This document discusses the changing role of higher education institutions in light of globalization trends. It addresses tensions between global, national, regional and local demands on universities. It also examines the public/private divide in higher education provision and how this is impacted by issues like marketization, austerity policies, and the role of the state. The document considers challenges around balancing social responsibilities with economic demands in a global context.

1. 6th Higher Education in the World
GUNi report
September 29, 2015

2. The Roads Now Taken: Interrogating the
Changing Role of Higher Education
Institutions in Light of Globalization
Trends and Challenges
UNESCO Chair in Quality Management of Higher Education and Lifelong Learning
“Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania

3. Local and Global Engagement of HEIs
Balancing global, national, regional and local demands and needs
- tensions, demands;
- social missions and responsibility of HEIs in the light of global-local tensions?;
- strategic position of nations and institutions;
- role of knowledge hubs/regions; of knowledge/knowledge cities;
- local development needs/demands of HEIs for global/local sustainable
development and social justice
• Going beyond the economic
• social and cultural benefits and tensions that arise for institutions and the
community

4. Private/Public Spheres of Action in the Provision of
Higher Education:
• impact of the economic crisis and subsequent austerity policies;
• future of universities (Kwiek, 2006, 2010);
• the “public vs. private good” university;
• collapse of the ‘‘communist’’ alternative in Eastern Europe (1989) and its
[lessening] ideological influence on the future of global capitalism;
• new, transnational discourses on higher education and its reforms;
• changing relations between the state and market forces in providing higher
education;
• transformation of the ideals of the state and its social responsibilities;
• decline of the traditional ‘‘Humboldtian’’ university;
• emergent ‘‘knowledge societies’’ with direct needs to be catered for by
educational institutions;

5. The public/private divide in higher
education …
• loose, overlapping boundaries (Marginson, 2007);
“Public goods are goods that (1) have a significant element of non-rivalry
and/or non-excludability, and (2) goods that are made broadly available across
populations. Goods without attributes (1) or (2) are private goods”. (p. 315)
“In the global dimension higher education produces a mix of private and
public goods. Globalisation enhances the potential for both kinds of goods. The
mix is policy sensitive, but there are no adequate forums for global policy
making. Global private goods are broadly understood. Global public goods –
and the potential contribution of inter-governmental forums, and non-
government agents, to those goods – are not”. (p. 330)
“We become all too easily trapped in understanding higher education in terms
of a dualistic public/private ideology, and a policy horizon still bounded by
the nation-state despite the obvious fecundity of globalisation”. (p. 330)
• new “marketization” of higher education;
• competitive discourses;

6. the university’s development and its relation to the nation-state
the role of explanatory variables (micro-causal mechanisms, ideas, discourses,
path departures, governance politics, and elite strategies);
tensions caused by [the IMF’s] structural adjustment policies, new governance
challenges, difficult socioeconomic problems, depleted budgets, need to rely
upon so-called market mechanisms for significant resources (Pyle and Forrant,
2004);
conflict between public service funding and private purchase of educational
goods ;
return on investment (state/vs private student financial support, loan
schemes, cost-sharing and related tensions regarding access and equity issues);
How to approach these issues

7. the need to shape research “to follow the money trail” (Whitchurch, 2012);
transfer of available and new knowledge from the university to outside
environments (Hall, 2008);
challenges to the (new) role of the university vs. the State (Scott, 2004);
the need to maximize on competition, performance and efficiency (Thornton,
2009);
 the gradual homogenization of academic research towards mainstream,
short-termism, practical, large applicability areas;
gender issues

8. University-local space
Global space
• dynamics and contradictions of the marked hybridity of practices
• ways in which the ‘local’ is producing the ‘global’
Expected results

9. End of presentation
Thank you