Higher Education Dynamics – serie

This Festschrift is dedicated to Ulrich Teichler who is celebrating his sixtieth birth­ day in 2002. Ulrich Teichler has been a central actor in the development of the field of research on higher education in Germany, Europe and beyond. Not only has he dedicated his professional career to studying a large number of higher education topics through national and international research projects. He was also in the fore­ front of the efforts to strengthen the structure and profile of higher education re­ search, for example, through his involvement in the establishment of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER). In addition, he has contributed to many important scholarly works reflecting on the state of the art and the nature of the field. The conventional wisdom is that working in a university or college makes you an expert on higher education. Consequently, while academics like to do research on every possible topic, they are in general reluctant to examine their own social insti­ tution. Within the European context Ulrich Teichler is one of the main exceptions to this rule. Already in his student days he has recognised the unique characteristics of higher education institutions and systems, and he understood that special efforts are needed to improve our knowledge on higher education.

This Festschrift is dedicated to Ulrich Teichler who is celebrating his sixtieth birth­ day in 2002. Ulrich Teichler has been a central actor in the development of the field of research on higher education in Germany, Europe and beyond. Not only has he dedicated his professional career to studying a large number of higher education topics through national and international research projects. He was also in the fore­ front of the efforts to strengthen the structure and profile of higher education re­ search, for example, through his involvement in the establishment of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER). In addition, he has contributed to many important scholarly works reflecting on the state of the art and the nature of the field. The conventional wisdom is that working in a university or college makes you an expert on higher education. Consequently, while academics like to do research on every possible topic, they are in general reluctant to examine their own social insti­ tution. Within the European context Ulrich Teichler is one of the main exceptions to this rule. Already in his student days he has recognised the unique characteristics of higher education institutions and systems, and he understood that special efforts are needed to improve our knowledge on higher education.

Over the last decades higher education has gone through an unprecedented growth period, and as a result the average university or college has now more students and a larger output than ever before. At the same time, the socio-economic and political demands with respect to higher education have grown dramatically. These developments have taken place without a proportional increase of the budgets and facilities of the higher education institutions. This has created an imbalance between the expectations with respect to higher education and the institutional capacities in the sector. One of the underlying trends is that the traditional pact between higher education and society has become problematic. Society no longer accepts the rather special and protected position that universities have had for a very long time in our societies. The knowledge-based social and cultural missions of higher education institutions are no longer taken for granted as the main legitimacy bases for public investments in higher education. Universities and colleges are at present expected to function efficiently, to contribute to sustainable economic growth at various levels, and to add to national and even supranational trade balances. On top of this they have to prove that they maintain a high level of quality in their primary activities, i. e. teaching, research and services, while adapting and responding to the expectations expressed so vehemently in their environments, and to a decreasing per capita funding basis.

Hedda, founded on 1 January 2001, is a consortium of nine European centres and institutes devoted to research on higher education (see web site: www. uv. uio. nolhedda). Theconsortium·saims are to strengthen the relationship between higher education research and practice, organise and support available academic expertise, and further knowledge on higher education in Europe in such a way that it becomes more accessible and visible at the supranational and international levels. To contribute to the consortium's objectives CIPES, one of its member institutes, and Hedda have taken a new initiative in the field of research on higher education, that is, an annual seminar focused on one specific topic of research. The topic is determined by the Hedda Board from among the most burning issues of present day higher education policies. The tirst seminar was a four-day scientific event on Governance Structures in Higher Education Institutions. The seminar was held along the banks of the Douro River, Portugal, on 13-17 October 2001. The second seminar focused on the Emergence of Managerialism in Higher Education Institutions and took place at the same location on 4-9 October 2002. The theme of the third seminar is Markets in Higher Education to be held 2-6 October 2003. Participation in the seminars is limited to select Hedda researchers and invited researchers of international standing, all of whom are active in the research theme of each particular seminar.

Hedda, founded on 1 January 2001, is a consortium of nine European centres and institutes devoted to research on higher education (see web site: www. uv. uio. nolhedda). Theconsortium·saims are to strengthen the relationship between higher education research and practice, organise and support available academic expertise, and further knowledge on higher education in Europe in such a way that it becomes more accessible and visible at the supranational and international levels. To contribute to the consortium's objectives CIPES, one of its member institutes, and Hedda have taken a new initiative in the field of research on higher education, that is, an annual seminar focused on one specific topic of research. The topic is determined by the Hedda Board from among the most burning issues of present day higher education policies. The tirst seminar was a four-day scientific event on Governance Structures in Higher Education Institutions. The seminar was held along the banks of the Douro River, Portugal, on 13-17 October 2001. The second seminar focused on the Emergence of Managerialism in Higher Education Institutions and took place at the same location on 4-9 October 2002. The theme of the third seminar is Markets in Higher Education to be held 2-6 October 2003. Participation in the seminars is limited to select Hedda researchers and invited researchers of international standing, all of whom are active in the research theme of each particular seminar.

