Transcript Managing Mass Higher Education in a Period of Austerity Michael

Managing Mass Higher
Education in a Period of
Austerity
Michael Shattock
Mass higher education in retrospect
 The US and European contexts
 Growth in participation rates associated with rising
prosperity—the middle classes being the chief
beneficiaries
 Widening participation policies not very effective—
continuing economic disadvantage and the
difficulty of combining public benefit and
competitive models in the same system
The achievements of mass higher
education
 The educational, social and economic benefits of increasing
participation in HE
 The UK’s ‘University Challenge’; expanding the skills base
 The unwillingness of European governments to pay for
massification—falling unit costs, worsening ssrs, reducing
proportion of GDP—inability to match the US in league
tables
 Lack of confidence in the educational performance and
standards at the lower end of HE systems
 The Innovation agenda—a golden age for research funding
in most European countries
The end of the “nice” decade
 Pressures on public expenditures—rising energy
costs, food costs, environmental costs, social
security costs including care for the elderly, security
costs, underfunded pensions
 Demographic downturn
 The “post public era” of HE funding (Marginson
2007)
The questions for mass HE
 Private contributions—fees?
 Continued investment in research?
 Widening institutional differentiation?
 How to sustain the widening participation agenda?
 Growth of private universities?
 International students—institutional branding?
 Income generation or cost containment?
 Autonomy and the dangers of an enhanced role of
the state?
Providing the right framework –the
role of the state
 Has reform proceeded too slowly in some
countries?
 Differentiation of mission—who does what?
 Retaining programmatic flexibility within institutions
 Preserving institutional cohesion
 Holding on to institutional values
What shall we find when prosperity
returns?
 Some institutions will be better placed than others to
maximise opportunities; there will have been some re
ordering of the league tables
 The state may have become more powerful in relation to
HE in some countries
 Those European states that have not reformed their HE
framework will have disadvantaged their HE institutions in
international competition
 Will there be a larger role for the EHEA?