Title: Globalization and higher education: global markets and global public goods
1Globalization and higher education global
markets and global public goods
- Simon Marginson
- Monash University, Australia
- York University International Colloquium
- 6 March 2006
2Five 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.
3Rethinking 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
4A 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
5Public 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
6Globalization
- 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
7Globalization 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
8Global 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
9Top 100 research universities 2005 data from
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher
Education
Others Israel, Finland, Denmark, Austria,
Norway, Russia, Italy each 1.
10The Super-League in 2005 from Shanghai Jiao
Tong University data
11Shanghai Jiao Tong University research rankings
weightings
12HiCi researchersselected universities, 2005
13The global market in degrees2003 OECD data
14Global 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
15Global 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?
16Anglo-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
17Unequal global knowledge flowsnumber of
published papers in science and social science
1993-1997 World Bank data 2000
18Global competition for brains (1) 2000-2004
data, various sources, Purchasing Power Parity
19Global 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
20Global competition for brains (3) doctoral
graduates staying in USAOECD/US data for 2000
21Global competition for brains (4) Clinton era
globalization of US roleOECD 2002 data
22Enhancing 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)
23Central 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.
24thank 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