Higher Education and Global Public Goods

1. Higher Education and Global Public Goods Richard Hopper The World Bank UNESCO conference on International Quality Assurance: Globalization and Higher Education October 17-18, 2002 Paris, France

2. What is a public good? • Non-excludable • No one can be barred from benefits • No single purchaser • Non-rival • Can be consumed without depletion

3. Externalities produced by higher education • Externalities are the difference between public and private benefits • Higher education produces significant externalities • In higher education, externalities are not often pure public goods • Yet are expressed as combinations and levels of the attributes of public goods

4. Externalities of higher education: hard to capture • Benefits of higher education tend to be diffuse • Employers and society benefit from an educated workforce, educated civil society, and educated populace • Producers of goods and services also benefit from educated consumers

5. “Free rider” problem • Benefits of higher education cannot be limited to the individuals who successfully complete it • Markets tend to underproduce public goods, so the public sector has role • “Free rider” problem in higher education is complicated by international reach of the benefits

6. Global public goods reach across borders, generations • Human capital circulation • Free and efficient flow of skills • Benefits to firms, individuals, societies • Yet, brain drain concerns remain • Loss of high-level human capital, loss of public investment, and loss of local social/civil benefits • Information & knowledge circulation • Public health benefits • Environmental and cultural heritage • Peace and security • Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

7. Public vs. private / National vs. international • Financing • How is the cost burden of higher education to be shared among individuals, society, and employers? • Provision • Who will provide higher education? • Quality • Who will ensure quality and how?

8. Global challenges growing • Interdependence and uncertainty • underscore the importance of the global public goods produced by higher education • Higher education provision • New forms • New providers • Increasingly international, borderless

9. Enabling framework needed • To promote knowledge societies • To deal with challenges and public goods • Brain drain • Quality assurance • Qualifications recognition • Foreign provision • Intellectual property rights • ICT access and affordability • Basic education for all (EFA)

10. Public policy options • National policies are key • Gov’ts often struggle to develop such policies • We need only look to issues like HIV, GM foods, etc. • Yet, global challenges require new approaches and frank debate • New actors & mechanisms • Civil society • Private sector • International cooperation • Cross-sectoral linkages

11. Crisis prevention vs. coherent policy framework • Many countries tend to be reactive • Lack of national policy debate and framework for higher education lead countries to react to problems • Countries should strive for… • Flexible lifelong learning frameworks • Coherence, articulation, recognition • Dev’t of quality measures that satisfy local needs

12. Public vs. private • Not a simple distinction • No correlation with quality • Nuance important, yet hard to generalize • Public traditional • Fee-based and free • Private for-profit • Common in developing countries; emerging in US • Private nonprofit • Common in US; often religious-based elsewhere • Lack of meaningful nonprofit laws seem to prevent great growth • Public for-profit • Growing trend, particularly in international offerings

13. Equity and access remain key issues • Access costly • Benefits accrue primarily to those who can afford higher education • Yet, increasing access… • Spreads benefits to society • Ultimately lowers cost of those benefits • Lifelong learning frames promote equity • …through modularity, articulation, and recognition • Quality assurance coordination can help to promote the modularity, articulation, recognition needed for lifelong learning