Higher Education and Equality of Opportunity: a Survey of Recent Cross-national Research

Rising costs of education at the start of the 21st century seem to indicate a stark shift in education policies, which raises several important questions. The author shows that from the United States to East Asia and Australia – seemingly everywhere – higher education policy is headed in the same direction. The movement to broaden access to public universities, the dominant strategy during the 1970s and 1980s, has largely shifted to enable the marketplace, rather than the government, to shape the contours of higher education. Government funding is being reduced, affirmative action and other programs designed to insure broader access are in decline, and personal fulfilment is replacing a public good designed to insure greater equality of opportunity. The author describes how this sea of change in higher education has played out in economically developed and developing countries. In trying to provide the answer to the above-mentioned development, the author raises the question related to the consequences of a market-driven higher education for student access, teaching and scholarship.*