Higher education policy

The editors seek to explain Arab political and economic interests to a western audience by presenting them as legitimate concerns much like those of any other region. An example is the article, "Vapeurs de soufre sur fond de n~gociations" by Katia Salam6, which examines the efforts of the oil-producing Arab states to diversify their economies by building petrochemical plants while the European petrochemical industry lobbies to keep such lower-cost rivals out of their markets. The cultural section profiles various artists and intellectuals: an Egyptian Arabic poet, a group of women singers important to the development of Algerian popular song, Tunisian and Egyptian filmmakers. While Arabies is aimed at the serious general reader, many academics will read it for background information. It would constitute a useful addition to a collection in regional or Islamic studies or in international affairs.

Higher Education Policy. 1988-. Q. $100 to North, South, and Central America, £60 to U.K and the rest of the world. Kogan Page Ltd., The Distribution Centre, Blackhorse Road, Letchworth, Herts., SG6 1HN, UK. Ed.: Guy Neave. LC 88-19209. ISSN 09528733. Issues examined: vol. 2, no. 4 (December 1989); vol. 3, no. 1 (March 1990). Higher Education Policy is the organ of the International Association of Universities (IAU), a body established in 1950 "at the initiative of Unesco" to "give expression to the 'obligation of universities as social institutions to promote, through teaching and research, the principles of freedom and justice, of human dignity and solidarity, and to develop material and moral aid on an international level'...." Higher Education Policy translates this purpose into a cooperative, internationalist outlook on postsecondary education, with special concern for the problems that underdeveloped or non-Western countries experience in paying for higher education and in adjusting to what is usually an imported and alien model of it. "Policy" in the title refers to decisions made by governments or other high-level organizations with regard to education. Higher Education Policy differs from the leading American-based journals in the field, such as Journal

of Higher Education, Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, and Review of Higher Education, in several ways: fewer of its articles report statistically based research; it is truly international, no one nation furnishing the majority of its contributors; and above all, its issuing body has a stated political goal that removes the journal from the sphere of morally neutral empiricism. - - P E R I O D I C A L S IN R E V I E W - -

Issues are organized around themes. Essays in the issue "Higher Education and Culture" look at such subjects as the integration of higher education into a traditional society 0raq), the implications of international student marketing for developing countries, and the maintenance of standards of quality in universities in remote locations. The guest editors of the issue "Informatics and Education: Implications for Higher Education" performed an exhaustive literature search and selected previously published essays and conference papers in order to provide "a distillation on a massive scale of...our knowledge" of computers in secondary education, particularly in developing countries. In concentrating on secondary education they looked beyond the scope of the journal, causing the regular editor to write an introductory essay of great courtesy in which he lauded their diligence while detaching himself from the result. Themes announced for future issues were "Systems of Quality Control," "Higher Education: Public Service and Private Commitment," "Funding of Higher Education: Emerging Patterns and Changes," "Migration of Highly-trained Manpower," "Financing of Students," and "Academic Freedom." As long as education is funded by governments and directed towards national ends, educators will of necessity be most interested in what happens within their own borders. This fact together with the periodical's social-democratic orientation is enough to exclude Higher Education Policy from core journals lists in many education collections in the United States. However, large collections, and those with a particular interest in developing countries, will want to add it.

Mediterranean Quarterly:A Journal of Global Issues. 1990-. Q. $44 institutions; $24 individuals; $12 students. Duke University Press under the editorial direction of Mediterranean Affairs, Inc., Box 6697, College Station, Durham, NC 27708. Ed.: Nikolaos A. Stavrou. LC 90-648471. ISSN 1047-4552. Issue examined: vol. 1, no. 4 (Fall 1990). The editors of Mediterranean Quarterlyassert that the Mediterranean region "keeps coming back to its dual origins in separation and integration" and that this paradigm of separation and inte/gration recurs "as a great wheel repeating for all humaJnkind the importance of each present and unique crisis as a moment between past and future." They believe that the expansion and fragmentation of civilizations over thousands of years of recorded history has created a unique, humanistic Mediterranean consciousness, little understood in America, that can offer a valuable perspective on current events both within and beyond the region. Mediterranean Quarterly exists to give voice to that consciousness. The journal proposes to cover not only foreign policy but also "the environment and energy, SUMMER

1993

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