Modern education works on certain presumptions which really might be myths. David Orr points out six of them. The first is that ignorance can be solved. However, this is not true because ignorance is an inescapable part of human condition. It only increases with the growth of knowledge because we may know some areas very well but not others. The second is that the planet Earth can be managed with enough knowledge and technology. But it is not nature that we can safely manage but our own desires, economics, politics and communities. By giving the illusion that through technology we can manage Nature, we are only avoiding the hard choices demanded by morality, ethics, politics and commons sense. The third is that as knowledge increases so des human goodness. What is increasing is data, words and paper, all of which have very little to do with human goodness. Actually we are losing knowledge of one type, which is vernacular knowledge. It is with those who have first hand experience in land; that is we lose the local and the personal which constitute real geography. In the confusion of data and knowledge, we make the mistake of thinking that as our knowledge increases, we will become more ethical. The fourth myth is that we can adequately restore what we have dismantled. In the modern curriculum we have fragmented the world into bits and pieces that we call disciplines and sub disciplines. This results in graduates who do not have an integrated sense of the broad unity of things. For example, economists may have no knowledge of ecology and so national accounting systems will not factor in biotic impoverishment, soil erosion, poisons in air or water and resource depletion when they calculate the gross national product. This makes us think that we are much richer than what we actually are. The fifth myth is that the purpose of education is to give students a means of upward mobility and success. Thomas Merton identified this as the “mass production of people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade.” The fact is that the planet does not need more “successful” people. What it needs are peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who have the moral courage to fight to make this world a more habitual and humane place. And this has little to do with success as we have defined it. Finally, there is the myth
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Higher Education systems, policies and institutions are being transformed by gloablisation, which is “the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide `interconnectedness’. Higher Education is most open to globalization because knowledge has never shown much respect for international boundaries. Now worldwide networking and exchange are reshaping social, economic and cultural life. In global knowledge economies, higher education institutions are important for a wide range of relationships and continuous global flows of people, information, knowledge, technologies, products and financial capital.
Higher Education has been facing significant and persistent pressure towards expansion in recent decades which has led to the emergence of mass higher education even in countries where till recently only a small percentage of young were enrolled in this sector. This had created academic and economic challenges both for the governments and higher education institutions. the challenge becomes significant because in many countries, higher education has traditionally been dominated by public provision. Now higher education is being asked to cater to an increasingly diverse population and to do it more economically and efficiently.
One response of the system has been to promote market elements in higher education particularly through increased privatization. One effect of privatization is the transfer of ownership and or financial responsibilities from the public to the private sphere. It could also mean development of private providers concurrently with public provision, the diversification of funding mechanisms, and the use of private management in public organizations.
Private higher education is not new. Many of the earliest universities were the product of non-governmental initiatives in Europe during the second half of the Middle Ages. Even if set up by a royal or a papal decree, they were normally set up as autonomous institutions. But they had a public orientation and were accountable to religious and secular authorities. In any case the separation between the public and private sphere was less clear in medieval times and hence the dichotomy between public and private institutions was also less clear. Today, private institutions are more accountable to public authorities because they have to face the same regulatory authorities as the public ones. Historically, the role of public authorities has become increasingly pronounced. Till the 19th early 20th centuries when the modern state explicitly expanded its functions to include higher education. By mid 20th Century private institutions became largely absent world wide and even when they existed, their size was relatively smaller than those in the public sector.
The higher education sector was mainly developed in Europe and most universities around the world followed the European model. The first universities in medieval Europe were established under the patronage of secular and religious authorities and their support was vital for their material subsistence and survival. Gradually the involvement of national and local authorities grew and strengthened universities role in training local and national social elites. Since the late 1600s, the more modern state began to emerge and came to regard the university as the supplier of qualified labour and its control of the university grew. Higher education institutions were increasingly regarded as an instrument for training elites whose usefulness was growing. To train new members of administration, European states started to either establish institutions or to visibly regulate the existing ones.
By the turn of the 19th C., there was a growing state bureaucracy aiming to regulate in significant detail the organization of the universities, syllabus, teaching staff and student recruitment. Thus the autonomy of universities was impacted. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the steady process of persistent State control over universities has started to be questioned and in some cases reversed.
