Markets In Higher Education

This volume presents the most comprehensive international discussion yet on the role of markets in higher education. It considers both the political and economic implications of the rising trend towards introducing market elements in higher education. The book draws together leading international scholars in higher education to explore different theoretical perspectives and present new empirical evidence on market mechanisms in higher education in several Western countries.

A remarkable indictment of how misguided business policies have undermined the American higher education system. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Higher education in America, still thought to be the world leader, is in crisis. University students are falling behind their international peers in attainment, while suffering from unprecedented student debt. For over a decade, the realm of American higher education has been wracked with self-doubt and mutual recrimination, with no clear solutions on the horizon. How did this happen? In this stunning new book, Christopher Newfield offers readers an in-depth analysis of the “great mistake” that led to the cycle of decline and dissolution, a mistake that impacts every public college and university in America. What might occur, he asserts, is no less than locked-in economic inequality and the fall of the middle class. In The Great Mistake, Newfield asks how we can fix higher education, given the damage done by private-sector models. The current accepted wisdom—that to succeed, universities should be more like businesses—is dead wrong. Newfield combines firsthand experience with expert analysis to show that private funding and private-sector methods cannot replace public funding or improve efficiency, arguing that business-minded practices have increased costs and gravely damaged the university’s value to society. It is imperative that universities move beyond the destructive policies that have led them to destabilize their finances, raise tuition, overbuild facilities, create a national student debt crisis, and lower educational quality. Laying out an interconnected cycle of mistakes, from subsidizing the private sector to “the poor get poorer” funding policies, Newfield clearly demonstrates how decisions made in government, in the corporate world, and at colleges themselves contribute to the dismantling of once-great public higher education. A powerful, hopeful critique of the unnecessary death spiral of higher education, The Great Mistake is essential reading for those who wonder why students have been paying more to get less and for everyone who cares about the role the higher education system plays in improving the lives of average Americans.

The introduction of market forces into higher education is the most crucial issue facing universities and colleges today. As the role of universities in the knowledge society becomes ever more apparent, and as public funding reaches its limit, marketisation has become an issue of critical importance. Discussions about the ever-increasing cost of tuition, affordability, access, university rankings, information, and the commercialization of academic research take place not just in North America, Western Europe and Australasia, but also in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. Higher Education and the Market provides a comprehensive account of this phenomenon, and looks at its likely impact on key dimensions of university activity: system structure funding and resources the curriculum participation and achievement research and scholarship interactions with third parties. Contributors propose how market forces, government intervention and academic self-regulation can be combined to harness the benefits of increased competition and efficiency without losing the public good. It is of particular interest to government and institutional leaders, policy makers, researchers and students studying higher education.

Free markets made US universities world leaders in research. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that in the late nineteenth century, entrepreneurial universities saw they could meet the industrializing country's demand for expertise. They moved away from religiously inspired teaching, and market dynamics allowed them to surpass European competitors.

This book critically examines some of the major trends in the development of higher education. It demonstrates how in the context of liberalisation, globalisation and marketisation, the crisis in higher education has assumed different dimensions in all advanced and emerging societies. The author shows how the state tends to slowly withdraw from the responsibility of higher education, including in the arena of policy-making, or simply adopts a policy of laissez-faire (of non-involvement) which helps in the rapid unbridled growth of private sector in higher education. The notion of higher education as a public good is under serious contestation in current times. The book argues for the need to resurrect the compelling nature of higher education along with its several implications for public policy and planning, while providing a broad portrayal of global developments, comparative perspectives and key lessons. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of education, political science, public policy and administration, governance, development studies, economics, and those working in the higher education sectors, think-tanks, policymakers as well as NGOs.

The marketisation of higher education is a growing worldwide trend. Increasingly, market steering is replacing or supplementing government steering. Tuition fees are being introduced or increased, usually at the expense of state grants to institutions. Grants for student support are being replaced or supplemented by loans. Commercial rankings and league tables to guide student choice are proliferating with institutions devoting increasing resources to marketing, branding and customer service. The UK is a particularly good example of this, not only because it is a country where marketisation has arguably proceeded furthest, but also because of the variations that exist as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland increasingly diverge from England. In Everything for Sale, Roger Brown argues that the competitive regime that is now applicable to our Higher Education system was the logical, and possibly inevitable, outcome of a process that began with the introduction of full cost fees for overseas students in 1980. Through chapters including: Markets and Non-Markets The Institutional Pattern of Provision The Funding of Research The Funding of Student Education Quality Assurance The Impact of Marketisation: Efficiency, diversity and equity; He shows how the evaluation and funding of research, the funding of student education, quality assurance, and the structure of the system have increasingly been organised on market or quasi-market lines. As well as helping to explain the evolution of British higher education over the past thirty years, the book contains some important messages about the consequences of introducing or extending market competition in universities’ core activities of teaching and research. This timely and comprehensive book is essential reading for all academics at University level and anyone involved in Higher Education policy.

This book addresses academic labor markets in three countries: France, Germany, and the United States. The management of faculty careers is a critical issue in university autonomy, and in many countries recent reforms have increasingly addressed this area. Musselin’s exhaustive empirical research on academic job hiring practices and faculty career patterns included over 200 interviews with faculty members and administrators concerning two disciplines: history and math. Each of the countries has very different historical traditions with regard to how peers recruit their colleagues within the academy. Using what is known as an "economics of quality" comparative approach, she sheds new light on faculty worklife. The author’s focus on the criteria of evaluation in academic hiring decisions is a unique contribution and one that should stimulate the current debates on higher education reforms.