Higher Education Management and Policy

Recent comparative education policy studies discover that even though there seems to have been similar trends in higher education reforms in East Asian societies, the recently initiated higher education reforms have really had diverse agendas. Thus, the considerable convergence of policy rhetoric and general policy objectives may not satis-factorily explain the complicated process of changes and the dynamic interactions between global-regional-local forces that shape education policy-making in individual countries. The present paper reflects upon the impact of the global marketization forces on higher education policy, with particular reference to how the higher education sector in Hong Kong and Taiwan has transformed under the global tide of marektization. The core of this paper is to examine the ways and strategies that the governments of Hong Kong and Taiwan have adopted to reform their higher education systems in response to the changing local socio-economic-political context and regional-global environments, with a particular focus on provision, financing and regulation.

The aim of this study is to examine the rationale for, and methods of, funding private universities with public money in Japan. In the mid-1970s, the National Parliament passed the first law in its history that permitted the allocation of taxpayers’ money to private colleges and universities. Lawmakers justified this action on the premise that over 75% of Japanese students were attending private institutions and that these institutions were facing great financial difficulties. However, the passing of the law created a whole new series of controversies and arguments among scholars and edu-cators with regard to the mechanisms of funding, accountability, and autonomy of higher education institutions that received taxpayer money.

This article suggests some simple, low-cost methods that may help directors of higher education facilities to visualise their school’s position on the international market. The approach draws on examples from some fifty management schools throughout France.

All over the world governments withdraw from full funding of their universities. Nowhere this world-wide trend is illustrated more sharply than in Russia. The share of higher education in the gross domestic product has declined drastically. This has led to a dramatic reduction of the higher education budget in real terms. A consequence is the growing share of non-governmental money in the yearly budgets of the higher education sector. The basic sources for this new funding are national, international and private. They come as well from foundations as from multinationals. Their distribution over the institutions and, within the institutions, over the different departments seems extremely unequal. Therefore old academic traditions only survive in fewer and fewer schools and, within these schools, in fewer and fewer centres of excellence. For a great number of institutions the basic educational subsidy does not permit a decent remuneration of their academic staff. This forces a majority of them to look for a second and even a third job outside the university. This again weakens the institution and leads to a widening range of quality of institutions and, within each of them, of departments and centres. At the same time the field is wide open for the development of private schools, which often only select types of educational activities which are remunerative in the market...

The material for this review article can usefully be divided into two areas:

firstly, two books on access; and, secondly, four on governance and management.