Can The Public Money Used to Fund Higher Education?
The spectacular growth of private higher education the world over has been garnering a lot of attention without a doubt. Indeed, private higher education has been a viable entity in the landscape of global higher education. While private universities may have co-existed with the public sector, many private universities have grown into some of the most prestigious higher education establishments in the world.
As more and more students are drawn into private higher education throughout the world, it becomes imperative for governments and stakeholders to consider how privates can and do contribute to meeting their nations’ higher education needs as well as to what extent should governments facilitate such efforts.
Generally, governments fund public higher education through annual appropriations, while privates rely heavily on tuition revenues and philanthropic contributions. Experts note that no attention has been given to why governments use various funding mechanisms to allocate funding to private providers. Policymakers, researchers and academicians continue to debate private higher education’s increasingly important role in an era of scarce financial resources and swelling enrolments.
With the prevalence of private higher education providers becoming the dominant institution type as mass higher education pervades less developed nations, more attention needs to be paid on the effects of such systems, particularly in questioning if there is any relationship between the channels available to publicly fund private higher education and the existing balances of states public or private sectors.
There are five basic characterises in today’s higher education:
1. The Statist Case (pure public case with 90 per cent public enrolments and 90 per cent state funding, characterised by a high degree of ministerial oversight and little institutional autonomy; usually no tuition fees and governments usually provide financial support. Found in many lesser-developed nations in Africa and Latin America as well as in Western Europe).
2. Public-Autonomous (focuses on single-sector systems that are largely publicly funded with a greater reliance on private sources of financing to supplement state appropriations. Nations having such a structure tend to have strong historical ties with the UK).
3. The Homogenised Pattern (represents the most balanced system in terms of both finance and form of control-government perceptions prevail that privates perform useful functions and should be financially supported. Countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand fit into this pattern).
4. Minority Private (a dual system is in operation; privates represent between 10-50 per cent of total enrolments and are largely financed by non-government funding. The public sector is still the dominant higher education provider. This is the dominant pattern much across Latin America).
5. Majority Private (often referred to the ‘pure private model’ where privates enrol the majority of students mainly because the government cannot maintain a sizeable public sector instead channelling public funding into primary and secondary education. Examples are Japan, South Korea and the Philippines).
Thus, policymakers need to have an understanding of the relationship between various blends of public or private finance and sector sizes and the availability of channels through which public funding can be allocated to private higher education providers. In the case of Malaysia, this is an issue that need to be tackled head on.
Arguably, with massification of higher education and the mushrooming of private providers, policymakers in Malaysia and many other countries in similar predicament need to put in place intelligent and prudent policies and observe successes in funding mechanisms from more established systems around the globe.
UMS Website Competition
Recently, UMS has launched the website competition and the evaluations for the UMS best website quality award are judged on these three following categories:
1. Best Website (School Category)
2. Best Website (Research Category)
3. Best Website (Service Category)
The marking scheme of the evaluation will be based on the:
1. Content – 30%
2. Interaction – 15%
3. Insight Generation – 10%
4. Services – 30%
5. Design and Functionality – 15%
However the closing date is already due, that is 21 August 2009. Hmm…wish I could participate in this evaluation, but I’m totally busy for this week and forget the due date of this competition. The evaluation for the website is on 29 August 2009. So far, the result has not be announced yet. So by the time it announced, I will let you know about the result. Well, I wish that my school will win this competition. I can see there is large improvement of the school website. So let’s pray for our school victory and of course SKTM boleh!
For more information, just log on to the website at http://www.ums.edu.my/conferences/index.php?mod=Publication&action=homeaccess&conf=PALWT09
Latest Technology in ICT – Switch to Digital Televison
Digital television (DTV) is the sending and receiving of moving images and sound by discrete (digital) signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV.
As of late 2007, 7 countries had completed the process of turning off analog terrestrial broadcasting. Many other countries had plans to do so or were in the process of a staged conversion. The first country to make a wholesale switch to digital over-the-air (terrestrial) broadcasting was Luxembourg, in 2006, followed by the Netherlands later in 2006, Finland, Andorra, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland in 2007, Belgium (Flanders) and Germany in 2008, and the United States in 2009.
