This article considers the counter-intuitive observation that some of the wealthiest nations can feature low tertiary graduation rates (e.g. Austria, Germany, and Switzerland). It also considers the observation that many countries with high tertiary graduation rates show low levels of social equity, while many countries with low tertiary…

Adult learning systems have come to be dominated by the view that the essential role of adult learning is to generate the high levels of skills deemed necessary for competitiveness and growth in the globalised economy. This 'education gospel' is underpinned by human capital theory (HCT) and its contemporary conceptualisation in terms of…

There has been much discussion about quantitative and qualitative approaches to research in different disciplines. In the behavioural and social sciences, these two paradigms are compared to reveal their relative strengths and weaknesses. But the debate about both traditions has commonly taken place in academic books. It is hard to find an article…

Whereas in 2000 the EU had heralded the knowledge-based society with as its motto "with more and better jobs and stronger social cohesion", the past decade has led to greater inequality and (at best) a status-quo in poverty. EU2020 seems to acknowledge this failure and aims to reconnect social inclusion with the knowledge-based strategy. This…

The student population is becoming increasingly diversified and heterogeneous. In a climate of decreasing traditional enrolments in the Portuguese higher education system and increasing competition for students, it becomes essential to understand the reasons and motivations that attract students to higher education and which are the more relevant…

This article examines the emergence of the public university in Kenya as a key provider of private higher education, characterised mainly by the phenomenon of the "private public university student." It probes the broader socio-economic reforms circumscribing the privatisation of Kenya's public universities and the local and global forces…

The purpose of this study is to seek to understand the process of privatisation and deregulation of Israel's higher education system which had been until the late 20th century predominantly public. Since 1994, public and governmental agencies became major clients of private universities. Thus the public sector played a major role in the expansion…

Since the early 1990s, European higher education has been undergoing drastic changes with regard to the organisation and governance of academic work. The political emphasis on higher education autonomy and accountability went hand in hand with the introduction of market type steering devices and a new discourse regarding the universities'…

In Western Europe, especially in Germany, private higher education is generally perceived as an alternative to public higher education for students from relatively affluent families; more broadly, there is a general perception that attending a private higher education institution is correlated to wealth. This perception is influenced by private…

In the last few decades, in the wake of three major crises in political faith and the overall instability that followed the end of the Cultural Revolution, the post-Mao Chinese government has sought to improve the lives of its citizens and to restore political legitimacy through rapid economic growth that has focused almost exclusively on GDP.…

What accounts for the rapid growth in the For-Profit (FP) higher education sector in the US? How will its growth influence educational opportunity and degree attainment rates in a country that first pioneered a mass higher education built largely on expanding public colleges and universities? The current US experience is a version of what I call…

The main aim of this article is to explore similarities and differences in the institutional features of private and state universities in the Italian higher education system and to assess whether graduating from a private university conveys advantages in the labour market. In the first part we use administrative data to describe the main…

This article analyses the short and the long-term relations between higher education and unemployment in Turkey for the period 1960-2007. It chooses the recently developed ARDL cointegration and Granger causality of Dolado and Lutkepohl (1996) methods. While the proxy of unemployment is total unemployment rate, higher education graduates were…

The importance of private higher education (PHE) is increasingly clear globally. But does Europe fit the global generalisation? This question can be assessed with reference to two major considerations: the size of PHE and the degree of private-public difference. The growth of PHE in Europe has been delayed and limited compared to that in most of…

The discussion in this article focuses on how the gap between academic knowledge and regional development can be bridged, creating conditions for change processes between researchers and regional agents. Institutional entrepreneurs can create regional development organisations and research organisations, but in order to fulfil regional needs it is…