There is a lack of support for integration of field experience, work-experience and community service within the curricula. The long delay in the process for approval of new academic programmes, which in some cases lasts for more than five years, inhibits the responsiveness of higher education institutions to changing regional needs. There is a need to ensure that higher education programme review and approval process is streamlined to allow for speed and greater responsiveness to regional needs. The principal incentive for the colleges is negative: their exclusion from research funding. Student numbers are established centrally and there are no incentives to enrol students from within the region. Because the institutions depend to a degree on revenue from tuition fees (within limits set by the Planning and Budgeting Committee), they have incentives to recruit paying students from outside the region to generate additional revenue.