Since the mid-1970s, economic and educational developments in Canada, Mexico, and the USA have been influenced by two parallel trends: (1) the resurgence of glob­ al economic competition and (2) the active promotion of knowledge-intensive, serv­ ice based economies. Both trends have been reinforced by the liberalisation of inter­ national trade under the rubric of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has accelerated these trends in all three countries by providing the framework for an integrated regional economy in North America designed to compete against comparable trading blocs centred in Japan and the European Union. The purpose of this study is to examine the developing relationship between trade liberalisation, post-industrialisation, and higher education in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. The larger trends and linkages that we identitY are by no means confined to these three countries. We have chosen to focus on Canada, Mexico, and the USA, because the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement has accelerated the devel­ opment of economic policies in these countries, which identitY higher education as a central component of each country's new competitiveness strategy. As a conse­ quence, government policy-makers and higher education decision-makers are responding with targeted initiatives to promote the internationalisation of higher education generally and to promote trilateral co-operation among North American higher education institutions specifically.

Since the mid-1970s, economic and educational developments in Canada, Mexico, and the USA have been influenced by two parallel trends: (1) the resurgence of glob­ al economic competition and (2) the active promotion of knowledge-intensive, serv­ ice based economies. Both trends have been reinforced by the liberalisation of inter­ national trade under the rubric of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has accelerated these trends in all three countries by providing the framework for an integrated regional economy in North America designed to compete against comparable trading blocs centred in Japan and the European Union. The purpose of this study is to examine the developing relationship between trade liberalisation, post-industrialisation, and higher education in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. The larger trends and linkages that we identitY are by no means confined to these three countries. We have chosen to focus on Canada, Mexico, and the USA, because the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement has accelerated the devel­ opment of economic policies in these countries, which identitY higher education as a central component of each country's new competitiveness strategy. As a conse­ quence, government policy-makers and higher education decision-makers are responding with targeted initiatives to promote the internationalisation of higher education generally and to promote trilateral co-operation among North American higher education institutions specifically.

This volume presents a rich account of the development of accreditation and evaluation in 20 European countries. The authors are leaders in the field and they have cooperated in this effort by writing richly different, often deep and insightful analyses of the situation in their country. The two editors have added a synopsis detailing the main trends, and sketching commonalities as well as contrasts in the developments across Europe. The book shows how accreditation is becoming a main mechanism in the steering of higher education all over Europe. The book is unique in its analysis of forces driving towards the spread of different models of accreditation in the emerging European Higher Education area. Readers will obtain an up-to-date picture of the state of affairs of accreditation in the framework of evaluation activities in Europe. They will gain an understanding of why accreditation and evaluation systems have evolved the way they have, and subsequently, they will obtain more realistic views on potentialities for European comparability and cooperation in this area.

This volume presents the most comprehensive international discussion of the role of markets in higher education ever published. It reflects on both the political and economic implications of the rising trend towards introducing market elements in higher education. The book draws together many leading international scholars in the economic and policy analysis of higher education to explore different theoretical perspectives and present new empirical evidence on market mechanisms in higher education in several Western countries.The authors present a dispassionate and ideologically neutral view of the advantages and disadvantages of the introduction of market-mechanisms in higher education and of its effects in terms of access, equity, quality of provision, student learning, research and scholarship, and so on. And they balance the performance of markets in higher education against the alternative of more, or a different kind of, governmental intervention.

What does it mean to be an academic in the twenty first century? Clearly, there is no one answer to this question, as the diversity evident in the following chapters reveals. Elite research universities often tend to join with others of their kind, so that a professor from an elite US institution may well undertake a Japanese sabbatical (if at all) at the University of Tokyo, a UK semester at Oxford or Cambridge, or an Australian semester at the University of Sydney, or perhaps Melbourne. At each, they can expect to have at their disposal well-stocked libraries, replete with requisite books, journals and databases, (many now available electronically), as well as highly regarded specialist peers in their research areas, with whom they can discuss their work in detail. How can this academic lifeworld be compared with that of a member of the South East Asian professoriate, for example, or many in Latin America and Africa, where inadequate wages often necessitate taking on a second job, often at a lower quality private institution (which, however, likely offers better remuneration), and/or perhaps conducting a small business on the side (Welch 2003, Tipton, Jarvis and Welch 2003), and where the lack of basic infrastructure, as well as research training, means that teaching, and perhaps some administration, is perhaps the limit of one’s activities? The story of differentiation, however, is not limited todifferences between elite institutions in OECD countries and more modest institutions elsewhere.

