes into account all production in the domestic economy (i.e., GDP) plus the net flows of factor income (such as rents, profits, and labor income) from abroad. The Atlas method smoothes exchange rate fluctuations by using a three year moving average, price-adjusted conversion factor.

Given the nature of expanding tertiary education, as outlined in Section II above, it is clear that the State will no longer be the sole source of funding. There are other sustainable strategies, which can and should be explored. Each country, however, has to find the model that best suits its political, economic and cultural context.

Loan programmes are often plagued by low rates of recovery

Ghana loaned $ 27 million to over 400,000 students in 1988, but by 2002 had received back only $ 1.1 million.¹⁷

More recently, public institutions and the corporate sector are entering into joint ventures, especially in the case of knowledge products and services, to generate funds through mutually beneficial synergies. This appears to be a more robust approach than most others. Another way of involving the private sector, is to raise funds through levies charged on the industrial sector specifically for educational/professional development as is the case in Nigeria and Mauritius.

Policy issues:

Funding of education systems in the developing countries has never matched the domestic needs as other 'pressing needs' take precedence over this important investment in the future. The prospects before most developing countries do not appear to change dramatically in the foreseeable future. Appropriate systems to supplement state funding have to be explored.
It is imperative that such alternate systems should be consistent with the objectives of national policies that address the issues of access and equity. In the context of the rising costs of tertiary education across the world, can systems of private financing through loans offer a solution? Is it possible to design and develop loan schemes that link recovery with future earnings rather than current assets, much like the micro-economic credit schemes that have worked well in some countries like the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh?
Linking education to private funding inevitably raises the question of ensuring adequate returns on the investments made. Here, the issue of relevance assumes importance. Would the education assure employment, ensure social cohesion and inculcate values? Would it enhance career prospects? What kind of educational provision would address these concerns?
How can education, provided on a large scale and to diverse clientele, be made more cost-effective and affordable without compromising its quality and standards?

2. Brain Drain

Many developing countries face an acute shortage of trained human capital especially in health and education. In recent times health workers from poor countries have migrated to rich countries--Indian doctors and Philippino nurses constitute about 15% of the total health force in OECD countries.¹⁸ African and Caribbean countries are sorely affected by the emigration of its professionals. 30% of Africa's tertiary trained professionals live outside the continent and estimates indicate that in the 1990's Africa lost 20,000 professionals annually.¹⁹ The large-scale exodus of teachers from Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago has led to a severe shortage of staff within the national education systems in the Caribbean and led to the development of the Teacher Recruitment Protocol 2004.

Such situations notwithstanding, the current global economic scenario also points to the positive aspect of brain-drain. Foreign remittances to the three leading recipients India, Mexico and China were estimated at US$ 26.9, 24.7 and 22.52 billion respectively in 2006-07.²⁰ It is true that all such remittances do not come necessarily from a high level workforce working abroad, but it is equally true that a sizable number of this workforce has tertiary education of one type or the other. Further, it is well known that there are no international laws against brain-drain, nor will human rights activists allow such laws to be framed and imposed. On the contrary, within the context of globalization, the free movement of people, services and goods across nations will continue to increase. What may be the possible ways of optimizing the benefits and minimizing the adverse effects of this phenomenon?

Policy issues:

Do non-binding recruitment protocols work? What has been the impact of the Teacher Recruitment Protocol?
Is there a need for a CW-wide consensus on how to stem brain-drain? Are there ways of attracting the diaspora for national development?
Should we have policy guidelines and strategic mechanisms to alleviate the harmful consequences of brain-drain, especially for small States?

3. Open Education Resources (OERs)

The last five years have seen tectonic shifts in how technology is being used to close the digital divide. Pioneered by the MIT, the Open Courseware movement, based on the principle of knowledge sharing marks the first generation in which knowledge is seen as our common wealth. The on-line course materials of the UKOU is the second generation wherein existing self-instructional materials are being put into on-line format. The third generation is collaborative course development as exemplified by the wikiEducator, a course authoring tool being used to develop materials for the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC). In this phase, the focus is shifting from 'this courseware is mine to this courseware is for (open) mining'²¹. The OER movement is largely based on four principles: i) encouraging mass ownership rather than elitism; ii) acknowledging faith in everyone's inherent capability to self-organise; iii) enlisting amateurs as producers of content; and iv) promoting collaboration for the common good. These principles, however, have yet to be accepted and followed by most of the developing CW countries.

In the developing Commonwealth, collaborative content development is still in the nascent stages. An Infodev/COL report, 2007, indicates that there is dearth of documented content in Africa. Content development is resource-intensive and the OER movement provides a unique opportunity to developing countries to access global knowledge flows.

