Central European University, 30 January 2017 - Higher education and public goods

Sep 1, 2026

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Ideas about public and private are presented as central to higher education policy, but the document argues that international debate lacks agreement on key distinctions. It highlights ambiguity in social science approaches, clarifies that public/private differs from individual/society, and frames three problems for higher education. These include uncertainty about where the public/private line lies for funding, confusion between economic and juridical-political definitions, and lack of shared understanding of public goods in education.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLetters

FormatDOCX

Pages12

Reading Time4 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Public vs private in higher education

Three questions about public good

Economic definition of public/private

Juridical-political definition of public/private

Central European University, 30 January 2017 Higher education and public goods Simon Marginson Director of the ESRC/HEFCE Centre for Global Higher Education Professor of International Higher Education UCL Institute of Education University College London, UK Honorary Professorial Fellow Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education University of Melbourne, Australia Contact details UCL Institute of Education University College London 20 Bedford Way London WC1H 0AL, United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0) 7876323949 Email: s.marginson@ucl.ac.uk Bio Simon Marginson is Professor of International Higher Education at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK, and Director of the ESRC/HEFCE Centre for Global Higher Education. He is Joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education. His self-authored books include The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr's California Idea of higher education (2016, September), University of California Press, Berkeley, which can be downloaded free of charge at ; and Higher Education and the Common Good (2016, December) Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne [Introduction slide] Ideas about ‘public’ and ‘private’ are central to thought and debate about higher education policy. But in national polities, and the international literature, there is little agreement about three elements. Social science is rarely as exact as we like to pretend it is—especially when its heavy intellectual machinery, especially in quantitative studies, becomes applied to complex historically situated material. Then when the language of social social science becomes implicated in the policy and political sphere and takes on normative elements the potential for ambiguity is immediately heightened. Yet we need notions of public and private because they do important work for us. Let me say at the start that the distinction between private and public is not the same as the distinction between individual and society. Any relationship between two or more people is ‘social’. Not everything ‘social’ is ‘public’. Many forms of social association remain in the private realm, however defined. At the same time the public realm, however defined, includes both individuals and societies. And while we can make distinctions between ‘public’ and ‘private’, society and individual can scarcely be pulled apart, they are inter-dependent and each omnipresent, for all individuals are nested in social contexts. The individual only emerges in her or his materiality through social interaction. As for example Vygotsky showed in his studies of child development, the early individual is formed through communicative interaction with others. Without that interaction there is no language and in some respects no person. It is impossible to imagine either individual or society without the other. We can more readily separate public and private, than we can separate individual and society. Three questions about public good But there are three problems with our notions of public and private in higher education. First, there is no agreement about where the public/private line falls, and the implications for funding policy. There are two main concepts of public/private. In one approach, which I will call today the economic definition, public/private is understood as a distinction between non-market forms of production and market forms of production. In the other approach, which can be called the juridical-political definition, public/private is understood as a distinction between state owned (or perhaps state controlled) higher education, or non-state owned (or non-state controlled) higher education. Each of these definitions is useful. Each says something important. They overlap but are distinct. However, the economic and political definitions are often muddled up. Thus it is widely assumed that the public/private distinction can be understood as a distinction betwee

FAQs

How does the document distinguish public/private from individual/society?

It states that private/public is not the same as individual/society. Social relationships exist in both private and public realms, and individual and society are inter-dependent rather than separable.

What are the two main concepts of public/private discussed?

The document describes an economic definition based on market versus non-market production, and a juridical-political definition based on state-owned/controlled versus non-state-owned/controlled higher education.

What are the three problems the document identifies about public goods and public/private notions?

It notes disagreement about where the public/private line falls for funding, confusion between economic and juridical-political meanings (e.g., state versus market), and lack of common understanding of what constitutes public goods in higher education.

Sep 1, 2026

Upload by Aria