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It is considered a mystery by many people that, despite charging significantly higher fees when compared to public institutions, research has shown an increase in the demand and enrolments at private higher education institutions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the critical factors considered by students when deciding to make private higher education institutions their institution of choice.

The study uses a case study approach and draws data from all the six private higher education institutions in Zimbabwe. Self-administered questionnaires were given to students representing at least 5 per cent of the student enrolment and representing all gender, study disciplines and levels of study from each university.

Irrespective of gender, six main factors influencing student choice were identified to be, in order of priority: access and opportunity; promotional information and marketing; reference or influence by others; quality of teaching and learning; fees and cost structure, and finally academic reputation and recognition.

The research was focused on a case study of Zimbabwe.

The study has implications on the way private higher education institutions market, manage and sustain the quality of educational provision. The study therefore provides private institutions with useful and practical insights on what students want in their institution of choice. This will assist these institutions in strategising in order to sustain or gain competitive advantage and to maximise on the increasing demand for private education. Implications to government and public institutions are also given.

The study recognises the critical role played by private universities in improving access and recommends African Governments who face financial and resource constraints to fund and expand public universities to encourage private higher education as a meaningful and viable way to improve access and provide higher education opportunities to potential students.

The study contributes to the current dearth of literature on factors influencing student choice to study with private institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the development of education in private sector universities in Pakistan as compared to public universities. Additionally, the purpose is to understand the quality of education in private universities in light of the 2012 higher education commission (HEC), Pakistan ranking data.

The paper utilizes the data shared by HEC at its web site (http://hec.gov.pk) and compares the total scores and the scores for research of private universities in the top ten ranking within the given categories. This comparison is used to evaluate issues related to access and quality of private higher education in Pakistan.

The private higher education sector is agile and more responsive to market demands. Furthermore, it has allowed the “youth bulge” of Pakistan access to higher education. However, with few exceptions the quality of private higher education is inadequate.

The need for Pakistan to reform its education to counter the grave twin dangers of religious extremism and militancy has been well recognized. High‐quality education at all levels is seen as one of the ways to create a more liberal society. This paper is among the first to evaluate private higher education in Pakistan in light of the most recent HEC rankings published in 2012.

Purpose of paper: A growing number of studies of the issues of budget process and budget participation have recently emerged in management accounting literature. This paper extends this literature by explaining budget process and budget participation. This research explores the budget process in JPUs, studies the level of budget participation in these universities, and highlights the views and perceptions of budget preparers about the government budget format.

Design/methodology/approach: Nineteen interviews were conducted in 11 universities in Jordan and in the Ministry of Higher Education during 2008.

Findings: The data suggest that the budget usage varies between JPUs, and budget participation in some universities is not consistent where management is centralized. Although respondents understand the importance of budget usage, most of them are dissatisfied with the ministry budget format.

Research implications: The influence of budget participation on the university's overall performance and on performance of head of department may consider one of the important topics to be researched in the future. While, studying the impact of the ministry budget format on the university performance, the reverse impact and relation might be of vital interest to verify the government's expectation about the universities’ compliance and to highlight the importance of implementing a unique standard for all Jordanian universities.

Originality/value of paper: This study contributes to the literature as prior studies have researched budget process and participation in commercial companies in developed countries; this study combines the budget process, participation level while researching the governmental budget format in HEIs in a developing country.

During the 20th century, the United States rapidly developed its research capacity by fostering a broad base of institutions of higher education led by a small core of highly productive research universities. By the latter half of the century, scientists in a greatly expanded number of universities across the United States published the largest annual number of scholarly publications in STEM+ fields from one nation. This expansion was not a product of some science and higher education centralized plan, rather it flowed from the rise of mass tertiary education in this nation. Despite this unprecedented productivity, some scholars suggested that universities would cease to lead American scientific research. This chapter investigates the ways that the United States’ system of higher education underpinned American science into the 21st century.

The authors present a historical and sociological case study of the development of the United States’ system of higher education and its associated research capacity. The historical and sociological context informs our analysis of data from the SPHERE team dataset, which was compiled from the Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database.

We argue that American research capacity is a function of the United States’ broad base of thousands of public and broadly accessible institutions of higher education plus its smaller, elite sector of “super” research universities; and that the former serve to culturally support the later. Unlike previous research, we find that American higher education is not decreasing its contributions to the nation’s production of STEM+ scholarship.

The chapter provides empirical analyses, which support previous sociological theory about mass higher education and super research universities.

This paper aims to examine the influence of records management practices on staff performance among administrative staff in private universities in Uganda.

Using surveys, this study took a cross-sectional descriptive and analytical design. Out of a population of 177, the study targeted a sample size of 123 respondents. Using proportionate random sampling, data were obtained from 104 usable questionnaires. The researchers applied Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) to test all the four hypotheses. The results are presented in terms of hierarchical regression analysis models.

Records creation, records maintenance and records disposal are significant predictors of administrative staff performance in chartered private universities in Uganda.

This study is relevant to heads of private universities, as it will guide them to set up and implement records management policies and practices, which are relevant for improving staff performance at work. They will be able to closely adhere to efforts that imply appropriate management of records to promote decision-making, cost reduction and information processing. Private university owners could appraise university management based on whether they can successfully execute records management-related policies and procedures for staff performance.

This study demonstrates that the application of proper records management practices translates into increased administrative staff performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness within the workplace.

