Publisher's Synopsis
Higher Education in the UK is at a crucial juncture in its history. Its funding is in crisis, and morale amongst students and academics perilously low. This monograph offers two contributions to the debate. Like many of the nationalised industries of old, producer-driven higher education suffers from inefficiencies and lack of responsiveness to its consumers: Adrian Seville shows how modularisation - the introduction of 'quasi'-markets in higher education - could ameliorate some of these problems. His paper explores fundamental issues, and challenges whether the current quality control mechanism in higher education can be considered satisfactory even in a traditional university setting, let alone when modularisation is introduced. Tooley's contribution takes the debate a step further. The suggestion of 'quasi'-markets in higher education begs the question as to why bot 'genuine' markets? Hence he examines the fundamental assumption which remains unchallenged in much of the current debate: why should government be involved in higher education at all? He looks at the major justifications given for government intervention, and finds each wanting. Government is not needed to make higher education opportunities available. Indeed, there are negative effects of such intervention, including qualification inflation. Finally, the desirable goal of equity in terms of access to higher learning only needs the minimal intervention of private income contingent loans for tuition and maintenance, not the gamut of interference with which we are familiar.
