Financing Higher Education: The Equity Aspects

Abstract

The unprecedented expansion of higher education that took place during the last 2 decades in both developed and developing countries is a well-established fact. In developed countries, enrollments in postsecondary education increased by 8.2 percent a year between 1960 and 1970. The slowdown recorded in these countries during the early seventies still allowed for a 4.3 percent yearly increase between 1970 and 1975.1 In developing countries, enrollments in higher education have increased by 10-11 percent a year since 1960, and there is no sign as yet that the trend is leveling off. These rates-which were once considered as signs of tangible accomplishments-have now become a cause for concern. The reasons for the shift in attitudes are many. First, the employment problem of highly educated manpower-once the privilege of a few emerging economies-has now spread throughout some of the most industrialized countries. Whether it is due to an oversupply of graduates from the education system or to the slackening demand for those graduates resulting from the low economic growth of the seventies succeeding to the high growth of the sixties is debatable. But the imbalances are there, thus raising doubts about the urgency of more educational growth. Second, the frustration felt over the narrow, quantitative approach toward educational expansion that prevailed during the sixties has led researchers and policymakers to introduce qualitative considerations into the picture. Increasingly, the content and structure of higher education are questioned. Its overall impact on societies is being investigated. In rich countries, traditional divisions among disciplines are broken, new streams are set up, and innovations in curricula are recorded. In poor countries, a recent trend criticizing the mere transplantation of foreign models and the replication of rich countries' standards is emerging. According to this trend, a more important objective of higher education is to make universities serve as agents of economic development. A few promising experiments designed to achieve this goal are already taking place in a number of developing countries.2