Policy-making, planning and change in tertiary education

Almost all countries undertake educational planning in some form. Educational planning is said to be “the application of rational systemic analysis to the process of educational development with the aim of making education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs of its students and society” (Forojalla, 1993, p. 39). Planning is thus closely linked to policy development and implementation, for the aims of planning are to inform decisions on appropriate goals and the approaches used to realise them. Given that growth has been a feature of world-wide development in education and a key challenge for education planning and policy, this article examines the developments and perspectives that are shaping educational planning and policy making with regard to educational expansion, particularly in relation to the experiences with tertiary education in three countries in the Asia-Pacific region: Japan, Republic of Korea and Australia. Copyright © 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.