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National policies:

Already in the abstract references are made to the reasons why governments turn to distance education. Such reasons can be found in mission statements of institutions or analyzed as underlying policy implementation. Filter out what was said here?
Interpret these policies within the framework of chapter 9 of our textbook. Does the framework of Perraton suffice to cover the reasons identified in Latchem et al.? Do we need amendments? If yes what would you propose?

In the abstract right at the beginning you find the following statement:

"This article draws upon Asian research and experience to describe the open and dual-mode universities of East mid South Asia which have been established to provide a cost-effective alternative means of expanding participation in higher education and supporting social and economic development."

Perraton uses three categories to classify reasons for using distance education: ideology, economy and politics. Ideological reasons include equity and access; moving away from elitist education towards a democratization of education. Such ideological reasons are not means but ends and need not to be justified in terms of efficiency. Economic reasons include all sorts of efficiency arguments: cost-effectiveness, scale economies, external and internal efficiency. Political reasons seem in Perraton's classification the least commendable ones: they refer to giving in social demand to reduce pressure. Distance education in this context is used as a security valve to release the social pressure.

Perraton	My explication	Latchem
Ideology	Access: reaching formally excluded audiences Equity: democratization of education; moving away from elitist education	Expansion Social development
Economics	Internal efficiency: achieving reduction of average costs; often this is done by economies of scale; central for that is lowering unit costs. External efficiency: assuring relevance of education in the sense that it is useful for the labor market or at least inducing positiveexternalities Cost-effectiveness: efficient provision but respecting quality standards	Cost-effectiveness: Economic development
Politics	Opportunism: wrong resource allocation; Klees argument (this can be identified when educational opportunities are created with low rates of return, both private and public).	Expansion

Especially when it comes to 'outcomes' it becomes clear that Latchem et al. have similar performance indicators in mind. - Generally I believe the concepts used here are clear. Some explanation I may have to include with respect to 'external efficiency'. The issue is this: an educational institution may be very efficient in the sense that it achieves its goals at low costs. But it may be that the outcome produced cannot be absorbed by the local economy and are also generally irrelevant both for society and the student. We have discussed the issue of the vicious circle, the diploma disease and academic unemployment. These may serve as examples for low external efficiency.

Later on (in Chapter 10) Perraton uses another assessment matrix for distance education projects. It is based on McAnany and includes effort, performance, adequacy, efficiency and process.

McAnany	Explication (based on Perraton)
Effort	For effort the simple indicator of student numbers is used; the idea: measure the size of the audience reached.
Performance	1. Productivity indicators: if program outputs are directly measurable, use these measures to assess program performance (e.g. an agricultural program to increase yield: has yield increased?) - Nonformal education 2. Change in practice indicators: Change of work practices (e.g. teacher training: does classroom behavior change according to the training received?) - Vocational education and training 3. Learning gains: formal education 4. Successful completion rates, drop out rates 5. Examination performance
Adequacy	The concept of adequacy is not formally defined. It may mean that the reasons why different stakeholders engage in some sort of education at a distance are met. A program which does not reap neither private not social returns in a wider sense seems not to satisfy the criterion of adequacy. The reference to tracer studies suggests that the adequacy criterion includes external efficiency requirements. Certainly, adequacy refers also to quality. Offering distance education programs for which the Klees verdict applies means that such programs are not adequate.
Efficiency	Cost per student Cost per successful student
Process	To look at process may be a substitute for outcome measures, especially if it is difficult to get hold of them. Some agreement about the quality of the respective processes may be achieved.

This is a first approximation to the 'national policies' issue. Here national policies are discussed on the level of policy objectives. The paper includes further interesting