Chapter 13: Higher Education in the Developed World: Common Challenges and Local Solutions

In this chapter, I provide an overview of some of the central issues which have been raised by contributors to this book. As noted in Chapter 1, there are many commonalities in the challenges faced by higher education systems across the developed world. Policy makers seeking to devise equitable and efficient provision are under pressure from competing interest groups and shrinking public funding. Students and their families, who are bearing a greater share of the cost of higher education, find themselves pitched against governments trying to balance funding for different parts of the education system. Universities argue for greater autonomy while attempting to demonstrate their intrinsic value to an increasingly sceptical group of young people struggling to find employment which is commensurate with their skills and qualifications. Globalisation (discussed briefly below) represents the wider backcloth to policy change, but the response within different jurisdictions is shaped by their specific economic, social and cultural contexts.