Higher education systems worldwide are faced with an intractable tension between the demands of quality, equity and funding (Unterhalter and Carpentier 2010). On the one hand, there are strong pressures for equitable expansion of enrolments, driven by both supply-side factors-principally the perceived importance of higher education for the knowledge economy-and demand-side factors, namely the increasing number of secondary leavers seeing university degrees as the primary means of economic betterment and social mobility. On the other hand, universities are grappling with the challenges of maintaining quality in the face of rapid expansion, particularly as massification implies both a rise in sheer numbers of students and an increasing diversity of incoming students, including in terms of academic preparation for university. The conundrum is further deepened by constraints on public funding and the uncertainties associated with alternative private sources.While all countries struggle to reconcile the competing demands of budgetary constraints and high levels of university participation, the issues faced in low-and middleincome countries (LIMCs) are distinctive for a number of reasons. First, resource constraints (particularly in low-income countries) present severe limitations, both in terms of available public funding for the higher education system and with regard to the possibilities of cost-sharing with students and their families. Second, as a result of public resource constraints, higher education systems in lower-income contexts have traditionally been restricted to a small elite population and, as a result, rapid expansion represents a significant and destabilising shock. Third, even when funding is in place, such systems have limited capacity to expand, due to the insufficient number of qualified academic faculty able to staff institutions. Fourth, quality challenges at the primary and secondary levels in such contexts tend to lead to a high proportion of under-prepared students entering & Rebecca Schendel

The rhetoric around decentralisation suggests school-based management improves education outcomes. Existing reviews on school-based decision-making have tended to focus on proximal outcomes and offer very little information about why school-based decision-making has positive or negative effects in different circumstances. The authors systematically searched for and synthesised evidence from 35 quantitative and qualitative studies evaluating 17 individual interventions on the effectiveness of school-based decision-making on educational outcomes. Devolving decision-making to the level of the school appears to have a somewhat beneficial effect on dropout, repetition and teacher attendance. Effects on test-scores are more robust, being positive in aggregate and for middle-income countries specifically. On the other hand, school-based decision-making reforms appear to be less effective in communities with generally low levels of education, where parents have low status relative to school personnel. The authors conclude that school-based decision-making reforms are less likely to be successful in highly disadvantaged communities.

Critical thinking is frequently proposed as one of the most important learning outcomes of a university education. However, to date, it has been difficult to ascertain whether university students in low-income contexts are improving in their critical thinking skills, because the limited studies in this domain have relied on instruments developed in Western contexts, despite the clear dangers of such an approach. Cultural bias in assessment can best be overcome by explicitly developing tests for use in specific contexts. However, resource constraints often prevent this possibility. An alternative strategy is to adapt an existing instrument for use in a particular context. Although adaptation is the norm for high-stakes cross-cultural assessments, it is often not attempted for single country research studies. This may be due to an assumption that adaptation is excessively technical or will add significantly to a study timeline. In this article, which relies on data from a recent study in Rwanda, we present a methodology for adapting a performance-task-based assessment of critical thinking. Our experience with this methodology suggests that small teams can adapt instruments in a relatively short time frame, and that the benefits of doing so far outweigh any cost.

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A recent study of student learning at three of Rwanda's most prestigious public universities has suggested that Rwandan students are not improving in their critical thinking ability during their time at university. This article reports on a series of faculty-level case studies, which were conducted at two of the participating institutions in order to investigate some of the reasons behind these results. Although educational practices likely to foster critical thinking skills are required elements of the undergraduate curriculum at both institutions, the case study analysis suggests that these practices are being fundamentally altered during implementation, because of a limited understanding of the rationale for pedagogical change and low levels of faculty motivation to implement more laborintensive teaching methods. The findings suggest that teaching and learning policies are only likely to be effective if accompanied by pedagogical training and support for ongoing faculty development.