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Globalization and higher education: global markets and global public goods

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Title: Globalization and higher education: global markets and global public goods


1
Globalization and higher education global
markets and global public goods
  • Simon Marginson
  • Monash University, Australia
  • York University International Colloquium
  • 6 March 2006

2
Five propositions
  • Globalization combines (1) world economic markets
    operating in real time and producing mainly
    private goods with (2) the first world-wide
    system of communications, knowledge and culture,
    which are predominantly public goods.
  • The main impact of globalization in higher
    education is in relation to (2). Higher education
    is central in the constitution of research and
    important in communications and culture.
  • But higher education is configured by policy to
    support the private economy, and organized as a
    quasi-market competition
  • and this weakens global public goods, reproduces
    global inequalities in the distribution of
    research capacity, and underpins Anglo-American
    domination in higher education.
  • The preferred move enhance and pluralize global
    public goods.

3
Rethinking public/private starting points
  • Higher education functions can be private,
    public or a mixture (and in part this is policy
    determined)
  • Whether education is government owned is not in
    itself the crucial element in determining whether
    its outcomes are public or private. Many
    public institutions produce scarce and valuable
    private goods for individuals. And private
    institutions contribute to collective public
    goods such as an educated citizenry
  • Our concepts of public and private should be
    consistent, whether we are talking in terms of
    national higher education or global higher
    education

4
A preferred definition of public adapted from
political economy
  • Public goods are those goods or outcomes from
    higher education that (1) have a significant
    element of non-rivalry and/or non-excludability
    (Samuelson 1954), and (2) are made broadly
    available across the population
  • Goods are non-rivalrous when they can be consumed
    by any number of people without being depleted,
    e.g. knowledge of a mathematical theorem. Goods
    are non-excludable when the benefits cannot be
    confined to individual buyers, e.g. law and
    order, or social tolerance, or the equitable
    distribution of social opportunities
  • Public goods are under-produced in competitive
    markets

5
Public and private goods in higher education
(examples)
  • Private goods include (1) university places
    providing career opportunities/ status benefits
    confined to individuals (2) commercial
    intellectual property
  • Public goods include (1) the production,
    codification and circulation of research and
    knowledge (2) higher educations contribution to
    advanced and common social and scientific
    literacy (3) univiersity contributions to the
    arts (4) social values advanced by education,
    e.g. cosmopolitan tolerance (5) the equitable
    allocation of social opportunities

6
Globalization
  • Globalization means worldwide and meta-regional
    convergence
  • Globalization combines two distinctive elements
  • (1) the formation of integrated world markets
    producing private goods, operating in real time.
    These markets rest on
  • (2) the first global system of communications,
    knowledge and culture (which are primarily state
    supported public goods)
  • Contemporary globalization is also marked by
    accelerated and intensified cross-border mobility
    of people, commodity trade, and norms of policy
    and practice. The last includes pro-market
    ideologies in government and education, which
    reinforce (1)
  • Global flows are transformative of practices/
    identities

7
Globalization and higher education
  • Higher education is among the most globalized of
    sectors
  • Higher education has a central function in the
    global knowledge system, and is important in
    communications and cultural exchange. For the
    most part these are, technically, public goods
    (though their contents are often pro-market)
  • Higher education has a direct role in the
    creation of economic value but this is much less
    important
  • But higher education can be configured as a
    quasi-economy, based predominantly on the
    long-standing status competition
  • Globalization has become associated with the
    formation of the two-tier world-wide higher
    education market

8
Global higher education as market competition
  • Two tier global markets in higher education
  • (1) Super-league of research universities
    mostly USA/UK
  • (2) Other universities providing cross-border
    education
  • A fully capitalist market is found only in part
    of tier (2)
  • Preconditions of market competition (a)
    traditional status competition especially in
    research, (b) worldwide networking/ every
    university visible, (c) policy-driven system
    organization of higher education as market
    competition in many nations
  • Increasingly, in many nations, global markets and
    the super-league overshadow the leading
    national universities

