Higher Education in Economically Advanced Countries: Changes within Recent Decades

Year 2020, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 1 - 17, 30.06.2020

Ulrich Teıchler

Abstract

The rapid increase of student enrolment during the 1960s and 1970s in economically advanced countries triggered intensive discourses about necessary structural changes of the higher education systems and possible concurrent functional changes , The varied terms used to describe major expected, desired and realized changes indicate a variety of value judgements: Diversification, vertical stratification and “massification” of higher education as well as “educational meritocracy”, “knowledge society” and “highly educated society”. The changing challenges felt and the search for new solutions created also a favourable climate the emergence of higher education research, which aimed at better explanations and for more empirical evidence. During these decades and during the subsequent decades, other similar challenges were felt in most countries: Changes in the relationships between higher education and the world of work, changing expectations and conditions as regards the academic profession and increasing internationalisation of higher education. Altogether, however, the similarity of perceived challenges did not lead to a substantially increasing similarity of higher education policies and reforms within the individual countries. Also, recent discourses about the future of higher education do not suggest a growing global convergence of higher education, because value judgement continue to differ substantially: Internationalisation is seen as hegemonic instruments by some actors and as a way towards cosmopolitan values by others; the “knowledge society” is viewed as reinforcing or calling academic quality criteria into questions; strong managerial power is perceiving as supporting or endangering academic creativity; the race for “world-class universities” seems to have different consequences for the quality of higher education in general. As a consequence, international comparison of the developments of higher education does not suggest any single best solution, but is most valuable as an eye-opener for alternatives.

Keywords

Higher education expansion, diversification, knowledge society, internationalisation, academic profession

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