Starting from the now classical book by Ladislav Cerych and Paul Sabatier (1986), the editors present a critical appreciation of that initial work and a review and critical appraisal of current empirical policy research in higher education.In the second part, a set of chapters analyses the effective and specific complexities of the implementation of higher education policies in several countries, offering a wide variety of situations both in terms of duration of implementation, legal objectives, adequacy of causal theories underlying the reforms, adequacy of financial resources and degree of commitment of the main actors of the process. Some of these chapters use alternative theoretical frameworks developed since the 1986 Cerych and Sabatier theorization to interpret the empirical results, and some national cases do not fall within the scope of Cerych and Sabatier’s analysis. The national case studies are: Australia (2), Austria, Finland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA.

In this book, an international group of leading higher education researchers draw on a wealth of social theory and comparative, empirical research to analyse current developments and their implications. Different contributions focus on different levels of higher education, the system, the institution and the academic practitioner, in different national and international contexts. However, strong common themes bind these contributions together. They include not only the significance of massification, globalisation, neo-liberalism and managerialism for the governance of higher education, its knowledge and values, but also the complexities of change processes, the importance of context and history and the strength of the stabilities that remain.The inspiration for this work comes from the career and personal influence of an individual scholar, Maurice Kogan. A central feature of his work has been empirically grounded analysis of interconnections between knowledge, values, authority and power and how these are reflected in institutional structures and individual practices. As a historian as well as a political scientist, he has always insisted on locating contemporary developments in a longer term perspective. This volume is for researchers in higher education studies, students in postgraduate courses in higher education policy and management, higher education policy makers in national and international organisations, higher education institutional leaders, senior academics, managers and administrators. Professor Teboho Moja, New York University, USA: "It will be an invaluable resource inter alia for higher education students, scholars, and institutional leadership." "The book could provide a major contribution to the field of higher education because of the different perspective different authors present and an array of issues as well as frameworks to discuss them.""This book is bound for the desktops instead of the bookshelves of administrators, researchers, and graduate students. It is likely to be used time and again as readers explore new ways to transform education systems or institutions, meet their needs for program improvement, policy development, and general research. I expect that most readers will weave through the chapters (...) on an as-needed basis, until they have engaged all its excellent content."

At the beginning of the 1990s the world was watching with anxiety at South Africa. Would the country be able to get rid of the despicable apartheid regime without bloodshed? Could a civil war be avoided? And would it be possible to develop a democratic society without having to build up a whole new set of social institutions? The latter concern certainly referred to the educational sector that was steered at each level by a number of separate Ministries of Education, i. e. one for each identified race group. Given the developments in other countries in the region as well as elsewhere in the world the prospects were not too hopeful. In addition, many especially white South Africans left the country the weeks before the first elections, and the stories of violence and contradictions between the various political groups in the country dominated for a while the international press’ coverage of the pre-94-election situation. However, ten years after the first democratic elections in 1994 it is fair to say that South Africa has gone through a far-reaching transformation that is characterised by a remarkably low level of political violence. The general impression of the transformation suggests that the country has managed to change rather smoothly most of its social institutions, without dramatically affecting the continuity in the operations and performance of these institutions. This also refers to higher education.

There has been a flare-up in interest in science policy and a key factor in this is the increased interest in analysing the role that research can play in informing policy making. A pioneering venture in this field was Government and Research: The Rothschild Experiment in a Government Department (1983) Heinemann. No other work had penetrated the deepest recesses of government to observe at first hand the attempts of a major department to determine its research agenda through collaboration with leading scientists in a wide range of fields, to observe how research was commissioned, and then evaluated by scientific teams, and how it began to enter the policy blood streams of the departments. This revised and augmented version updates the original text for current policy concerns and takes account of changes in science policy studies, whilst preserving its essential themes. It contains a succinct account of where matters now stand as well as an extended analysis of the themes that continue to dominate research and science policy.

