] 08 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus this is critical in assisting students toward adequate preparation and succeeding in the new environment. Mestenhauser goes on to explain how this expanded goal for orientation can be accomplished in the section on "Learning and training." International education professionals must comprehend key learning concepts such as motivation in the development of their programs. What type of learning, experiential, informational, competency based learning, etc., is best for what type of student? Mestenhauser outlines each of the learning approaches along with explanations for possible inclusion in orientation program development. The last chapter in the book (18, Adding the Disciplines: From Theory to Relevant Practice) builds on Chapter 17 and calls for the direct involvement of the disciplinary faculty in the orientation programs; once again reminding us that cultural information is not enough. Respecting the students field of study and how to manage it is extremely important if the student is to achieve well academically. The integration of the cultural adjustment component along with the goals and processes of the academic discipline is the preferred approach for successful orientation according to Mestenhauser. A proposed model for the integration of these two is provided. The chapter concludes with some very worthwhile guidelines and recommendations for selecting appropriate goals, content, structure, sequencing and methods for orientation of international students. Overall, this book is not to be taken as a scholarly volume on orientation programs for professionals. Rather, it is a collection of articles of varied quality and of interest to a restricted group of readers in Canadian Higher Education. However, for those who are interested in the theoretical basis of cross-cultural orientation for adjustment and the development of academic competency among international students, they will find Part II of the book stimulating and worth exploring. Sir Christopher Ball and Heather Eggins (eds.). Higher Education into the 1990's: New Dimensions. Milton Keynes, England: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, 1989. Pp. xi, 138. Reviewed by Michael L. Skolnik, Higher Education Group, OISE, Toronto, Ontario. Observers of higher education, like those who chronicle events in politics, sports, and entertainment, seem to love to produce books at the end of a decade. The turn of the third digit in the calendar provides an often irresistible urge to carve history into ordered chunks, to reflect upon events of the past ten years and speculate on changes which are likely to occur in the next ten. Such an undertaking in the United Kingdom in 1990 is particularly appropriate, for the 1980's was certainly a period of momentous developments in higher education there, and major challenges exist for the 1990's. Among the developments of the past decade, the long-term significance of which the contributors to this book try to digest were the following: an unprecedented intrusion of government into the universities' planning and decision making, for ] 08 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus example, with respect to what programs each institution will offer; the abolition of tenure by an Act of Parliament; the removal of the polytechnics and most colleges of higher education from local authority control; the replacement of the once venerable University Grants Committee by the Universities Funding Council, the latter having a more substantial representation from outside the university community than the former; moves by government to separate funding for research from funding for teaching, to increase student fees and shift student support from grants to loans, and to redefine, through legislation, academic freedom; a substantial decline in the traditional demographic and financial base of higher education; and preparation of higher education for the challenges of a single European market in 1992. The pall that all but the last of these developments have cast over higher education in the U . K . is captured by the following remark by one of the contributors to Higher Education into the 1990's: The last decade has been a disaster for higher education in the United Kingdom. Resources have been depleted, morale shattered, all sense of clear purpose and direction abandoned. Response to threats to higher education and doubts about its value have not prompted a spirited defense of academic ethos by its guardians or a vision of the future by its leaders but an inward-looking, truculent trench mentality. It is at present a no-win situation, for institutions, for knowledge, for young people and for the nation, (p. 63). This book, however, is less concerned with complaining about problems than with coping with them, or ignoring them and getting on with what various observers regard as the agenda for the 1990's, which for most means meeting the challenges of increasing accessibility, making lifelong learning a reality, and providing the skills required for a transformation of the economy in the context of 1992. A few of the thirteen essays explore the possibility of constructing a renewed philosophical, epistemological, moral, or political foundation for higher education. One of these reasserts the primacy of knowledge as the base of the university, "even in the restricted sense of sophisticated information and expert skills", but in the new context of external demands that "public order has to be imposed on its [the university's] anarchic private world" (p. 10). Another contains an unabashed call for a return to N e w m a n ' s ideal of the university as a civilizing force and a rejection of Nietzcheian epistemology (and deconstructionism). A third wrestles agonizingly with the conflict between access and standards and concludes (a la Alexander Astin, but without reference to his work) that if quality is conceptualized in terms of value added, then more does not necessarily mean worse. These essays, which stand in sharp contrast to most others in the book, in one way or another urge the university to cling to certain of its traditional values in the face of Thatcherite pressure toward privatization, accountability, and instrumentality. Another example of the call for a return to traditional values is an essay on academic freedom which asserts that the university was a major force in pre-Gorbachev Eastern Europe for keeping alive the idea of freedom and democracy and urges U . K . universities to "emulate the honourable tradition in ] 08 