Abstract
In March 2000, The World Bank sounded an alarm that higher education in developing countries was in crisis. It is overcrowded, chronically underfunded, poorly managed, and beset with inadequate faculty and curricula. Additionally, research universities face an array of especially serious problems. The disappearance of a research agenda and postgraduate studies from these universities has serious consequences. The inability to pursue research isolates the nation’s elite scholars and scientists, leaving them unable to keep up with developments in their own fields (Task Force on Higher Education and Society, 2000 and UNESCO, 1998).
It can be argued that in higher education there are three main learning activities: taught courses, research, and projects/peer learning. Recent advances in technology have resulted in intemet-based learning, which has significantly contributed to the improvement of distance learning in higher education. However, most of the work seems to focus on taught e-courses with little emphasis on research. Computing networks, modern communication techniques and digital libraries seem to offer valuable facilities that can assist research students in carrying out their work at a distance. The e-PhD is an international collaborative programme run by the University of Nottingham, for developing countries. It started last year with a pilot scheme with Egypt. It is an innovative approach employing modern distance learning techniques and the internet to conduct postgraduate education and joint research studies.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35615-0_52
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Shalaby, M.T., Tucker, A., Tang, B.Y. (2002). e-PhD. In: Passey, D., Kendall, M. (eds) TelE-Learning. IFIP WCC TC3 2002. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 102. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35615-0_46
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35615-0_46
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