This volume presents the most comprehensive international discussion of the role of markets in higher education ever published. It reflects on both the political and economic implications of the rising trend towards introducing market elements in higher education. The book draws together many leading international scholars in the economic and policy analysis of higher education to explore different theoretical perspectives and present new empirical evidence on market mechanisms in higher education in several Western countries.The authors present a dispassionate and ideologically neutral view of the advantages and disadvantages of the introduction of market-mechanisms in higher education and of its effects in terms of access, equity, quality of provision, student learning, research and scholarship, and so on. And they balance the performance of markets in higher education against the alternative of more, or a different kind of, governmental intervention.

COM(91) 349 final and the Peripheries of European Higher Education Voldemar Tomusk Open Society Institute – Budapest For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia 1. REDEMPTIVE IRONY OF STRATEGIES AND PROCESSES It is unfortunate to a degree that as soon as we begin discussing our human condition in the third millennium since mankind was offered its salvation, and the state of our institutions that structure and guide our existence as social beings in order not to act as beasts or mere social animals, we cannot avoid the word ‘ironic’. For the people of intellectual calling who cannot but try to make sense of what is happening around, in and with us beyond digestion in the broad sense of the term, that is beyond the consuming the resources of the earth, ironic is the word without which nothing can be said any longer. ‘Deliver Us from Irony’ is the title of a recent paper by a young historian discussing the last great post-modern historian Hayden White in his approach of employing epistemological irony against moral irony (Paul 2004). The degree to which our existence has become ironic is truly tragic, though it could be worse. Human existence has become ironic so much that one can but weep. However, there are other ways to explain the situation.

Chicago, the Leverhulme Trust (for an emeritus fellowship awarded to Maurice Kogan which enabled a particular part of the English study to be completed) and to the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation which provided funds assisting us with the last stage of the project and its dissemination. The list of names of the editorial team on the cover of this book in no sense exhausts the account of its authorship or of those responsible for the contr- utory country studies. Our equal partners in the whole exercise have been Steve Hanney (England), Berit Askling and Susan Marton (Sweden), and Roar Høstaker and Agnete Vabø (Norway). The names of individual authors are to be found at the beginning of each chapter. Throughout the five years of our project we have enjoyed an intellectual camaraderie which enabled the expe- ence of different cultures and systems to flow into our research. We are also indebted to Tom Kogan for expert copy editing of the first v- sion and to Deana Parker for producing a camera ready version of this second edition. Our first publishers, on selling out the first edition, arbitrarily took the book out of print. We have been fortunate in finding new publishers, Springer, for this second edition which has given us the opportunity to update our macro data about changes in systems and advance further some of our arguments.

Higher education finances lie at the crossroads in many Western countries. Hence, worldwide, the most common approach to the need for increasing revenue was to use some form or forms of cost sharing, or the shift of some of the higher educational per-student costs from governments and taxpayers to parents and students. This raises several important challenges to higher education systems. First, there is the political and social controversy associated with most forms of cost-sharing, particularly with tuition fees. Secondly, there are important issues in terms of the broad context of social policy, such as the role of families and students and the relationship that the state establishes with each of them. Third, there is the comparison of alternative instruments of cost-sharing and the direct and indirect effects of each of them, notably in terms of educational equality. Overall, underlying cost-sharing debates are fundamental questions about social choice, individual opportunities, and the role of government in society.

From autumn 1998 to spring 2000, about 3,000 graduates each from nine countries in the European Union (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom), one EFTA country (Norway), one of the Central and Eastern European countries in transition (the Czech Republic) and one econo- cally advanced country outside Europe (Japan) provided information through a wr- ten questionnaire on the relationship between higher education and employment three to four years after graduation. In total, over 40,000 graduates from higher education institutions answered questions on their socio-biographical background, study paths, transition from higher education to employment, early career, links between study and employment, job satisfaction and their retrospective view on higher education. The study provided a unique opportunity to examine how far the relationships - tween higher education and the world of work are similar or different in the Western European countries. This became clearer through the inclusion of one country of the Central and Eastern European countries and one country outside Europe. The study also helped to understand the common elements and differences between various fields of study and occupational areas. It made it possible to analyse current salient issues of higher education, e. g. equality, the role of educational levels, the demand for specialized or general competences, the growing role of international mobility and lifelong education, the regional diversity in higher education.