In the United States, high-power over-the-air broadcasts are solely in the ATSC digital format since June 12, 2009, the date that the FCC set for the end of all high-power analog TV transmissions. As a result, almost two million households could no longer watch TV because they were not prepared for the transition. The switchover was originally scheduled for February 17, 2009 until the US Congress passed the DTC Delay Actt. By special dispensation, some analog TV signals ceased on the original date.
In Japan, the switch to digital is scheduled to happen July 24, 2011. In Canada, it is scheduled to happen August 31, 2011. China is scheduled to switch in 2015. In the United Kingdom, the digital switchover has different times for each part of the country; however, the whole of the UK will be digital by 2012. Brazil switched to digital on December 2, 2007 in major cities and it is estimated it will take seven years for complete signal expansion over all of the Brazilian territory.
In Malaysia, the Malaysian Communications & Multimedia Commission (MCMC) will call for tender bids in the third quarter of 2009 for the UHF 470–742 megahertz spectrum which will pave the way for the country to move into the digital television era. The awarding of the spectrum will see the winner having to build a single digital terrestrial transmission/TV broadcast (DTTB) infrastructure for all broadcasters to ride on to transmit their TV programs. The winner will be announced at the end of 2009 or early 2010 and has to commence digital roll-out soon after the award where the analog switch-off is planned for 2015.
DTV has several advantages over analog TV, the most significant being that digital channels take up less bandwidth (and the bandwidth needs are continuously variable, at a corresponding reduction in image quality depending on the level of compression as well as the resolution of the transmitted image). This means that digital broadcasters can provide more digital channels in the same space, provide high-definition television service, or provide other non-television services such as multimedia or interactivity. DTV also permits special services such as multiplexing (more than one program on the same channel), electronic program guides and additional languages, spoken or subtitled. The sale of non-television services may provide an additional revenue source.
Digital signals react differently to interference than analog signals. For example, common problems with analog television include ghosting of images, noise from weak signals, and many other potential problems which degrade the quality of the image and sound, although the program material may still be watchable. Digitized signals are designed to resist ghosting or noise by using a redundant signal composed of numeric codes. Even if some of the information is missing or wrong, the decoder computer can reconstruct the complete signal. The only way it fails is when the decoder does not receive enough information from the antenna — if there is too much interference in the signal for the decoder to read enough of the numbers and produce the picture. This can render a digital signal completely or partially unwatchable (picture pixelates or freezes) in situation where an analog signal would still be usable, in urban (ghosting due to multi-path) and rural (weak signal) areas.
Therefore, it is the time for us to digitalize our television due to its benefits. So why not we make an investment in buying the devices before the analog based completely switched off at 2015. Let’s us wait for its arrival…
World Issue – Influenza AH1N1
The entire world has been attacked by the AH1N1 or what is commonly called as a “swine flu”. Statistics show that too many people have been affected by such sickness, and some even died. It is now a global panic, people are even afraid to go out their house, and be exposed to the crowd because of the flu. I, myself is taking precautionary measures to avoid it. Who would want it, anyway?
But, just recently, the World Health Organization made a statement, and cleared the issue regarding SWINE FLU. People might have thought of it as an incurable and deadly disease, but they said that the truth is, SWINE FLU can be prevented, and most of all, it is curable. It is just like any other flu, and the person who has it can even experienced exactly the same symptoms just like an ordinary flu. The reason why it worsen sometimes is because of the immunity of the person who has it, or if that particular person has another health condition such as a weak immunity, asthma, diabetes, and other health issues. It is not the SWINE FLU that can kill a person, it will only worsen the persons current health issue apart from the flu itself. The good news is, we can at all times prevent it. Take a lot of vitamin C. It will boost your immune system. Make exercise a regular part of your routine, you do not have to go to the gym, cleaning the house, a 30 minute walk, or walking up and down the stairs is already a good form of exercise. Choose your foods wisely, if you can be a vegetarian, then that would be good. Eat lots of fruits and drink plenty of water. Also, hygiene is very important. Be sure to wash your hands before you eat or bring with you a sanitizer so you sanitize your hands wherever whenever. Avoid crowded places as well. And if you are really worried, it would be best to consult medical experts so they can help you with it.