The control of the State over the universities forged a strong dependence of universities on the secular authorities at all levels – financial, administrative, educational and political. The growing role of the government funding of universities was accompanied by a much greater oversight over them. It led to the establishment of the Ministries of Education or similar public administrative structure that would develop a detailed control of university life. In Europe this took place throughout 19th C while in Britain it happened after the Second World War. With increasing accountability to the government, the universities had to ask for governmental authorization for a wide set of organizational procedures which led to the model of rational planning and control so that government defined standard curriculum and syllabus for higher education institution providing training in a specific field this, of course, meant that the training would be such the government officials deemed most appropriate keeping mind the role of universities in public administration.
The expansion of the government’s economic and social role after the Second World War created significant needs for qualified personnel. This demand was already present in the 19th C for example for some type of legal training and also for some engineers. But with the emergence of the social welfare state, there was need for highly qualified people like teachers, social workers, doctors, muses, accountants and others. Expansion of economics led to the demand for individuals with economic training. Expanding governmental structures in these fields sought to accomplish this either in the syllabus or even in the types of programs available. It was reflected in expansion of government expenditure on education and gradually became a political and budgetary priority, what was required was a poet of skilled labour, and achievements in scientific research for military, economic and social life. All these factors led to mass higher education in N.America, Japan and then in Western Europe.
By the early 20th C. there were very few universities outside Europe and the Americas. Although many parts of the world had a long history of learning the dissemination of university-like institutions outside Europe was linked with the European influence around the world. Universities were modeled on and deeply influenced by those existing in Europe. N. America diverged from the European model because of the development of a federal state and its limited role in higher education. The `North American’ model has also been initiated in different parts of the world.
Both in Europe and outside Europe, because of a large government control over higher education institutions, the number of private institutions was insignificant in the early twentieth century. By the end of the twentieth century, however, higher education systems increasingly included some type of private higher education institutions.
In parts of the world even where higher education was a twentieth century phenomenon, it was seen as a state responsibility. It was also seen as an instrument for training elites especially for civil service and public administration. Private higher education was either presented from being established or not allowed to continue to function. This trend continued till the 1980s and 1990s when the emergence of massive growth in the demand for higher education and strained the ability of the state to meet it. This led to the emergence and rapid increase of private universities and institutions the world over.
One of the major forces promoting higher education has been the access to it in countries where it was restricted to a small minority. The demand has been fuelled by societal and individual forces. At the policy level, governments have increasingly regarded the advanced qualification of human resources as a key factor in promoting national economic competitiveness. The view is that accumulation of human capital can improve economic prospects. Hence Governments are interesting in enhancing higher education as it enhances national economic performance. This is especially relevant in times of globalization.
Individuals have also pushed the expansion of higher education as a higher education degree is seen as an attractive personal investment because of the high private rates of return that it bring. This has led to the view that higher education graduates must look forward to enviable prospects regarding long-term income and employability in comparison to individuals with lower formal qualifications. This has led to the massification of higher education both in terms of growing rates of enrolment but more heterogeneous and complex higher education systems. To meet the diverse demand, higher education systems have developed have developed new and diverse programs and institutions. Thus diversity has become an increasingly important dimension in higher education policy. But massification also makes it nearly impossible to maintain a pattern of detailed regulation of higher regulation. Hence new forms of steering are needed that would be effective in the new context of mass higher education.
Further, recent expansion of higher education has coincided with a period of increasing constraints on public expenditure that has affected education too. In the case of richer countries, the sustainability of traditional financial reliance of higher education on public funding has been challenged. In case of poorer countries, the resources available for public funding of higher education have been a significant obstacle.
Also, the political mood that has affected western countries since the 1980 because of the economic turmoil of 1970s had led to an increasing debate about the type and degree of government intervention. The pendulum has swung between increasing liberalization and market regulation and restrained government regulation.
There has been mounting pressures towards greater efficiency in the allocation of resources and in the management of public institutions. Although higher education institutions are recognized as peculiar type of organization, policy makers have been keen to promote a more managerial behaviour by higher education institutions.
The argument favouring the development of private higher education were not only related to issues of internal efficiency but also to external efficiency. Private higher education was supposed to demonstrate an increased capacity for exploring new market opportunities and occupying market niches by using its higher administrative flexibility and financial motivation. They had the potential to promote better balanced supply of higher education from a geographical and disciplinary perspective. Also, they could be innovative and supply qualifications more suitable to labour market needs.
