In contemporary Europe, the rhetoric of both the Left and the Right appears to
have converged on a policy of creating a flexible, high-skilled workforce so as to
compete with newly industrialized states in a globalizing world. However, this strategy
can only work in combination with a mass higher education system that provides these
flexible high-end skills. Scandinavian and Anglo-American states have moved firmly
towards this model over the past two decades, albeit adopting different strategies to this
end. Continental states, however, remain wedded to an elite model of higher education,
which has led to an over-whelming reliance on specific, trade-sensitive jobs at the
intermediate level. Moreover, the current set of conservative governments in these states
appears unwilling to facilitate this expansion since this hurts their core constituency of
the upper middle class. Conversely, in the Anglo-American and Scandinavian systems,
expansion to a mass system was made possible. However, even in these systems, the
partisan profile of government determined the strategy that was chosen. Ironically,
traditionally neoliberal England facilitated expansion through Labour’s fiscally
progressive strategy of tuition fees, whereas traditionally social democratic Sweden
facilitated expansion through the Moderate coalition’s fiscally regressive decision to
expand public funding.
This paper develops the argument that higher education policy in the OECD is
driven by a set of partisan choices within a ‘trilemma’ between the extent of coverage,
the degree of subsidization, and the overall public cost of higher education.
Consequently, states can achieve a maximum of two out of the following three points: a
mass higher education system, a fully publicly subsidized system, and a system that
keeps public spending on higher education less than around 1.5% of GDP. For a fixed
budget constraint, moving from an elite to a mass higher education system requires a
large reduction in the degree of public subsidization, requiring a large injection of private
financing. For a fixed level of subsidization, expanding from an elite to a mass system
means breaking through the budget constraint. Thus some countries, like England, will
choose mass, partially private, inexpensive higher education systems. Other, like the
Scandinavian states, have mass, fully public, but expensive higher education systems.
Finally, Continental countries, have inexpensive, publicly funded, but elite higher
education systems.
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Convention