HIGH PARTICIPATION SYSTEMS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

29th November 2018 : 15:00 - 18:30

Category: Book Launch Seminar

Research Group: Higher Education

Speaker: Brendan Cantwell, Michigan State University; Simon Marginson, University of Oxford; Anna Smolentseva, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow

Location: Seminar Room A

Convener: Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education

Higher education has become a central institution of society, building individual knowledge, skills, agency, and relational social networks at unprecedented depth and scale.

Within a generation there has been an extraordinary global expansion of higher education, in every region in all but the poorest countries, outstripping economic growth and deriving primarily from familial aspirations for betterment.

By focusing on the systems and countries that have already achieved near universal participation, High Participation Systems of Higher Education explores this remarkable transformation. The world enrolment ratio, now rising by 10 per cent every decade, is approaching 40 per cent, mostly in degree-granting institutions, including three-quarters of young people in North America and Europe. Higher education systems in the one in three countries that enrol more than 50 per cent are here classified as ‘high participation systems’.

Part I of the book measures, maps, and explains the growth of participation, and the implications for society and higher education itself. Drawing on a wide range of literature and data, the chapters theorise the changes in governance, institutional diversity, and stratification in higher education systems, and the subsequent effects in educational and social equity.

The theoretical propositions regarding high participation higher education developed in these chapters are then tested in the country case studies in Part II, presenting a comprehensive enquiry into the nature of the emerging ‘high participation society’.

Programme

15:00-15:10: Introduction
Alis Oancea

15:10-15:40: Drivers and dimensions of unlimited worldwide growth in higher education
Simon Marginson and Q&A

15:40-16:10: High participation after Martin Trow: Inclusive capabilities and exclusive opportunities
Brendan Cantwell and Q&A

16:10-16:40: What is the emerging high participation society?
Anna Smolentseva and Q&A

16:40-17:00: Break

17:00-17:30: Comment and response
Paul Ashwin

17:30-18:00: General discussion

18:00-18:15: Launch speech from one of the editors

18:15/18:30: Close