One of the most significant aspects of private higher education is its diversity. Unlike a public institution it is not required to have homogenizing rules of staff policies, funding, student recruitment and others.
Then the size of private sector institutions is often not more than one-third of a public institution. Usually there are small institutions in large numbers. Further, although historically private institutions were established as not-for-profit institutions like the old private universities in the united, recent growth of private provision has introduced increasing shades of profit-seeking behaviour. The for-profit sector has in some cases attained reasonable success regarding enrolments. Even when for-profit institutions are not allowed many private institutions have behaved as if they were for-profit. The regulatory powers have found it difficult to deal with these type of institutions. the government has to play a crucial role in providing reliable information and ensuring quality. Some developments in for-profit private higher educations is international collaborations. These can take the form of collaborations, acquisitions of local institutions, establishment of new campuses.
Most private higher education institutions are not universities. They are usually specialized institutions that provide higher training in one or a few fields of study. The role model of the university as an institution with a research mission is largely mitigated in the private sector. Although some attempt to gain legitimacy by a certain amount of research, this is not a common situation. The US experience with prestigious private not-for-profit research universities. Often cited in policy circles as the example to follow, in the development of the private sector, remains quite unique. There is nothing similar in even countries with a sizeable private sector.
One important characteristic of the recent expansion of private higher education is that in many countries with very different levels of income, governments alike have allowed the private sector to develop rapidly in order to fulfill objectives of higher levels of enrolment. This is because either the governments are unable to financially support a massive expansion of higher education or because they attempt to mitigate the effects of massification of higher education.
This pattern of expansion is called the demand absorption theory. It is normally the result of strong social demand and tax regulation by political decision makers. The tax regulatory framework often stimulates opportunistic behaviour. Private institutions are allowed to mushroom and rapidly expand the number of programmes and size of enrolments at times outpacing the expansion of the public sector. The private sector may move from an almost non-existent to a prominent role in the mass sector. This kind of evolution may end up giving preeminence to quantity over quality in the development of higher education institutions.
The relationship between policy makers and the private sector may often be ambiguous. On the one hand governments may create conditions that lead to the rapid expansion of the private sector through tax regulation, but on the other, they may seek to maintain tight bureaucratic control over private institutions.
There are risks involved in treating private institutions as demand absorbing sector. The government may use the private sector to absorb demand and prevent the uncontrolled expansion of the public sector, but once the demand stabilizes, mainly due to demographic reasons, the private institutions may become vulnerable.
Families regard a higher education degree as a good long term investment due to the high private rates of return. These increase significantly when the average level of schooling is low and when a small portion of the population has attained higher education. Individuals and families are willing to take a small short-term financial burden because they expect the long term return will compensate that. But these have to be carefully managed because they are not always fulfilled.
Another expectation from the private sector would be that it would contribute to external efficiency of the higher education system as it would be more responsive to the labour market demands. It would also make the supply of higher education system better balanced both from its reach in the geographical area and from the disciplinary perspective. But its demand absorption expectation dampens the above.
Further, in reality the private sector has had a negative effect in diversity of higher education system. This is because these institutions tend to get concentrated in the region of the capital city and in major urban areas and that too in the healthiest and most highly populated areas. It is the public sector that is more geographically diverse because of the influence of local and regional authorities.
With regard to disciplinary diversity too, private sector institutions tend to concentrate on low cost social science programmes or in those that have good employment prospects or in more technical costlier areas. Therefore, the popular areas are social sciences, low, economics and business. Programmes that require very high tuition fees are hardly viable as they do not attract the required student enrolment. Thus, the regional concentration of the private sector is coupled with strong concentration also on the disciplinary distribution of enrolments.
The issue of quality has become a burning one with private institutions since the latter find it hard to compete in terms of fees with public institutions. One of the most contentious issues in the private sector is the scarce research activity. Unlike the US experience, usually the low priority given to research in private institutions is basically because of financial and administrative reasons. Research activities especially basic research have a very limited short-term economic return in spite of their high social value. Private institutions generally do not have access to public research funding and cannot find alternative sources through philanthropic institutions. they have to find their own funds which they can only do from cross subsidization from teaching funds and mainly to enhance social prestige as well as to gain legitimacy. But as the system matured, more attention could be paid to research to gain social and political recognition as well as to get quality assurance labels.
