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This study focuses on the single most important component of the private return on tertiary education, the gross wage premium. There are at least two additional reasons for paying particular attention to wage premia. First, the wage premium earned by existing graduates is easy to observe, so high-school leavers can be assumed to take it into account when deciding for or against enrolment in tertiary education. Second, to the extent that wages reflect marginal labour productivity, estimates of wage premia are sometimes used to assess the quality of human capital in an economy with a view to correcting simpler measures based on years of schooling or attainment levels.
The situation in financial markets deteriorated over the past year, but government actions have helped to avert an even bigger crisis. While some signs of recovery are on the horizon, the banking sectors in many countries are not yet on solid footing. Recent government programmes that deal with banks’ ‘toxic assets’ are welcome in this regard. But further reaching financial sector reforms such as those recently endorsed by the G20 leaders and proposed in Europe and the United States are necessary in order to establish a sound financial system.
Viewed through a market paradigm, universities can appear as the aggregation of numerous and varied markets. While universities’ primary markets focus on teaching and research, they are active in many other markets, most of which support and contribute to their smooth, effective and efficient operation.
Using financial and real estate markets as examples, the purpose of this article is to articulate some details that further validate the deepening complexity of the modern multiversity and to help clarify the extent to which market-like activities have infiltrated the institution, creating opportunities and posing threats. The cultural impact of the trend towards marketisation increases the need to protect the academic core of the academy.
Les marchés secondaires de l’enseignement supérieur : un contexte canadien
Vues à travers le paradigme du marché, les universités peuvent ressembler à un agrégat de marchés nombreux et différents. Bien que leurs marchés principaux se concentrent sur l’enseignement et la recherche, elles sont actives sur bien d’autres marchés dont la plupart est essentiel ou nécessaire à leur bon fonctionnement.
En reprenant des exemples des marchés de l’immobilier et de la finance, l’article se propose d’articuler certains détails démontrant la complexité croissante de la multiversité moderne et apporte également un éclairage sur la façon dont les activités du marché ont infiltré l’université, ces phénomènes étant générateurs d’opportunités comme de menaces. L’impact culturel de la tendance portant vers la marchandisation accroît la nécessité de développer le corps enseignant de l’institution.
Educational outcomes are shaped by a wide range of factors, including innate students’ characteristics, family and school background and other environmental factors. But a key-question for policy-makers is what schools and school policies can do to raise overall student performance. Several studies have indeed shown the positive effect of an increase in cognitive skills and competencies on both social and individual economic welfare. From a macroeconomic viewpoint, international differences in student achievement tests have been shown to increase long-run economic growth. Our analysis focuses on the quality of school systems, i.e. on the association of educational policies with average learning outcomes.
Historically, the main direct contribution of exchanges to corporate governance has been listing and disclosure standards and monitoring compliance. Stock exchanges have established themselves as promoters of corporate governance recommendations for listed companies. Demutualisation and the subsequent self-listing of exchanges have spurred debate on the role of exchanges.
Regulators have been concerned about conflicts of interest between exchanges' for-profit activities and their regulatory responsabilities. The conversion of exchanges to listed companies is thought to have intensified competition. And, the sharper competition has forced the question of whether there is a risk of a regulatory 'race to the bottom'.
Recently, the rise of alternative trading systems (ATS), first in the United States and then in Europe have had a profound impact. Their existence has induced exchanges to cut fees and in some cases launch their own off-exchange trading platforms. The effect of ATSs on corporate governance is not clear. Two practical concerns voiced so far are, first, that trading fragmentation may reduce the transparency of the markets for corporate control and adverse consequences for price discovery. Secondly, exchanges are uneasy about the prospect of having to continue performing their traditional regulatory and other corporate-governance enhancing functions amid a shrinking revenue base.
There are increasing pressures for universities to commercialise their research and increase their contributions to their local and regional environments. For those institutions located in areas of low demand, this can lead to a low-impact equilibrium of universities working with external partners, and having relatively low impact. In such circumstances, universities have to “build up” local demand for their knowledge. But this is long-term, costly and volatile, and so partnership and collaborative models of capacity building may be one way for universities to maximise the benefits whilst minimising the risks. In this paper, we explore how capacity in such situation builds up, and whether university regional associations (URAs) can help universities to develop regional capacity in such situations. The case study demonstrates that URAs can become a focal point for a community of regionally engaged university actors. It is this community which can help universities to rationalise and make sense of local uncertainties, and thereby increase total university regional contributions.
