Dangerous Curves

Abstract

In this article, detailed data are presented to indicate the growing participation rates in higher education in seven countries – France, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the USA. The author argues that participation rates in higher education will continue to increase and that, while such growth will not be unconstrained and indefinite, it will continue for the forseeable future and therefore must be reckoned with in the development of higher education policies. The notion that higher education can increasingly be funded from private sources is challenged on the basis that private funding is very largely geared to research and service activities, which generate the funds, rather than to teaching. The trend curves that are presented here, showing increasing participation and an increase in private funding, are therefore ‘dangerous’, in that the ‘education’ component of higher education is threatened with erosion.