Professor Bob Bernard of the Educational Technology group at Concordia University, Montreal, and his colleagues carried out a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies in which distance education students were treated in different ways. They distinguished three types of interaction: student - content; student - student; and student - teacher. They then analysed all the studies to find which type of interaction made the greatest difference when it was increased. The results were very clear. Increasing student - content interaction had much the greatest effect; with student - student interaction coming next and student - teacher interaction last. Within this context, the importance of content cannot be underestimated. In the coming years, there will be a greater need to collaborate on free content development and sharing resources.²²

Policy issues:

Easy access to educational resources of the developed world does not ensure that developing nations can straightaway deploy them in their national systems. They need to develop indigenous competence and capacity to adopt, adapt and internalise these resources in a manner that is appropriate to their domestic environments.
How can these capacities be built? Who do the developing nations turn to for strengthening and sustaining their national systems and also for receiving programmes and services that would help build the professional capacities and put in place systems and processes that can meaningfully draw upon the OER movement?

4. Quality

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University's top 500 universities table features institutions from Australia, Britain, Canada, Singapore and New Zealand, with very little reference to other developing world institutions. While there can be disagreement on the ranking criteria, the results signal the need for CW institutions to review their research outputs and student outcomes, if they aspire to world-class status.

Policy Issues:

The criteria for assessing the quality of educational provision are already established. The real issue is about adapting and applying these criteria to specific national systems. The creation of a Commonwealth Tertiary Education Area on the lines of the European Higher Education Area that would aim to make Commonwealth tertiary degrees and quality assurance standards more coherent and comparable throughout the Commonwealth could be considered.
Would it help to have a CW-wide ranking system? Who would take the responsibility?
Many developing CW countries have QA and accreditation bodies (Annex 1) but others would require capacity development and technical advice on setting up appropriate mechanisms. Who would Member States turn to for this advice?

IV. CONCLUSION

Recently, when Seychelles asked COL for assistance in undertaking a tertiary education sector review towards the establishment of a national university, it also requested help from UNESCO and the African Development Bank (AfDB). Information of these requests came serendipitously because of COL's contacts with UNESCO and the AfDB, so duplication of effort and wastage of resources was avoided. This is a typical instance of why a centralized repository of information is needed. There are many other cases, as we have pointed to in the previous Sections of this paper, in which institutions all over the Commonwealth need help in the form of information, advice, guidance and training. The proposed CTEF could provide a one-stop access opportunity for countries in need of a particular service.

The Needs

Among such services, the most pressing pertain to:

Tertiary education sector reform
Policy development
Capacity building especially leadership development
Curriculum Reform
Skills training
Professional development and training
Qualifications frameworks, quality assurance, institutional audits and assessment;
Transferable student credits to facilitate student mobility
Governance
Selection of suitable technologies
Collaborative action (services, sharing/developing materials.)

What will the CTEF do?

CTEF would assist member states and tertiary education institutions to strengthen systems and institutional capacity. In particular, its functions would include:

Collecting and disseminating information and best practice in tertiary education in the Commonwealth (e.g. on student credit systems, qualifications etc). This information would be available free and updated regularly.
Facilitating communications and information exchange between governments and institutions in the Commonwealth.
Advocating certain principles in tertiary education in line with Commonwealth values.
Supporting professional development in the Commonwealth, including leadership development.
Responding to individual requests for policy advice in the areas of tertiary education policy and management.
Liaising with other international bodies engaged in tertiary education to harmonise and coordinate interventions.

In the Report of the Senior Official's Working Group Meeting on the Proposal to establish a Tertiary Education Facility, held on October 12, 2007, at Marlborough House, London, it has been noted that 'top quality medium to long term experts in tertiary education sector and institutional reform' are not available easily. A body like CTEF may, therefore, be difficult to staff. Without questioning this fact, it needs to be emphasized that in recent times what has been and is happening in the immensely diverse field of tertiary education/training is significantly new, not only in the developing countries of the Commonwealth, but also in the advanced ones. Instead of looking for 'existing' experts; what we need to look for are dedicated people who are capable of identifying the emerging issues, contemplating solutions and providing policies and strategies to resolve them. It will be quite sometime before we will have expertise in areas (the new tertiary learner, cross-border education, private providers, etc.) that have been identified in this paper. The proposed initiative should not falter for want of experts.

There is already a consensus over the need for a pan-Commonwealth intervention in the development and strengthening of tertiary education systems. This discussion has delineated the areas for such an intervention in some detail. What is needed is a strong and professionally credible entity to help Member States to engage in effectively addressing these concerns. It is the duty and the obligation of the Commonwealth to take this forward.

