310 likes | 328 Views
Enhancing the quality of higher education: governance and funding challenges. Stéphan VINCENT-LANCRIN OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). Outline. Tertiary education and economic performance Enhancing the quality of: Teaching Research
E N D
Enhancing the quality of higher education: governance and funding challenges Stéphan VINCENT-LANCRIN OECD Centre for EducationalResearch and Innovation (CERI)
Outline • Tertiary education and economic performance • Enhancing the quality of: • Teaching • Research • Funding and governance implications
Tertiary education and economic performance • Labour productivity • Innovation in the economy • Researchers and R&D • Absorption of innovation • Lifelong learning • Absorption of innovation
New demands of the modern economy • Technology-bias towards highly skilled people • Increasing need for non-routine cognitive skills in advanced economies • Interactive • analytical
How the demand for skills has changedEconomy-wide measures of routine and non-routine task input (US) Mean task input as percentiles of the 1960 task distribution Source: Levy and Murnane
Missions of higher education • Teaching • Research • Community services • Production of new knowledge • Transmission of knowledge • Transmission of critical thinking • Maintaining of old knowledge (culture, scholarship, libraries)
EU countries tend to invest less than OECD average as a % of GDP (2004)
The US and Korea invest about twice as much in education per se as most EU countries (% GDP) (2004)
Annual expenditures per student on tertiary education (Constant US dollars, PPPs)
Household contribution to tertiary education expenditures (2003)
The expansion in numbers may continue and put pressure on quality: projected tertiary enrolments in 2025 under recent trends (2005=100) Source: OECD, Higher Education 2030, Vol. 1 Demography (forthcoming)
How much additional public budget (% of GDP) will be needed to keep current “quality” conditions in 2025(scenario 2, no productivity enhancement, current cost-sharing)
Evolution of student/staff ratio according to recent trends in access (if staff stay at 2004 level)
Changes in the number of 25-44 tertiary graduates relative to the US
Tertiary Educational Attainment of the 25-44 population2005 and 2025 (trends of past 10 years)
Quality of education • Teaching is the first and main function of Higher Education • BUT little incentives for teaching: bad teaching is often unnoticed, and good teaching, unrewarded
Quality of education • Change the incentive structures • Reward and value good teaching as much as research • Assessment of tertiaryeducationlearningoutcomes • Differentiatedtertiaryeducationsector • Avoidacademic drift • Develop soft skillsduring first years of university • Impliesbetterstudent/staff ratio for the undergraduateyears (funding) • New pedagogies and productivityenhancements (e-learning?) • Internationalisation • Encourage outward and inwardstudentmobility
Quality of education • Autonomy and accountability • Lift administrative burdens of public accountancy • Autonomy to hire and to someextent set wages • Quality assurance mechanisms • Risks: costly and burdensome • Objective: shoulddevelopquality culture • Performance-basedfunding • Important to have agreedtargets • Mix of input- and output-basedfundingworkswell • Importance of lifelonglearning • Not necessarily in tertiaryeducation • Examples: communitycolleges in the US
Share of students enrolled in advanced research programmes (ISCED 6) (2005)
« Public » research expenditures as a percentage of GDP (2005) Lisbon agenda target
Relative public research productivity Scientific articles per million inhabitants Public research as % of GDP
Relative public research productivity Scientific articles per million inhabitants Public research as % of GDP
Quality of research • Concentrate the funding? • A question of balance: project-basedfunding and block grants • Avoid short termfunding and « research to the assessment » • Relocate the excellent research? • World class universities, mergers, centres of excellence • To bebalancedagainstregional innovation • Avoidacademic drift
Conclusion • Researchis important, but educationeven more so • Fundingis important: level and type of allocation • More funding for tertiaryeducation(new cost sharing?) • Balance in fundingmechanisms, based on inputs and outputs • In research, beready to « lose » money • Competingwith Harvard willbedifficult… • But qualityis not just about money • Education: innovation in teaching, focus on graduation and not just entry • Research: beready to lose and waste money by fundingcontroversialresearch and researchers • Internationalisation contributes to qualityenhancement
Stephan.Vincent-Lancrin@oecd.org Thank You www.oecd.org/edu/universityfutures