An International Comparative Look at the “Crisis” of Public Higher Education among OECD Nations

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November 14, 2007 - To what extent is tertiary education still a public enterprise in much of the world? Is the private sector becoming more attractive to students? This paper by Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, analyses international aggregated data and examines to what extent there has been a crisis of public tertiary education in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in the past decade. The OECD includes 30 mostly developed nations, and a number of “partner” nations.

There is a wide consensus in some OECD countries that the expansion of higher education systems has led to its under-funding, especially where it relies on a traditional public governance model. “However, except for students, there has been no dramatic decline in funding and public funding of higher education institutions over the past 15 years,” notes Vincent-Lancrin. “Moreover, it should be reminded that there is no objective benchmark in this respect. While more money certainly means better resources, it does not necessarily imply better quality or cost-effectiveness; some less well funded systems might compare favourably to better resourced ones. Nobody knows what the optimal level of tertiary education funding ought to be.”

In most countries for which information is available, only a small part of financial aid to students seems to ultimately go to educational institutions: it can thus generally not be seen as a new way of indirectly financing tertiary education institutions through more competitive market mechanisms or vouchers. In the case of research, there is more evidence of a shift towards a different allocation of public funding: between 1981 and 2003, the percentage of public research funding allocated through general university funds has dropped from 78% to 65% in the 16 OECD countries for which information is available for both years.

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 tertiary education policy debates in the United States and most other OECD countries. For example, international data help understand why the United States is the only OECD country where the crisis is perceived in terms of public versus private research universities.

For access to this study, please see: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?s=1

CONTACT:
Dr. Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Stephan.Vincent-Lancrin@oecd.org.

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