Dr. Bruce Johnstone was invited at the end of January 2013 to present at a Symposium, Equity in Higher Education for Economic Development, sponsored by Aarhus University and Empower European Universities (EEU). Dr. Johnstone’s presentation was entitled Higher Education’s Worldwide Dilemmas, which focused on Europe’s access – equity dilemma in light of the following ten propositions: […]
Dr. Bruce Johnstone was invited at the end of January 2013 to present at a Symposium, Equity in Higher Education for Economic Development, sponsored by Aarhus University and Empower European Universities (EEU). Dr. Johnstone’s presentation was entitled Higher Education’s Worldwide Dilemmas, which focused on Europe’s access – equity dilemma in light of the following ten propositions:
- high and annually increasing costs and revenue needs at rates generally exceeding the prevailing rates of inflation;
- a preoccupation with classical research universities and a relative neglect of public shorter cycle alternatives;
- high & unsustainable drains on tax revenues for pensions and health care;
- resulting imperative for (a) lower unit costs and (b) more non-tax revenues;
- complicated by the great political resistance in virtually all European countries to regular, significant, & sustainable tuition fees;
- the inability of economies to absorb all projected increasing numbers of university graduates in high knowledge content jobs;
- resulting in rising levels of graduate unemployment and unmanageable debts;
- exacerbated by the persistence of high failure and non-completion rates on the participation margin;
- the high correlation of the participation margin with those who are poor, from linguistic and ethnic minority groups, and from single parent families;
- political & social ambivalence and lack of consensus on clash between: (1) the fact of persistent inequalities; and (2) the fact of higher education more likely to accentuate than to mitigate widening social class disparities.