Quality Assurance Bodies Annex 1

Higher Education Quality Assurance in Sub-Saharan Africa, August 2007
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/
INTAFRREGTOPTEIA/Resources/WP124_Web.pdf

Quality Assurance in tertiary education - the Bangladesh experience
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/
EDUCATION/Resources/bangladesh_apqn.pdf

Antigua & Barbuda
TVET/Occupational - National Accreditation Board
HE/Tertiary - Antigua and Barbuda Training Agency

Bangladesh
University Grants Commission of Bangladesh (UGC)

Barbados
Barbados Accreditation Council

Belize
National Accreditation Council (under development)

Botswana
TVET/Occupational - Botswana Training Authority
HE/Tertiary - Botswana Tertiary Education Council

Cameroon
National Commission on Private Higher Education (NCPHE)

Cyprus
Council for the Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications; National QA Agency

Fiji
South Pacific Board of Education Assessment (SPBEA)

Ghana
National Accreditation Board (NAB)

Guyana
National Accreditation Council

India
National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)

Jamaica
University Council of Jamaica

Kenya
Commission for Higher Education (CHE)

Lesotho
TVET/Occupational - Lesotho Skills Agency (under consideration)
HE/Tertiary - Council on Higher Education

Maldives
Maldives Accreditation Board

Malta
Malta Qualifications Council

Mauritius
TVET/Occupational - Mauritius Qualifications Council
HE/Tertiary - Tertiary Education Commission (TEC)

Mozambique
National Commission for Accreditation and Evaluation of Higher Education (CNAQ)

Namibia
TVET/Occupational - National Training Authority
HE/Tertiary - National Council for Higher Education (NCHE)
Namibia Qualifications Authority

Nigeria
National Universities Commission (NUC)

Pakistan
Pakistan National Accreditation Council (PNAC)

Samoa
Samoa Qualifications Authority

Seychelles
Seychelles Qualifications Authority

St. Kitts & Nevis
TVET/Occupational - TVET Council (in progress)
HE/Tertiary - St. Christopher and Nevis Accreditation Board

South Africa
South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA)

Sri Lanka
Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC)

Tanzania
Higher Education Accreditation Council (HEAC)

The Bahamas
National Accreditation and Equivalency Council of the Bahamas (NAECOB)

The Gambia
TVET/Occupational - National Training Authority

Tonga
TNQAB (in progress)

Trinidad & Tobago
TVET/Occupational - National Training Agency (NTA)
HE/Tertiary - The Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT)

Uganda
National Council for Higher Education (NCHE)

References:

UNESCO, 1997 "International Standard Classification of Education - ISCED"
Adapted from Devesh Kapur and Megan Crowley . 2008, Working Paper No 139. Beyond the ABC's: Higher Education and Developing Countries, p.6.
Ibid., p. 16.
Daniel, Sir John, Kanwar, Asha and Uvalić-Trumbić, Stamenka. 2006. 'A Tectonic Shift in Global Higher Education', Change, July/August 2006, Volume 38, Number 4. pp. 17-23.
http://education.nic.in/cabe/universalisation.pdf
www.uis.unesco.org
Adapted from Participation in formal and technical vocation education and training programmes worldwide: An initial statistical study. UNESCO-UNEVOC 2006. p. 50
Kapur and Crowley, p.58.
Ibid., p.7.
Ibid., p.53.
John Daniel, Asha Kanwar and Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić . 2005. 'Who's Afraid of Cross-Border Higher Education?: A Developing World Perspective' in Higher Education Digest. Issue 52. UK: Open University
Jane Knight. 2006. Higher Education Crossing Borders: A Guide to the implications of GATS for cross-border education. UNESCO-COL report. pp. 72-3.
Materu, Peter. 2006. quoted in Kapur and Crowley, p.79
Adapted from Kapur and Crowley, p. 18.
It may be noted that Cross-border Education and the Rise of Private Providers (subthemes discussed in Section II) pertain partly to the issue of rising demand and partly to that of the resources for tertiary education. We will not discuss them again in this Section.
Adapted from Kapur and Crowley, p.10.
Kapur and Crowley, p. 54.
Ibid., p. 45.
Kapur and Crowley, p.78.
Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia; 'Remittances'
OER Report 2006
Sir John Daniel, Asha Kanwar and Ms. Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić. 2008. 'Achieving Quality in Distance Education', paper presented at a meeting of Private Providers, Pune, India, April, 2008.