Higher Education and the State: Changing Relationships in Europe and East Asia

The relationship between the state and higher education institutions has always been a complex one. The ‘state’ itself in this context is a heterogeneous mix of elite people - bureaucrats, politicians, committees of co-opted academics and business leader - and it increasingly faces pressures from diverse stakeholders, including students (themselves an increasingly diverse community), staff, families, employers and businesses (local, regional and multinational).

This volume explores the rapidly evolving relationship between the state and higher education in Europe and in East Asia through a combination of empirical studies, secondary analyses and personal observations from many of the leading scholars in the field of comparative education studies. A scenario emerges where the state seeks to encourage stakeholder influence, while, at the same time, acts to moderate such influence in order to ensure that wider objectives are satisfied; markets are controlled, elements of demand and supply are manipulated and funding is targeted to meet particular policy priorities through a model that is described as ‘controlled stakeholder steering’ which offers a new explanation of the relationship between the state and higher education, certainly in the countries addressed in this book.