Public Vices, Private Virtues?: Assessing the Effects of Marketization in Higher Education

Recent years have seen the strengthening of a discourse that emphasises the virtues of markets, competition and private initiative, vis-a-vis the vices of public intervention in higher education. This volume presents a timely reflection about the effects this increasing marketization has been producing in many higher education systems worldwide. The various chapters of this volume analyse the impact of markets at the system level, with significant attention being devoted to the changes in modes of regulation, the strengthening of aspects such as privatization and inter-institutional competition in higher education systems, and the closer interaction between higher education and its economic environment. Several of the contributors devote attention as well to the implications of market forces for institutional change, notably regarding issues such as mission, organizational structure and governance and the way marketization is affecting the internal distribution of power and the definition of priorities. Finally, the volume includes several chapters focusing on the different markets of higher education, such as the academic labour market, undergraduate and postgraduate education, and research markets. Altogether these chapters provide important insights concerning the many national and institutional contexts in which the marketization of higher education has been taking place around the world.

Recent years have seen the strengthening of a discourse that emphasises the virtues of markets, competition and private initiative, vis-à-vis the vices of public intervention in higher education. This volume presents a timely reflection about the effects this increasing marketization has been producing in many higher education systems worldwide. The various chapters of this volume analyse the impact of markets at the system level, with significant attention being devoted to the changes in modes of regulation, the strengthening of aspects such as privatization and inter-institutional competition in higher education systems, and the closer interaction between higher education and its economic environment. Several of the contributors devote attention as well to the implications of market forces for institutional change, notably regarding issues such as mission, organizational structure and governance and the way marketization is affecting the internal distribution of power and the definition of priorities. Finally, the volume includes several chapters focusing on the different markets of higher education, such as the academic labour market, undergraduate and postgraduate education, and research markets. Altogether these chapters provide important insights concerning the many national and institutional contexts in which the marketization of higher education has been taking place around the world.

Introduction - The Many Faces of Marketization in Higher Education; Part 1: Markets and Global Trends in Higher Education: Looking Back, Moving Forward?; 1. Markets and the End of the Current Era in U.S. Higher Education; 2. Liberalization of the Privateness in Higher Education: Funding Strategies, Changing Governance and Policy Implications in Asia; Part 2: Changing Public-Private Boundaries; 3. Organisational Diversity in Chinese Private Higher Education; 4. What Characterises the Public-Private Distinction in HE in a Nordic Perspective? Comparison of the Essential Features of Private Universities in Denmark, Iceland and Norway; Part 3: Market Forces and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA); 5. The Increasing Role of Market Forces in HE: Is the EUA Institutional Evaluation Programme Playing a Role?; 6. Ranking Lists and European Framework Programmes: Does University Status Matter for Performance in Framework Programmes?; 7. How Growing Pressure to be Competitive at National and International Level Affects University Governance: Some Preliminary Remarks from a Comparative Analysis of Fifteen European Universities; Part 4: Marketization and Governance in Higher Education; 8. Leadership, Leadership Development and Markets in UK Publicly Funded Higher Education Organisations - Global, National or European?; 9. Public Management, New Governance Models and Changing Environments in Portuguese Higher Education; Part 5: Institutional Responses to Marketization; 10. Differences in the Academic Performance of Italian Universities: Exploring the Relationships with Market and Public Policies; 11. Regional Delocalization of Academic Offer in Québec: A Quasi-Market Manifestation in Higher Education; 12. Chinese Universities Facing Global Competition; 13. Volatile Markets and Reluctant Entrepreneurs?: The Market for Continuing Education in the Government Controlled Higher Education System of Norway; Part 6: Market Competition in HE: Promises and Pitfalls; 14. FinnishUniversities: Car Dealerships, Churches or Cultural Institutions?; 15. Responses to Resource Scarcity in African Higher Education: The Case of Kenyan and South African Public Universities; 16. ‘Up-Market’ or ‘Down-Market’: Shopping for Higher Education in the UK; 17. Faltering Effects of Market-Oriented Reforms on Italian Higher Education: Focus on Reforms Promoting Competition.