Advice about how to achieve a PhD usually falls short of relevance because the ways of creating and reporting knowledge differ dramatically from one disciplinary field and specialisation to another. Yet supervisors and doctoral candidates alike know that there are certain protocols or parameters, often inexplicit in nature, that govern its achievement and that need to be mastered. This book sets out to explore the nature of these protocols and parameters, linking them to the cognate characteristics of fields of knowledge and to social conventions constraining how new knowledge is reported.‘Disciplines and Doctorates’ provides a detailed analysis of the experience of learning to make new knowledge at the level of the research doctorate. It does so from the perspectives of both supervisors and candidates across a range of disciplines in different university settings. It draws principally upon a very large-scale, empirical investigation at a number of Australian universities. It also provides a comparative account of doctoral study in different national systems.

Starting from the now classical book by Ladislav Cerych and Paul Sabatier (1986), the editors present a critical appreciation of that initial work and a review and critical appraisal of current empirical policy research in higher education.In the second part, a set of chapters analyses the effective and specific complexities of the implementation of higher education policies in several countries, offering a wide variety of situations both in terms of duration of implementation, legal objectives, adequacy of causal theories underlying the reforms, adequacy of financial resources and degree of commitment of the main actors of the process. Some of these chapters use alternative theoretical frameworks developed since the 1986 Cerych and Sabatier theorization to interpret the empirical results, and some national cases do not fall within the scope of Cerych and Sabatier’s analysis. The national case studies are: Australia (2), Austria, Finland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA.

This volume presents a rich account of the development of accreditation and evaluation in 20 European countries. The authors are leaders in the field and they have cooperated in this effort by writing richly different, often deep and insightful analyses of the situation in their country. The two editors have added a synopsis detailing the main trends, and sketching commonalities as well as contrasts in the developments across Europe. The book shows how accreditation is becoming a main mechanism in the steering of higher education all over Europe. The book is unique in its analysis of forces driving towards the spread of different models of accreditation in the emerging European Higher Education area. Readers will obtain an up-to-date picture of the state of affairs of accreditation in the framework of evaluation activities in Europe. They will gain an understanding of why accreditation and evaluation systems have evolved the way they have, and subsequently, they will obtain more realistic views on potentialities for European comparability and cooperation in this area.

"Financing Public Universities" addresses newer practices of resource allocation which tie funding to indicators of performance. The gist of these efforts is to raise the quality of institutional systems. Performance-based budgeting and funding of public universities is part of broader efforts to reform public management, and it is being promoted and implemented by various government agencies around the globe. In particular, European universities with their normally strong governmental ties, or higher education systems molded on European universities, are prime targets of such reforms.Performance funding has made its inroads in attempts to grant university systems managerial autonomy: autonomy was to be granted in exchange for funding modes which are tied to the measurement of performance indicators. Unfortunately, performance-based budgeting or funding measures cannot meet the various expectations: they do not raise the quality of teaching or learning; they do not raise research performance; they take back a great deal of managerial autonomy which is commonly judged to be essential for the well being of higher education institutions, in particular research universities; and they act as automata in place of proper governance and management."Financing Public Universities" addresses policy makers, higher education administrators, scholars and students of higher education management. After an introduction to the theme and to the book (Chapter 1), "Financing Public Universities" covers the evolvement of mass higher education and the associated curtailment of funding (Chapter 2), the public management reform debate (Chapter 3) within which performance-based budgeting or funding evolved (Chapter 4), sketches alternative governance and management modes which can be used instead (Chapter 5), and epitomizes inertia or challenges (Chapter 6). Four appendices cover more technical matters, such as a comparative exposition of the research performance ofuniversities by nation (Appendix C) and examples of funding systems in the UK and in the USA (Appendix D).

Graduates from institutions of Higher Education do not only hope to get employed and be better paid. Study can also have an impact on employment and work in many respects: facilitating transition to employment, opening up opportunities for demanding, interesting and responsible professional assignments, increasing remuneration and job security, providing opportunities for continuing learning and leading the way to international mobility and visibly international assignments. The book provides a series of detailed analyses of graduate employment and work in comparative perspective. It draws from the survey of graduates from 11 European countries and Japan first published in H. Schomburg und U. Teichler "Higher Education and Graduate Employment and Work" (Dordrecht: Springer 2006). In this volume, scholars from twelve countries show how transition to employment, job assignments, employment assessments of the quality of employment and work vary by the graduates’ socio-biographic and educational background. It also focuses on experiences during the course of study and competences acquired, international experience, regional background and regions of employment. It demonstrates more substantial differences of the relationships between study and subsequent employment between various countries than previous debates and analyses have suggested.

