ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a description of an ongoing restructuring of the entire higher education system in Laos, with a particular emphasis on its implications for one of its three university-level postsecondary institutions, the University Pedagogical Institute (UPI). It suggests strongly that international consultants engaged to provide the technical assistance necessary for implementing reform in any sector of Laos be attentive to the implications for their work of the criticism levied against Western models in both the economic and higher education sectors. Individuals who have been working at the UPI are faced with going from being members of the flagship institution within the Lao higher education system to being just faceless faculty members within the new national university, with having to undergo retraining to be able to offer a redesigned curriculum, and with having to adapt to a set of changes being driven by a very powerful (but nonetheless foreign) donor agency, the Asian Development Bank.
