] 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 ] 08 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus representative account of the major issues, trends, and features of distance education as it pertains to the post-secondary sector. Two very thought-provoking papers are presented in section one on access and student support. Coulter's "Women in Distance Education: A Feminist Perspective", questions the degree to which women students are empowered to make free, autonomous choices allowing them to engage in "socially conscious activities" with other women within a distance education milieu. Suggesting that there are real limitations with an authoritative and patriarchical-based course design process, Coulter alludes to one of the characteristic features of distance education its fundamental reproductive and assembly line mode of operation. She offers some solid suggestions on how course developers can avoid and hopefully overcome some of these insidious features. Thompson's paper, in contrast to Coulter who would like to see more support systems for women, advocates "differential" student support services. Since students who enrol in distance education are largely "self-selecting", independent, and self-motivating anyway, why impose support on them if they choose not to avail themselves of it? While his arguments make good sense from an economic and individual learning perspective, one wonders if women and other minority students might not be disadvantaged? Robert Paulet's informative paper, "Building Bridges: Northern Teacher Training" is more than a case study account of Brandon University's highly successful Native teacher training programs. There are lessons for distance educators not least of which include: the need to obtain Native input into course design and delivery; the importance of keeping programs under community control; and the fact that distance education - as a supplement to current delivery systems — is a productive way to conceive and organize programs for Natives and, presumably, other isolated and culturally different populations. The final paper in this section by Libel and Michaud more or less reinforces Thompson's call for student support services, but is oriented more toward developing student's learning skills through the active intervention of course tutors. The six papers in the second section on Educational Technology reflect a rather eclectic perspective, reiterate themes and issues which will be familiar to those conversant with the area, and assume a student-centred stance. Henri and Lamy provide a valuable overview of competing definitions of distance education, resulting in a decision-framework for choosing instructional technologies. In the next article, Kaufman provides an historical review of three generations of distance education course design. Third generation designs are computermediated and allow, hypothetically at least, for maximum control by the learner over the pace of learning. While there is vast potential in those designs, Kaufman may be somewhat overoptimistic in terms of the benefits to the individual and society. The next paper, by Gary Boyd, exudes the same Utopian vision evident in Kaufman. Boyd suggests that if computer communication were to be placed at the ] 08 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus service of the world community, environmental and overpopulation problems could be appropriately addressed through the electronic network he envisions. Charles Brauner offers a "new and unifying philosophy of education called Perceptivism". In an attempt to go beyond the behaviorist recipes captured in Kaufman's analysis of 1st and 2nd generation approaches to course design, Brauner draws heavily on cognitive and cybernetic theory as a basis for a complex new framework for conceptualizing course design and delivery practices. Sauve, Gagne and Lamy present an interesting paper on the theoretical relationship between educational technology and distance teaching as a basis for establishing a distinct role for the educational technologist. Helm's paper, the last in section two, presents results from a national survey of communication technologies and their use in distance education. Her conclusions warrant repeating. There is a paucity of evaluations of the learning and cost-effectiveness of distant learning technologies; there is a shortage of Canadian content and training opportunities for workers in Canada compared to the United States; and there are few joint ventures between Canadian post-secondary institutions and the private sector for on-site training compared, once again, to the United States. Also of interest is Helms' finding that most Canadians look to distance education courses to fulfill job-related aspirations. "Courses in three disciplines, the health sciences, education and the arts/social science are most frequently offered - at the continuing education, professional development and undergraduate levels" (p. 126). This finding reveals the middle-class character of distance education participation and raises questions, notwithstanding rhetoric to the opposite reflected in the papers in section one, regarding the ability of distance education institutions to reduce social and economic inequality. The nine papers in section three, Institutional Responses, concentrate on innovative practices, and describe a range of responses to the demands for improved access. What emerges from these papers can perhaps be summed up in the following way. First, despite Tony Bates' perceptive claim in his leading paper that distance education provision is "patchy, arbitrary and incoherent," it is equally accurate to say that Canada is second to none in offering the consumer an extremely wide range of organizational arrangements for distance teaching. Distance education has succeeded in reaching thousands of learners in spite of the lack of Federal-provincial articulation Bates feels is missing. As Haughey points out in her paper, universities have changed, albeit grudgingly, in accommodating the adult learner through distance education means. Clearly, universities can do much more, but as Dennison makes abundantly clear in his article on the community college response to distance education, "a promising scenario might well be greater and even more creative exploration of the consortium approach". The theme of collaboration and cooperation in distance education is expanded upon in excellent fashion in a later article by Konrad and Small. Similarly, Paul's analysis of the Open Learning Agency, Athabasca University and the Tele-Universite, along with Ian Muggridge's paper on inter-institutional collaboration in B.C. point to the growing ] 08 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus maturity and importance of these organizations as models of distance education provision. Anderson and Nelson's paper on the much publicized Contact North/Contact Nord project in Ontario, provide further support for the advantages of a collaborative approach. Slade and Sweet discuss the role of distance education vis-à-vis proprietary correspondence schools, and show clearly why this growing sector of activity cannot be ignored by policy-makers and scholars. At the school level, McKinnon describes the viability of distance education as a cost-effective means to deliver secondary school credits. He describes how the Ontario Ministry of Education's Independent Learning Centre (ILC), responds to an increasing number of adult learners. On balance, the book is a highly useful, practical collection of accumulated experience, insight and wisdom by those who are intimately involved in the day-to-day operation of distance education. The book will be a useful reference for those unfamiliar with distance education in Canada, and an up-to-date collection for theoreticians and practitioners outside of Canada interested in the field from a comparative or international perspective. Evaluating Higher Education, Higher Education Policy Series 6, ed. Maurice Kogan, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, 1989. pp. 220. Reviewed by Wayne B. Ingalls, Director, Research & Special Projects, Mount St. Vincent University. This is a collection of twenty-three papers, originally published between 1979 and 1984 in the International Journal of Institutional Management in Higher Education, and now known as Higher Education Management. After an introductory chapter by Kogan, the essays are divided into four categories: approaches and techniques; evaluating institutions; evaluating faculty, courses and departments; and evaluation of research. The contributions are drawn from scholars in most of the OECD countries and describe a range of institutional settings. Kogan begins his introduction with the observation that "At no time has higher education been faced with such strenuous demands, from its political paymasters and its sponsoring publics, to demonstrate its work and account for its share of national resources." This is the perspective which informs much of what follows. Many of the evaluation models described in these papers were developed by or in response to government authorities seeking a "more rational" way to allocate resources to institutions of higher education. Kogan suggests that the main issues relating to evaluation "divide broadly into questions of power, or what should be the institutional mechanisms for evaluation, and questions of technology, or how evaluation might convincingly and acceptably be performed." The various essays should be "considered," he continues, "within a frame of the followings issues: the range of approaches to the evaluation of higher education; the institutions and mechanics for evaluation; and