Also, these institutions face staff issues. Many of them have to rely on part time staff especially in the early phase of the development of the sector. This leads to `moonlighting’ that creates tensions between public and private institutions and places a question mark over quality. The main rationale is cost advantage. Not only does part-time staffing cost les, but it also provides a more flexible cost structure that may help the institution to adopt to changes in student demand.
Most private institutions remain focused on undergraduate programmes designed to serve the short term needs of labour market. Traditionally, private institutions have a less qualified staff and the better qualified staff includes a number of retired professors from the public sector. Not only is there a problem of quality faculty but also shortages in sheer numbers which increases the ratio of faculty to students and dilutes quality.
Although private higher education has a long historical significance, until recently its role was rather small in many higher education systems. However, during the last decades this situation has changed significantly, mainly due to the massive and continuous expansion of higher education worldwide. Pressed by increasing financial constraints and by an increasing cost-burden due to the massive expansion of the higher education sector, governments searched for ways of coping with this paradoxical situation, redefining not only their financial role but also their administrative and political roles. In many parts of the world, the promotion of private higher education has emerged as a viable policy alternative to the often over-stretched public sector.
Although in some cases it has been seen as a transitory phenomenon, the evidence seems to suggest that private higher education is becoming a permanent feature of the higher education landscape. As discussed earlier, the resilience of private higher education is strengthened not only in developing countries where the limitations in resources prevent governments from major expansions of their public higher education systems but also in many developed countries, where fiscal constraints conflict with the rising cost of (largely subsidized) public higher education.
In future, private higher education is likely to become a necessary part of the higher education landscape. This is because higher education is likely to persist as an important priority in policy terms. This will push private higher education. There will also be financial challenges on how to expand the supply of higher education. The likely response will be through the strengthening market mechanisms which can only be through increasing the privateness of the system. It is likely to be a complex and controversial issue especially in countries where private institutions remained minimal. Further, private education will get a boost because of massification. Initially they will tend to focus on absorption of unfulfilled demand but gradually may position themselves as high quality/ high cost alternative to mass/ low cost public higher education. The acceptance of private higher education will also depend on the role of the state. As the market orientation of higher education strengthens, the government may increasingly see itself as contractors of higher educational services from autonomous institutions which may be publicly owned rather than as a provider of higher education.
In the post massification phase, the demand absorption pattern is likely to give way to niche institutions which present alternatives to mass higher education rather than reinforcing it. Private institutions tend to position themselves as an elite alternative to a mass public system rather than as a second choice for whose who did not get a place in the latter. The former situation will not disappear but the latter alternative is likely to emerge.
Private institutions will gradually also start paying more attention to research. Up to now the teaching element has been dominant but they will focus on research for legitimacy. They will attempt to improve their academic pedigree with better qualified staff, increase the number of research centres affiliated to them and develop good post graduate programs.
Private institutions will seek greater legitimacy. The first endeavour will be to strengthen their teaching mission both in terms of programs and faculty. They will improve research and develop strong student support mechanisms. Governments will increasingly develop accreditation and evaluation mechanisms often as an instrument to curtail private institutions. this will gain relevance as for-profit institutions emerge and even the not-for-profit behave like for-profit ones private institutions too will seek accreditation.
After initial disconcertion, there is a growing recognition (Kim et al, 2007) that private higher education will become a more integral part of the reality of mass higher education. The main force contributing to an acceptance of this realization may be the blurring division of blurring division of public and private higher education sectors. The growing pervasiveness of market elements in many higher education systems, namely the growing privateness of the public sector, has been slowly making it more difficult to distinguish between public and private institutions. although this will make life more difficult for private institutions, who face more proactive behaviour from public institutions, it will also contribute to eroding resistance to including them as part of the higher education system.
Overall, one cannot help but expect that the role of private higher education in mass higher education systems will be strengthened in the coming years. Although the recent privatization has often been characterized by controversy and some mismatches between expectations and results, private higher education may play an important role in mass higher education. This includes major aspects such as the expansion of higher education to respond to growing demand, the broadening of access and the development of some innovative programmes.
