Not all markets are created equal : re-conceptualizing market elements in higher education (original) (raw)

Marketisation in Higher Education, Clark's Triangle and the Essential Ingredients of Markets

Higher Education Quarterly, 2003

While government intervention in the higher education market may be justified, it may come at the cost of lower consumer sovereignty and restricted producer autonomy. Through marketisation policy, students and higher education providers have more room to make their own trade-offs and interact more closely on the basis of reliable information. This article discusses eight conditions for a market and the extent to which these are met in Dutch higher education. It is argued that there is still a key role for the government to co-design framework conditions and facilitate interaction in a more demand-driven and liberalised higher education sector.

The impossibility of capitalist markets in higher education

Journal of Education Policy, 2013

For more than two decades governments around the world, led by the English-speaking polities, have moved higher education systems closer to the forms of textbook economic markets. Reforms include corporatisation, competitive funding, student charges, output formats and performance reporting. But no country has established a bona fide economic market in the first-degree education of domestic students. No research university is driven by shareholders, profit, market share, allocative efficiency or the commodity form. There is commercial tuition only in parts of vocational training and international education. While intensified competition, entrepreneurship and consumer talk are pervasive in higher education, capitalism is not. At the most there are regulated quasi-markets, as in post-Browne UK. This differs from the experience of privatisation and commercialisation of transport, communications, broadcasting and health insurance in many nations. The paper argues that bona fide market reform in higher education is constrained by intrinsic limits specific to the sector (public goods, status competition), and political factors associated with those limits. This suggests that market reform is utopian, and the abstract ideal is sustained for exogenous policy reasons (e.g. fiscal reduction, state control, ordering of contents). But if capitalist markets are clearly unachievable, a more authentic modernisation agenda is needed.

The Visible Hand of the Market in European Higher Education Policies

2018

The conclusion chapter brings together the insights gained through the exploration of the multiple forces, drivers and actors that have been shaping European policy in the area of higher education. The global tendencies towards liberalisation of markets and neoliberal thinking have influenced the rhetoric about higher education and its purposes. European Union institutions, too, have facilitated this new direction for higher education, seen as an engine of the continent’s economic growth. Although not explicit in European policy, the invisible hand of the market is becoming more and more visible in European higher education, exerting pressure through the intervention of European institutions in areas not immediately and obviously related to higher education. National sovereignty, evident in the implementation of the Bologna Process, has represented an obstacle to the pursuit of this economic agenda.

The limits of market reform in higher education

Higher Education Forum, 2010

The paper argues that the failure of economic market reform reflects not simply political capture or the absence of governmental will but the intrinsic character of higher education and research. The public good nature of knowledge is irreducible. The primary economic (and social) contributions of higher education institutions are indirect and conditional rather than quantifiable as products. Status competition in elite institutions operates with a different logic to conventional product markets. National marketsystem models cannot comprehend the increasing globalization of research universities.

Higher Education ‘Markets’ and University Governance

2015

It was one theme of my recent critical essay on managerialism in the universities that much loose policy talk about the market and universities has a superficial plausibility only because the conditions required for a genuinely competitive market are not explicitly acknowledged (Aspromourgos 2012). It is only some notion of the applicability of the benefits of competition to higher education and university research that can favour a market model for universities. To the extent that standard economic theory justifies ‘the market’ as a superior way of allocating resources relative to other modes of allocation, it is not the market as such that is thereby endorsed; it is the competitive market in particular. Some further implications of this, particularly in relation to the character of university governance, are considered here.

The' Market for Higher Education: Does it Really Exist?

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2009

Higher education, like any other commodity or service, has been viewed in a variety of economic frameworks. Little of this work, however, appears to have made any effort to define carefully the boundaries of the relevant market for higher education, which is the subject of this particular inquiry. Market definition is an essential preliminary step before any academic or policy investigation can properly be made into the forces that determine the behavior of the buyers and sellers of higher education, those who provide inputs into the education process, or those who fund or otherwise subsidize it. The authors spell out the key economic dimensions of a market, and illustrate their relevance for research that seeks to analyze the players and policies in the many distinct domestic and international markets that exist for the inputs and outputs of the higher education sector.

The Marketization of Higher Education

Higher education initially a government –supported service has entered the marketplace. Many countries have encompassed the notion of marketization of higher education. A commodity economy driven by market ideology has motivated the students to perceive higher education as a medium to gain meaningful employment, attain professional growth and social status. Universities are big businesses that are aggressively marketing themselves to turn into a brand. Funding of higher education is transferring gradually from the government to the students. Market ethic as an ideological force in higher education policy though has enhanced the participation rates, but the equity in educational opportunities has come under threat. Another challenge that higher education systems across the world face is that of quality education. It is important both economically and on equity grounds, for increasing the number of government funded universities as against private higher education institutions several of which provide education of debatable quality.

The Market in Higher Education: Concern for Equity and Quality

This paper brings to the fore problems associated with application of market logic to higher education, which is poised to play an important role in India’s pursuit of inclusive growth. In a context where marketisation of higher education continues unabated and the government is keen to encourage private sector involvement, it is necessary to analyse their impact on the three stated objectives of expansion, inclusion and excellence. It is therefore crucial to understand how the market for higher education works and to critically examine the actual impact of the market on education in India. This paper argues that the market logic seriously compromises value and quality of higher education and this weakens our ability to build an inclusive society.

Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education

Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education, 2018

Higher education is in the grip of an unprecedented level of attention to quantitative performance indicators. The recent trajectory of government policy discourses position such measures as necessary in enabling students to have more and better information to inform their choices, in ensuring that institutions are more transparent in their offer, and in justifying to the public that government funding for higher education is well-spent. Measurement imperatives are, therefore, positioned in policy discourses as key to the generation of market competition and institutional differentiation. But beyond government policymakers, many are sceptical about their use and value. Some consider that the measures themselves are flawed instruments; some are concerned about their role in increasing surveillance of staff; and some feel they have little value in relation to enhancing knowledge and knowing, improving pedagogic relationships and developing learning communities. This chapter uses a narrative approach to explore these tensions. It includes five academics' accounts of their personal responses to measurement imperatives. In tracing how individual narratives intersect with broader discourses of marketisation, equity and differentiation, the chapter activates the sociological imagination (C. Wright Mills, 1959) to bring into closer view some vital questions about the aims, purpose and value of contemporary higher education.