Everyone seems to see higher education in crisis. In spite of recent fee increases, institutions are still underfunded if one takes into account present and future investment needs against current and projected surpluses. Students are having to pay more for their courses while being less certain of a graduate, or even any, job. Employers continue…

The United Kingdom Coalition Government has introduced a series of market-based reforms to the English higher education system. These come on top of a number of similar policies going back to the early 1980s. Together, these take English higher education closer to an economic market than any other major public system. Taking the period as a whole,…

The article discusses higher education policies and policy making during the period of the author's direct involvement between the mid-80s and the present. The author points to an increasingly ideological form of policy making which has emphasised the economic role of higher education and created a higher education "market". As the scope…

England is developing a new quality assurance regime that will come into effect in October 2011. A new funding regime will operate from the following year, together with new rules to ease the participation of private higher education providers. This article describes and analyses the new quality and funding regimes. It argues that the greater…

This article explores what is meant by "a balanced higher education system". It argues that the Clarkian "triangle of coordination" (Clark, 1983) and the more recent model of Martinez and Richardson (2003) should be replaced by one that distinguishes between "self" and "collective" interests in both the…