Presentation for the

1. Concentration and Diversification in the Higher Education Landscape Prof. Dr. Dirk Van Damme Head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation – OECD/EDU

2. Outline Contexts Four main competing rationales affecting the structure of the landscape Main thesis: we need to tune better the different rationales in order to enhance the capacity of the system to deliver excellence A few critical success factors Some questions 2

3. Contexts Main trends: Continued expansion of higher education systems in access and participation More heterogeneous student population Institutional diversification More challenging and insecure funding Increased competition for resources and output, including for academics on a competitive market In an increasingly global context of networking, mobility and collaboration 3

4. Contexts Main policy directions: Policy frameworks (theoretically) exchanging more institutional autonomy for accountability Continued (or even increased) steering to integrate institutional objectives with national priorities Integration (or subordination) of research in national and European innovation systems From ensuring quality to promoting excellence European convergence: EHEA and ERA Positioning national systems in global arena 4

5. Contexts Future trends and policies to be expected: Continued increasing participation; growth will come from more diverse and more demanding students Changing skill demands, including innovative skills and interdisciplinary skills for new professions More challenging situation at input side: resources, staff Increased social and political demand for effectiveness, productivity in research and teaching, innovation More competition, not only between institutions and countries, but also with new types of institutions outside the HE sector 5

6. Problem No lack of good ideas and policy objectives But lack of system capacity to implement and to innovate What explains this resistance to change? Possible: lack of tuning the different rationales, system dynamics and motivations present in the higher education and research system Main obstacle: complacency with status quo 6

7. Rationales affecting landscape Public policy rationale: concentration and specialisation Strong drive in many countries and EC to rationalise provision and research capacity in order to avoid fragmentation and overlap Often opposed by institutions being interested in expansion and competition Main policy benefit: efficiency and excellence Main policy deficit: narrow fascination with excellence, life-cycle of top research and top researchers difficult to predict 7

8. Rationales affecting landscape Institutional rationale: autonomy, expansion, coherence and competition Confronted with increasingly international competition, institutions tend to maximise their sphere of activity Even in less market oriented systems, institutional autonomy has increased mission drift Main policy benefit: entrepreneurial universities Main policy deficit: proliferation of profitable but not necessarily most innovative activities, risk-avoidance 8

9. Rationales affecting landscape Market rationale: reputation race and competition Significance of market forces has increased, even in public systems, because of institutional autonomy, the reputation race provoked by international rankings and excellence initiatives Main policy benefit: competition may perhaps increase system capacity to deliver excellence Main policy deficit: self-regulatory capacity of the system is limited; reputation leads to ‘the winner takes all’; competition at odds with cooperation; competition needs transparency and regulation 9

10. Rationales affecting landscape Research rationale: flexible networks organised around primacy of research needs and ideas Research networks escaping institutional boundaries and national policy frameworks Public policy, institutional and even market rationales do not fit well with what drives researchers and research communities Main policy benefit: sufficient space for researchers drives excellence and innovation Main policy deficit: limited overall efficiency, lot of waste, limits of peer review modes of quality 10

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12. Critical success factors Sufficient resources: how to guarantee expenditure objectives in times of public spending deficit Modernising university governance, leadership and management: how to move away from parochialism, how to improve institutional capacity for strategic management Inter- and trans-disciplinarity: how to transcend or even break the conservative powers of disciplines Improved system transparency: a well-tuned system needs far better transparency mechanisms 12

13. Questions for discussion What will be the impact of the crisis on the global competition for talent and excellence? Is the European ‘plateau’-model in university performance more sustainable than the US stratified model? Is the main challenge for Europe to increase quality at the top or to improve the sub-top? How to lower tolerance for mediocrity protecting forces in higher education and research? 13

14. The structure of the top 200THEWUR 2010 – Regions N=81 N=82 N=27 14

15. Thank you ! dirk.vandamme@oecd.org www.oecd.org/edu/ceri 15