9
Top 100 research universities 2005 data from
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher
Education
Others Israel, Finland, Denmark, Austria,
Norway, Russia, Italy each 1.
10
The Super-League in 2005 from Shanghai Jiao
Tong University data
11
Shanghai Jiao Tong University research rankings
weightings
12
HiCi researchersselected universities, 2005
13
The global market in degrees2003 OECD data
14
Global public goods in higher education
  • Global public goods in higher education
  • (1) have major elements of non-rivalry and/or
    non-excludability
  • (2) are made broadly available across
    populations
  • (3) affect more than one group of countries, and
    are broadly available within countries
  • for example
  • (a) common or collective goods like the research
    system, and recognition systems that facilitate
    cross-border mobility
  • (b) cross-border externalities, i.e. the effects
    of higher education in one nation on higher
    education in another nation

15
Global public goods in higher education are
  • Under-recognized (due to the jurisdictional
    gap)
  • Under-produced in markets, and under-provided
    overall
  • Global public goods are not unambiguous goods.
    Note that cross-border externalities are not
    always positive (e.g. brain drain in many nations
    is a global public bad). And the research
    system tends to occlude work in languages other
    than English. We must ask the question whose
    global public goods? Who is included in
    public? Who decides?

16
Anglo-American hegemony especially US hegemony
  • The nations that dominate global markets in
    higher education also dominate global public
    goods (yet they under- recognize the public
    character of goods like research and evade the
    democratic responsibilities suggested by
    public)
  • Global higher education markets powerfully
    sustain Anglo-American hegemony. Competition
    pulls status, resources and people to the USA/UK,
    reproducing the unequal distribution of academic
    capacity between naitons. Competition legitimates
    the supremacy of American universities and models
  • English dominates research and the US/UK lead
    world output
  • The US is the world doctoral school, with half
    the worlds foreign doctoral students (200,000
    ), many of whom stay on

17
Unequal global knowledge flowsnumber of
published papers in science and social science
1993-1997 World Bank data 2000
18
Global competition for brains (1) 2000-2004
data, various sources, Purchasing Power Parity
19
Global competition for brains (2) doctoral
students crossing bordersPercentage () of all
foreign students who are enrolled in research
degreesOECD data for 2003 except USA 2003-2004
20
Global competition for brains (3) doctoral
graduates staying in USAOECD/US data for 2000
21
Global competition for brains (4) Clinton era
globalization of US roleOECD 2002 data
22
Enhancing and changing global public goods in
higher education
  • Creation of inter-governmental and multilateral
    spaces for negotiating recognition systems,
    cost-sharing, the management of cross-border
    externalities
  • Specialist units in national governments
    responsible for monitoring and negotiating
    cross-border effects
  • Involve non-government interests, market actors,
    universities themselves in negotiation of global
    goods
  • Cultural diversity in higher education ,on the
    basis of equal respect, can become a primary
    global public good
  • This broader spread of higher education capacity
    as a common global objective (rather than market
    competition)

23
Central propositions
  • Globalization combines (1) world economic markets
    operating in real time and producing mainly
    private goods with (2) the first world-wide
    system of communications, knowledge and culture,
    which are predominantly public goods
  • The main impact of globalization in higher
    education is in relation to (2), where it is
    central to research and culture. Yet higher
    education is configured by policy to support the
    private economy, and organized as a quasi-market
    competition
  • This downplays global public goods, reproduces
    global inequalities in the distribution of
    research capacity, and underpins Anglo-American
    domination in higher education.

24
thank you for the opportunity to speak with you!
  • simon.marginson_at_education.monash.edu.au
  • http//www.education.monash.edu.au/centres/mcrie/p
    ublications/
  • after 1 July 2006 based at Centre for the Study
    of Higher Education, University of Melbourne
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