Higher education in Asian countries and the role of international ...

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According to this document, since 1980, the Bank‟s investments in education in India increased
by many folds: from an almost negligible amount to $2 billion until 1990. The Bank has
approved four vocational and technical education and training (TVET) projects and six basic
education projects (Abadzi, 2002).
More recently, investments in tertiary education have been justified in terms of their potential
contribution to teacher training, a prerequisite for achieving the goals of the global Education for
All (EFA) initiative and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (Berk, 2002) there has
been no study of the performance of the Bank‟s tertiary education lending or the extent to which
it has contributed to fulfilling these goals in practice. To fill part of this gap,
5.3.12.3 Tertiary Education: Lessons from a Decade of Lending, FY1990-2000
This is the pioneer study of its type that evaluates Bank‟s lending performance in tertiary
education sector. This study reviews the objectives, content, and performance of the 30 Bank-
supported tertiary education projects completed between fiscal years 1990 and 2000. The key
objectives of the projects were improved educational quality, expansion of enrollments, better
planning and management, financial sustainability, and policy reform. Sixteen of the projects
were in the East Asia and Pacific Region, seven in Africa, and seven in four other Regions. In
this document no project on south Asia, Central Asia and West Asia is included. Eighteen of the
30 projects were in 10 middle-income countries and 12 were in 9 low-income countries. For
these projects a $2.48 billion loan was provided by the Bank. The Operations Evaluation
Department (OED) rated the outcomes of 70 percent of the projects moderately satisfactory or
better (Berk, 2002). Some of the findings of this study were:
Tertiary education projects performed poorly in low-income or poor countries.
The completed projects did not fully address the problem of equitable access; only three
out of thirty projects provided evidence of any impact on the equitable access of poor or
disadvantaged students, including women.
Most of the project on quality improvement could not help improve teaching methods,
student learning, or labor market outcomes
The projects aiming to increase enrollment were partially successful: 66% of the projects
failed to achieve the goals.