Crisis of Public Higher Education: A Comparative Perspective

eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Abstract: Is public tertiary education really in a crisis, and, if so, what is the crisis about? This paper analyses international aggregated data and examines to what extent there has been a crisis of public tertiary education in OECD countries in the past decade. It first focuses on relative enrolments in the public and private sectors to show that enrolments in the public sector have not significantly declined, and only marginally benefited the private for-profit sector. It then analyzes changes in the funding of tertiary education from the perspectives of tertiary education institutions, students and governments. It shows that only students can (to some extent) complain about a recent crisis of funding and of public funding of tertiary education. Finally, the paper points to other possible reasons for the perceived crisis. Throughout the paper, the differences in the structure of public/ private enrolments and funding in the United States and other OECD countries are emphasised to help better understand the differences in tertiary education policy debates in the United States and most other OECD countries. ABSTRACT Is public tertiary education really in a crisis, and, if yes, what is the crisis about? This paper analyses international aggregated data and examines to what extent there has been a crisis of public tertiary education in OECD countries in the past decade. It first focuses on relative enrolments in the public and private sectors to show that enrolments in the public sector have not significantly declined, and only marginally benefited the private for-profit sector. It then analyzes changes in the funding of tertiary education from the perspectives of tertiary education institutions, students and governments. It shows that only students can (to some extent) complain about a recent crisis of funding and of public funding of tertiary education. Finally, the paper points to other possible reasons for the perceived crisis. Throughout the paper, the differences in the structure of public/private enrolments and funding in the United States and other OECD countries are emphasised to help better understand the differences in tertiary education policy debates in the United States and most other OECD countries. There is growing concern in the United States that public higher education institutions, and particularly public research universities, is losing ground compared to private research universities: this is the so-called “crisis of the publics”. In other OECD countries 1 , there is also a feeling of a “crisis” of public higher education, relating to the perception of an underfunding of public tertiary education, especially when compared to US tertiary education, and some concerns about the rise of competition, trade, private providers and market mechanisms. Many observers see the traditional public model governing tertiary education changing, for better or for worse. Something is changing in tertiary education and tertiary education currently ranks higher in policy debates than it used to: anecdotal evidence is that OECD