By Paul Benneworth and Alan Sanderson, University of Twente, The Netherlands, and Universities for the North East, United Kingdom
L’engagement régional des universités : Comment le renforcer en l’absence de pôle d’innovation à l’échelon local ?
De plus en plus, on attend des universités qu’elles commercialisent les fruits de leurs efforts de recherche et intensifient leur contribution locale et régionale. Mais pour les établissements implantés dans des zones où leurs travaux suscitent une demande limitée, la collaboration des universités avec des partenaires externes risque fort d’avoir un impact, là aussi, limité. Dans ce cas, c’est aux universités de « créer » une demande de connaissances à l’échelon local. Mais il s’agit d’une démarche longue, coûteuse et à l’issue incertaine ; dans cette optique, les modèles de renforcement des capacités basés sur le partenariat et la collaboration interuniversités pourraient permettre aux établissements concernés de maximiser les bénéfices tout en minimisant les risques.
Dans ce rapport, nous analysons la façon dont se créent les capacités d’engagement régional dans ce type de contexte, et nous nous efforçons de déterminer si les associations régionales d’universités (ARU) peuvent alors aider ou non les universités à développer leurs capacités régionales. L’étude de cas proposée montre que les ARU deviennent parfois le cœur névralgique d’un consortium d’acteurs universitaires engagés au plan régional. C’est précisément grâce à cette communauté d’acteurs que les universités peuvent faire face aux contingences locales et s’y adapter, ce qui permettra d’accroître la contribution régionale totale des universités.
Par Paul Benneworth and Alan Sanderson, Université de Twente (Pays-Bas) et Université pour le Nord-Est (Royaume-Uni)
The purpose of this article is to discuss how policies can affect investment in tertiary education in ways that would eliminate some of the perceived shortcomings of existing systems, while preserving or (preferably) enhancing equality of access to higher education.
To this end, the analysis focuses on the institutional set-up of tertiary education that provides incentives for supplying quality educational services; the private returns from higher education which act to attract prospective students; and, individual funding mechanisms to help overcome the liquidity constraints that may restrict participation in higher education. These mechanisms should also be designed so as to prevent uncertainty about future incomes from unduly deterring investment in tertiary studies by risk-averse individuals.
Joaquim Oliveira Martins, Romina Boarini, Hubert Strauss and Christine de la Maisonneuve
This article investigates the policy determinants of hours worked among employed individuals in OECD countries, focussing on the impact of taxation, working-time regulations, and other labour and product market policies. It explores the factors underlying cross-country differences in hours worked — in line with previous aggregate approaches — while at the same time it looks more closely at labour force heterogeneity — in the vein of microeconomic labour supply models. The paper shows that policies and institutions have a different impact on working hours of men and women. Firstly, while high marginal taxes create a disincentive to work longer hours for women, their impact on hours worked by men is almost insignificant. Secondly, working-time regulations have a significant impact on hours worked by men, and this impact differs across education categories. Thirdly, other labour and product market policies, in particular stringent employment protection of workers on regular contracts and competition-restraining product market policies, have a negative impact on hours worked by men, over and beyond their impact on employment levels.
This paper describes the global knowledge economy (the k-economy), comprised by (1) open source knowledge flows and (2) commercial markets in intellectual property and knowledge-intensive goods. Like all economy the global knowledge economy is a site of production. It is also social and cultural, taking the form of a one-world community mediated by the Internet.
The k-economy has developed with extraordinary rapidity, particularly the open source component; which, consistent with the economic character of knowledge as a public good, appears larger than the commercial intellectual property component. But how do the chaotic open source flows of knowledge, with no evident tendency towards predictability let alone towards equilibrium, become reconciled with a world of governments, economic markets, national and university hierarchies, and institutions that routinely require stability and control in order to function?