There has been a significant change in the provision of library services due to the application of technology to every aspect of library services. This has posed a major challenge to library staff as they need to be abreast with current technologies and their application to library services. One means by which a librarian can overcome this challenge is through professional development (PD) programs. The purpose of this paper is to determine PD opportunities in private university libraries in Ghana.

A cross-sectional survey of 61 staff and interviews with 20 heads of libraries was conducted to collect data from 25 private universities in Ghana.

The study revealed that not all library staff in the private universities were allowed to attend PD programs. None of the private universities studied had a policy on PD and only three institutions made budgetary allocation to PD programs. Majority of the private universities did not have in-house PD programs and there were no means of knowledge sharing in most of the libraries studied.

In this paper, the researchers identified the major challenges encountered by library staff in private universities in Ghana and propose that librarians should see PD as a part of their own responsibility while, libraries should have a PD policy and make budgetary allocation toward PD.

Commitment of governments and development partners in achieving both qualitative and quantitative measurements for primary and secondary provisions is the key reason for the development of private higher education (HE) and its rapid expansion in the developing world. A considerable amount of attention towards primary and secondary provisions has produced a large numbers of graduates who are theoretically qualified, but have questionable competences in meeting the needs of the market. This has a significant impact on the quality of HE which is delivered by private and public provisions. The purpose of this paper is to examine quality assurance (QA) mechanism set-up for the private HE sector in Bangladesh.

Qualitative methods were used because interviewees can express their views in a candid way, with a primary focus on the desired themes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with personnel from the Ministry of Education, the University Grants Commission, students, staff and management from public and private universities. Documents review and secondary data also supplemented.

The mechanism set-up for QA is yet to mature. Formal arrangements for the governance and regulatory control of private HE provision in Bangladesh are neither sufficient nor up-to-date to help the sector function effectively. The current rules and regulations are suitable only for public HE, but not for the private sector HE.

A number of studies have been conducted in the area of private HE in Bangladesh. Only one of them covers QA, and none covers the impact of governance on QA. In the light of this background, this paper is the first of its kind.

A successful education system is a great asset for any society. However, what factors make an academic institution successful and how these factors interact with each other are not clear in literature. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a model that explains success of private universities which entails clarification on theoretical understanding and explains the relationships among relevant variables.

Variables from information systems success models and marketing theories have been adapted in the context of private universities to theorize a conceptual model. In order to validate the model, this study employed quantitative approach. Survey data, collected from 326 respondents, were analysed using partial least squares algorithm.

The results suggest that: “curriculum quality”, “teaching competence”, “service facility”, and “service delivery” provided by a private university are positively related to “perceived value (PV)”, while students’ perceived satisfaction (SPS) is dependent on “service facility”; PV and SPS drive to students’ “intention for continued education (ICE)”, and ICE eventually improves quality of students’ lives. Additionally, PV and SPS are interrelated. The mediating roles of PV and SPS are also identified.

Empirical data analyses confirm that improving quality of life through continued education represents an insightful theoretical lens for investigating success in higher education. To become successful in education business, maintaining both academic quality and service quality are important for a private university because they lead to student satisfaction and the overall PV of education.

This study is the first initiative that develops and validates a success model of private universities. The findings provide some guidelines for top managers in higher education to maximize their abilities to understand customers’ expectations in both strategic and operational settings.

The purpose of this paper examines the development of entrepreneurial skills amongst accounting students in public and private universities and its impact on career pathways, including self-employment. Also, the paper explores what skills have an effect on self-employment intentions.

This study uses a quantitative approach to measure the entrepreneurial skills developed by accounting students in business schools and whether these skills direct them to choose to start their own business. A questionnaire was developed and a sample of 583 Egyptian and Bahraini accounting students was used.

The study concludes that in private universities, there is no difference in the development of entrepreneurial skills and subsequent self-employment practices between students in Egypt and Bahrain. When it comes to public universities, students in Bahrain develop better entrepreneurial skills and subsequent self-employment practices than students in Egypt. In addition, private universities are better than public universities in representing the relationship between entrepreneurial skills and self-employment practices.

This study and its conclusions fill a gap in the literature in comparing public and private universities to highlight the relationship between developing accounting students’ entrepreneurial skills and their self-employment practices. This study is the first to compare universities in Egypt and the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the causal links between public and private university environments and the entrepreneurial intention (EI) of students.

The impact of different university environments on the students’ EI was checked using a model adapted from Krueger et al. (2000). The study comprised a sample of students enrolled in business administration from three public and three private universities at first semester (freshmen) and at the last two semesters (senior) in Brazil. The model was measured through various questions and later assessed by principal component analysis to build constructs. Via t-test and path analysis the EI and the antecedents were subjected to a comparative analysis to test the equality of the models across the four categories emerged.

The two main types of Brazilian university environments (public and private) do not present significant differences in the way they influence EI and its antecedents. Both the tests of means and the tests of measurement of the structural relations between constructs confirm this finding with only a few exceptions. The result of this study is opposed to other studies carried out in Brazil, by showing that the public university environment is not worse for the entrepreneurship than the private. The environmental effects are mostly equal and they as a whole are not conducive to the development of EI.

The study comprises business students only, and enrolled on regular universities. It is worth highlighting that evidence was brought to the debate for a group of universities in Brazil. Replicating the study with students from other areas and other universities, as well as students in Master’s and Doctorate programs could enrich the analyses.

This study provides insight into entrepreneurship education, as to which the university environment is conducive to the entrepreneurship. It brings insights for the development of entrepreneurial universities.

This study contributes to understanding the differences between the public and private universities environment regarding students’ EI.