Managing Mass Higher Education in a Period of Austerity

1
Managing Mass Higher Education in a Period of
Austerity

• Michael Shattock

2
Mass higher education in retrospect

• The US and European contexts
• Growth in participation rates associated with
  rising prosperitythe middle classes being the
  chief beneficiaries
• Widening participation policies not very
  effectivecontinuing economic disadvantage and
  the difficulty of combining public benefit and
  competitive models in the same system

3
The achievements of mass higher education

• The educational, social and economic benefits of
  increasing participation in HE
• The UKs University Challenge expanding the
  skills base
• The unwillingness of European governments to pay
  for massificationfalling unit costs, worsening
  ssrs, reducing proportion of GDPinability 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 agendaa golden age for research
  funding in most European countries

4
The end of the nice decade

• Pressures on public expendituresrising 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)

5
The questions for mass HE

• Private contributionsfees?
• Continued investment in research?
• Widening institutional differentiation?
• How to sustain the widening participation agenda?
• Growth of private universities?
• International studentsinstitutional branding?
• Income generation or cost containment?
• Autonomy and the dangers of an enhanced role of
  the state?

6
Providing the right framework the role of the
state

• Has reform proceeded too slowly in some
  countries?
• Differentiation of missionwho does what?
• Retaining programmatic flexibility within
  institutions
• Preserving institutional cohesion
• Holding on to institutional values

7
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?