The article argues that in the k-economy, knowledge flows are vectored by a system of status production that assigns unequal values to knowledge and arranges it in ordered patterns. The new system for regulating the value of public good knowledge includes institutional league tables, research rankings, publication and citation metrics, journal hierarchies, and other comparative output measures such as outcomes of student learning.
Cet article décrit l’économie globale de la connaissance (la « k-economy »), qui comprend (1) les flux de connaissances de source ouverte et (2) les marchés de la propriété intellectuelle et des biens à forte intensité de connaissances.
Comme toute économie, l’économie globale de la connaissance représente un site de production. Elle est aussi sociale et culturelle, prenant la forme d’une communauté mondiale unique fondée sur l’Internet. L’économie de la connaissance s’est développée à une vitesse extraordinaire, en particulier la composante source ouverte, qui, en raison du caractère économique de la connaissance en tant que bien public, semble occuper une place plus importante que la composante propriété intellectuelle commerciale.
Mais comment les flux chaotiques de connaissances de source ouverte, qui de toute évidence ne tendent pas vers plus de prévisibilité et encore moins vers un quelconque équilibre, peuvent-ils être conciliés avec un monde fait de gouvernements, de marchés économiques, de hiérarchies nationales et universitaires, et d’institutions qui exige stabilité et contrôle pour fonctionner ?
Cet article soutient que dans l’économie de la connaissance, les flux de connaissances sont orchestrés par un système de production de statuts qui assigne des valeurs inégales au savoir et l’organise en schémas ordonnés. Le nouveau système de régulation de la valeur de la connaissance en tant que bien public inclut les tableaux de classement institutionnel, les classements de recherche, les métriques de publication et de citation, les hiérarchies au sein de la presse, et d’autres mesures comparatives de rendement, tels que les résultats d’apprentissage.
The information content of qualitative survey responses are confronted with the corresponding quantitative figures on a firm-by-firm basis. This comparison permits to directly check the information content of the qualitative data. The findings indicate that survey respondents provide correct information, by and large. The results lend support to the Carlson-Parkin method and may pave the way towards improving variance estimates within this method.
This paper analyses revisions of Swiss current account data, taking into account the actual data revision process and the implied types of revisions. In addition we investigate whether the first release of current account data can be improved upon by the use of survey results as gathered by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich. An answer in the affirmative indicates that it is possible to improve first releases and thereby enhance the current assessment of the Swiss economy.
The paper starts with a description of higher education in the United Kingdom and of reforms over the last 50 years. By reference to specified output measures, the performance of UK universities is judged to be good. The factors affecting this performance are postulated by comparing policies and approaches in the United Kingdom with those elsewhere (in particular in continental Europe). Three factors – the level of autonomy, the amount of competition, and the level of funding, combined with the universities’ direct control over funding – are identified as important factors.
The level of autonomy for UK universities is long-standing. So too is the level of competition for recruiting the best students – although the reform in 1991 to bring universities and polytechnics into a single sector has increased that competition. Competition for research has increased through the reform initiated by the University Grants Committee in the mid 1980s to introduce the Research Assessment Exercise for non-specific funds. Recent reforms have provided both additional funding and, through tuition fees for UK students, greater influence for universities over the level of funding.
Le système de l'enseignement supérieur au Royaume-Uni a fait l’objet de nombreuses réformes depuis cinquante ans. Evaluées à la lumière d’indicateurs spécifiques, les universités britanniques présentent de bons résultats. Les facteurs de cette performance sont postulés par comparaison des politiques et des approches adoptées au Royaume-Uni et à l’étranger (en particulier dans le reste de l'Europe). Associés au contrôle direct des universités sur le financement, le degré d'autonomie, le niveau de concurrence et le niveau de financement apparaissent ainsi comme trois facteurs de performances importants.
Bien qu’elle ait été renforcée par la réforme de 1991 regroupant les universités et les instituts de technologie en un secteur unique, la concurrence pour le recrutement des meilleurs étudiants existe depuis longtemps, tout comme le degré d'autonomie important dont jouissent les universités britanniques. La concurrence a également gagné le milieu de la recherche où, suite à une réforme initiée par le University Grants Committee au milieu des années 1980, l’attribution de fonds non spécifiques est déterminée par le Research Assessment Exercise (exercice d’évaluation de la recherche). De récentes réformes ont permis d’accorder des financements supplémentaires et, par le biais des frais d’inscription imposés aux étudiants britanniques, de développer l’influence des universités par rapport au niveau de financement.