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus Eastern Europe of the academic community being in the front line against the erosion of democracy and the power of authoritarian government" (p. 56). That the essayist draws a parallel between the parliamentary authoritarianism of the Thatcher Government and Pre-Gorbachev Eastern Europe gives some indication of just how beleaguered some academics in the U.K. feel today. The essay goes on to argue that academic freedom is not bestowed by society, but has to be won through personal integrity and courage of professors and administrators, but laments that courage has not been a notable virtue in U.K. academe of late. It would be misleading, however, to give the impression that this book is largely about the idea of the university, let alone a defense of traditional academic values. Only two of the eleven contributors are from the universities, the rest being from polytechnics, colleges of higher education, industry, and the media. In the preface, one of the editors suggests that the end of the twentieth century may see a marginalization of the traditional university system, leaving to the Open University, the polytechnics, and the colleges the task of responding to new needs for accessibility, lifelong learning, and the inculcation of skills required to make the economy more competitive. The majority of the essays focus on new approaches to continuing education, training for industry, business-higher education collaboration, the development of non-traditional postsecondary education, and the use of media in higher education. Canadian readers will find many of the issues and problems in the book familiar, as there are broad similarities between the major issues and problems faced by higher education in the two countries. However, the book is of limited usefulness for the Canadian reader who wishes to reflect upon these phenomena in a comparative framework for two reasons. First, there are major differences between Canada and the U.K. with regard to both the social and political context of higher education and the structures of the respective systems, especially in regard to the stature and role of the non-university institutions. Second, the book is quite parochial, presuming an audience which is familiar with recent legislation and public debates on higher education in the U.K. Many of the articles will be elusive for foreigners who are not regular readers of the Times Higher Education Supplement. The latter limitation is particularly evident in regard to the fragmented treatment, referenced in several of the essays but nowhere explained in full, of what is, in my view, the most exciting new development in U. K. higher education. This is the Educational Credit Banking Scheme under the auspices of the Council on National Academic Awards (CNAA) in conjunction with the Open University. The CNAA is the body which awards degrees for academic work in the polytechnics, from Bachelor's to Doctorate, for studies of a more applied nature than those in the universities. Under the new scheme, students will be able to put together a combination of courses taken in any university or polytechnic along with certified experiential learning in the workplace and qualify for a degree. The incorporation of the Open University into the scheme will facilitate the inclusion of distance education components mediated by state of the art technology in the ] 08 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus delivery system. This credit banking scheme holds the promise of making flexible, work related, lifelong learning a tangible reality rather than the pie in the sky rhetoric that one so often encounters in discussions of higher education for the twenty-first century. This scheme looks as if it will truly make institutions serve the convenience of students rather than vice-versa as is usually the case. It is an innovation where Canada could learn much from the U.K., and it is a pity that there is not a more systematic description of it in this book. There is one exception to the parochial orientation of the book, and this was the essay that I found the most interesting and informative, the one on the challenge of a single European market in 1992. The essay provides a particularly insightful analysis of the barriers to achieving a unified European academic market: the diversity of national postsecondary structures and corresponding professional qualifications; that the provisions for free movement of workers across national boundaries after 1992 does not apply to the public service, and in many countries teachers and professors are regarded as public servants, notably in France which has the widest possible definition of the public service; differing practices regarding tuition fees and financial support of students; and what the author regards as the most significant barrier of all - language. English is the most widely studied foreign language in Europe, and not surprisingly, in the interesting tables provided on student mobility, the U.K. is the only significant net importer of students in the inter-university cooperation programs which presently exist in Europe. The author thus observes that the brain drain of U.K. academics to the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand (Canada is not mentioned in this connection) hardly surprising given the demoralized state of U.K. universities described in the other essays - is a loss not only for the U.K., but in the context of 1992, for the European Community as a whole. Robert Sweet (Ed.) Post-Secondary Distance Education in Canada: Policies, Practices and Priorities, Athabasca University and Canadian-Society for Studies in Education, 1989. pp. 210. Reviewed by John R. Minnis, Continuing Education Division, The University of Manitoba. The editor's intention is to present "a number of papers from individuals who have not been quite as closely associated with distance education in this country, yet whose experience, training and inclinations offer insightful interpretations of issues and events". There are nineteen articles in all, organized under three major themes: Access and Student Support; Educational Technology; and Institutional Responses. Contributions range far and wide over the distance education landscape, illustrating the diverse and developmental character of the enterprise. While the arrangement of articles by theme is by no means exact, this does not detract from the volume as a whole. The papers are all informative, some could have been slightly more analytical, but together they add up to an interesting and fairly