This strengthening of privatization and marketisation forces does not mean that governments will retreat from any kind of regulation. On the contrary, as in any other market, some kind of regulation is needed, and higher education is no exception to that. The more governments strengthen the role of markets and private initiative in higher education, the more they will need to give attention to issues such as the quantity and quality of the information available in the system, the consequences of enhanced institutional competition and the level of equity (either at the individual or at the institutional level).
The challenges for policy makers will be to learn how to use this rapidly expanding sector in the best possible manner, to steer it in a way that will contribute to social welfare and to fulfil the social expectations regarding the higher education sector. This will only be possible if governments are able to develop an integrated view of the higher education system in which different types of institutions could coexist. Easier said than done, this will be one of the major future challenges in higher education policy in many parts of the world.
The boom in higher education is the demand of a better educated workforce. Universities are central in the race to provide workforce with skills to make them competitive in the global knowledge system.
Higher education is the key to development. India realizes that there is a need to expand to higher education system to build world class research universities at the rap of a differentiated system. In 2006, India enrolled approximately 12% of its university age population. With its 13 million enrolment, it ranks third after USA and China.
Selective quality problems exist in less selective colleges and universities. According to a McKinsey report, upto 75% of India’s engineering graduates are too poorly education to function effectively in the economy without additional on-the-job training.
Higher education has become a policy priority. The importance of expanding higher education access and improving quality has been recognized for decades but only recently have significant resources been allocated after the recommendations of the Knowledge Commission and subsequent government commitments. Current plans call for expanding the member of top-tier higher education institutions.
The future of higher education policy depends on several factors. Demand relates to continuing expansion of the middle class with resources to pay tuition and other fees and educational qualifications for admission. Other population groups also have interest in access to higher education but the middle class is the largest force. It has dramatically expanded in recent years, being about 50 million and likely to go up to 500 million in 2025. a significant member will then demand access to higher education, creating huge stains on the system. Government policy regarding founding of higher education and supporting research universities and the elite sector of the system is a key factor shaping higher education prospects. World class universities are important to compete globally.
For higher education systems, history plays a role.
India was a British colony for more than two centuries, ending with independence in 1947, and this experience shaped higher education and continues to influence it. The British did not give much support to higher education in their colonies. Higher education first expanded mainly due to the initiative of the growing middle class in the mid-19th century and recognition by the British that an educated civil service was needed to administer India. In 1857, the first universities were founded in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. T he Indian colleges and universities were British in organization. These institutions, teaching exclusively in English, displaced the few traditional schools left, which simply withered and died. Higher education was based on an organizational pattern where the universities constituted examining bodies more than teaching institutions. Most of the teaching took place in undergraduate colleges affiliated to the universities, examinations and curriculum were by and large controlled by the universities. This structure enabled centralized control over the colleges. A small number of British academics were recruited to teach and lead the universities and colleges. Indians had an opportunity to study in Britain, and most returned home to serve in the administration, including in the colleges and universities. Moreover, many became involved in nationalist organizations that eventually played a leading role in bringing independence to India (Basu 1974).
From the early 19th century, almost all higher education in India was entirely in English, no Indian language was used for instruction or examination. The curriculum was largely limited to fields useful to the administration and to India’s emerging professional classes – such as law, the social sciences, and related fields. While the academic system remained quite small – at the time of independence with 369 000 students studying in 27 universities and 695 colleges (Agarwal, 2009) – it succeeded in educating a cadre of graduates who provided the leadership of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and later Bangladesh. As late as 1961, only 1.5% of the relevant age group participated in postsecondary education (Agarwal, 2009). There was little research capacity at India’s colleges and universities at the time of independence, as there had not been interest in spending money on research there and since higher education was in English, more than 90% of the Indian population was excluded from access (Agarwal, 2009). India’s higher education system at the time of independence was small, highly bureaucratized, restrictive on academic freedom, provided in a language most Indians did not understand, and had a restricted curriculum.
Despite many reports and much criticism, higher education expanded between independence and the end of the 20th century although there were few structural changes. Enrolments expanded from little more than 100 000 in 1950 to 9 million by the end of the century (Agarwal,2009). Annual growth sometimes was 10%. Most observers agree that overall quality declined and that the basic structure of the system remained quite similar to the colonial period (Kaul 1974). While India expanded higher education, it made few structural changes. This made the universities less than effective in meting the needs of Indian society.
The system was dysfunctional characterized by little self-governance and strong.