In the past decade, accountability has become a major concern in most parts of the world. Governments, parliaments and the public are increasingly asking universities to justify the use of public resources and account more thoroughly for their teaching and research results. Is this a favourable development for tertiary education? Or is there too much accountability, at the risk of stifling initiative among university leaders?
This article analyses the main dimensions of the growing accountability agenda, examines some of the negative and positive consequences of this evolution, and proposes a few guiding principles for achieving a balanced approach to accountability in tertiary education. It observes that the universal push for increased accountability has made the role of university leaders much more demanding, transforming the competencies expected of them and the ensuing capacity building needs of university management teams. It concludes by observing that accountability is meaningful only to the extent that tertiary education institutions are actually empowered to operate in an autonomous and responsible way.
By Jamil Salmi, Tertiary Education Coordinator, The World Bank
The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author and should not be attributed in any manner to the World Bank, the members of its Board of Executive Directors or the countries they represent. This paper is derived from a short think piece published in October 2007 in International Higher Education. The author wishes to thank all the colleagues who kindly reviewed earlier drafts and generously offered invaluable suggestions, in particular Michael Adams, Svava Bjarnason, Marguerite Clarke, Graeme Davies, Elaine El-Khawas, Ariel Fiszbein, Richard Hopper, Geri Malandra, Sam Mikhail, Benoît Millot and Alenoush Saroyan. Full responsibility for errors and misinterpretations remains, however, with the author.
Les universités face aux exigences accrues de transparence et de responsabilité : Une évolution bénéfique ou dangereuse ?
Ces dix dernières années, les notions couplées de transparence et de responsabilité sont devenues incontournables dans la plupart des régions du monde. Les gouvernements, les parlements et le public attendent désormais des universités qu’elles justifient leur utilisation des ressources publiques et rendent davantage de comptes au sujet de leurs activités d’enseignement et de recherche. S’agit-il d’une évolution bénéfique pour l’enseignement supérieur ? Ou cette exigence accrue de transparence et de responsabilité risque-t-elle au contraire de tuer dans l’œuf les initiatives des dirigeants d’universités ?
Cet article analyse les grandes problématiques qui sous-tendent cette évolution, étudie certaines des conséquences négatives et positives et propose un certain nombre de principes directeurs permettant aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur de répondre de façon réfléchie et mesurée à cette exigence nouvelle. L’auteur constate que la demande universelle de responsabilité et de transparence dans l’enseignement supérieur s’accompagne de contraintes nouvelles pour les dirigeants d’universités, en modifiant les compétences que l’on attendait d’eux jusqu’à présent et en obligeant, par voie de conséquence, les équipes de direction des établissements à renforcer leurs capacités. L’auteur termine en faisant remarquer que cette obligation redditionnelle ne fait sens que si les établissements d’enseignement supérieur ont effectivement la possibilité de mener leurs activités de façon autonome et responsable.
Par Jamil Salmi, Coordinateur des programmes d’enseignement supérieur, La Banque mondiale.
Les observations, interprétations et conclusions exprimées dans ce rapport sont exclusivement celles de l’auteur et ne sauraient en aucune manière être attribuées à la Banque mondiale, aux membres de son Conseil des Administrateurs ni aux pays qu’ils représentent. Le présent rapport est extrait d’un bref article de fond publié en octobre 2007 dans la revue International Higher Education. L’auteur tient à remercier l’ensemble des collègues qui ont eu la gentillesse de réviser les versions précédentes de ce rapport et de l’enrichir de leurs précieuses remarques et suggestions. Il tient à remercier particulièrement Michael Adams, Svava Bjarnason, Marguerite Clarke, Graeme Davies, Elaine El-Khawas, Ariel Fiszbein, Richard Hopper, Geri Malandra, Sam Mikhail, Benoît Millot et Alenoush Saroyan. L’auteur est toutefois seul responsable des erreurs et interprétations erronées que pourrait contenir ce rapport.