The European University is under stress. The claim is that while environments are changing rapidly, European universities do not learn, adapt and reform themselves fast enough. Reform plans comprise the purposes of universities and include the universities’ organization and financial basis, their governance structures, who should influence the future dynamics of universities, and according to what principles. In contrast, it can be argued that the currently dominant reform rhetoric is only one among several competing visions and understandings of the University and its dynamics. This book explores the visions underlying the attempts to reform the European University as well as two European integration processes ("Bologna" and "Lisbon") affecting University dynamics. It presents a framework for analyzing ongoing modernization reforms and reform debates that take place at various governance levels, not least, the European level and a long-term research agenda.

By bringing together leading experts on quality assurance in higher education from seven countries (from Europe, the USA and South Africa), this volume intends to go several steps further than most publications on quality assurance. First, it brings together views from micro to macro levels in the multi-actor space, showing how quality assurance impacts the higher education system throughout. Second, it links quality assurance solidly to issues of regulation, translation (rather than mechanical ‘implementation’) and transformation, instead of being only focused on quality assurance as a single policy instrument. Third, it uses this broad range of research insights to criticize current practices, explaining for instance why sometimes people have difficulty in tracing any concrete effects of all initiatives taken in this area. Finally, the book offers proposals for better focusing quality assurance in the future to address institutional challenges better.The general purpose of the book then is to give an engaged, academic reflection on how quality assurance is embedded in higher education and in a dynamic way to assess its impacts and potential improvements.

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Jim Allen*, Yuki Inenaga**, Rolf van der Velden* and Keiichi Yoshimoto*** * University of Maastricht ** University of Tsukuba *** Kyushu University 1. 1 Objectives and Background 1. 1. 1 The Focus of This Book It is well known that Japan and the Netherlands have enjoyed friendly relations for more than 400 years. Despite this fact, neither country has had much influence on the other in terms of society, culture, or institutional arrangements in the educational system and the labour market. These aspects remain essentially unique to each country. As a result, Japan and the Netherlands, the two countries at the focus of this book, form an intriguing contrast of culture, education system and labour market organisation. For decades Japan has attracted the attention of countless scholars attempting to come to grips, first of all with the enormous success of the post-war Japanese economy, and subsequently with its faltering progress since the early 1990s. In contrast to most western capitalist countries, the Japanese economy is characterised by a strong degree of centralised planning and cooperation between economic and political elites, in which favoured corporations and industries have been deliberately fostered. The higher education system has been largely academic in its focus, and strong links between higher education institutions and companies have helped ensure a smooth and rapid transition by graduates from higher education to employment.

What does it mean to be an academic in the twenty first century? Clearly, there is no one answer to this question, as the diversity evident in the following chapters reveals. Elite research universities often tend to join with others of their kind, so that a professor from an elite US institution may well undertake a Japanese sabbatical (if at all) at the University of Tokyo, a UK semester at Oxford or Cambridge, or an Australian semester at the University of Sydney, or perhaps Melbourne. At each, they can expect to have at their disposal well-stocked libraries, replete with requisite books, journals and databases, (many now available electronically), as well as highly regarded specialist peers in their research areas, with whom they can discuss their work in detail. How can this academic lifeworld be compared with that of a member of the South East Asian professoriate, for example, or many in Latin America and Africa, where inadequate wages often necessitate taking on a second job, often at a lower quality private institution (which, however, likely offers better remuneration), and/or perhaps conducting a small business on the side (Welch 2003, Tipton, Jarvis and Welch 2003), and where the lack of basic infrastructure, as well as research training, means that teaching, and perhaps some administration, is perhaps the limit of one’s activities? The story of differentiation, however, is not limited todifferences between elite institutions in OECD countries and more modest institutions elsewhere.

At the beginning of the 1990s the world was watching with anxiety at South Africa. Would the country be able to get rid of the despicable apartheid regime without bloodshed? Could a civil war be avoided? And would it be possible to develop a democratic society without having to build up a whole new set of social institutions? The latter concern certainly referred to the educational sector that was steered at each level by a number of separate Ministries of Education, i. e. one for each identified race group. Given the developments in other countries in the region as well as elsewhere in the world the prospects were not too hopeful. In addition, many especially white South Africans left the country the weeks before the first elections, and the stories of violence and contradictions between the various political groups in the country dominated for a while the international press’ coverage of the pre-94-election situation. However, ten years after the first democratic elections in 1994 it is fair to say that South Africa has gone through a far-reaching transformation that is characterised by a remarkably low level of political violence. The general impression of the transformation suggests that the country has managed to change rather smoothly most of its social institutions, without dramatically affecting the continuity in the operations and performance of these institutions. This also refers to higher education.