FOREWORD: THE PARTIAL SHIFT FROM PUBLIC TO PRIVATE GOODS IN UK HIGHER EDUCATION

This fine collection of papers, which has been variously sourced from Greenwich, Hull, King’s College London, Leeds Beckett, Oxford, Sheffield, and the UCL Institute of Education, embodies the well-distributed strengths of UK scholarship on higher education. One of the longstanding strengths of what we might call the British school is historical method, where the work of the scholar is often in sharp contrast to those policy documents, apparently emanating from the end-of-history engine room, in which short-term political objectives are everything and there is nothing to be learned from the past. We find history at the core of the opening paper by Ourania Filippakou and Ted Tapper on the 1960s universities; and in Gareth Parry’s on college higher education. It is also part of the framing of the argument in several other papers. Another strength of the British school is the contextualized method of studying sub-sectors in higher education, which digs deep without losing sight of the larger systemic context, as in the grounded work of Brian Slater, Ourania Filippakou, and Ted Tapper on English medical schools; and Carol Azumah Dennis, who like Gareth Parry also writes on further education. A third, more recently emerging strength is the cross-border method, as in the respective papers by Vivienne Caruana and Catherine Montgomery on transnational education, with the latter focused specifically on China. All of these papers make significant empirical contributions. A fourth strength is the capacity for critical overview of the national system of higher education as a whole. This has always been a powerful tool of the British school, for whom the nation, both as living fact and as an ideal goal to be achieved, stands strongly in the foreground. For UK scholars the moderate size and firm central framing of the higher education system – which is not as far-flung as, say, the more disparate federal and quasi-federal American, Russian, or Chinese systems; not as determinedly local and diverse as German higher education; and regulated with a tightness that is quite exceptional by international standards – has proven especially amenable to measured stratification and structured analysis on the basis of a single grid of HEIs. The system overview method, which opens the way to both extensive and varied empirical work and normative policy critique, is applied here in: Patrick Ainley’s paper on the 2012 reforms as a transition from education to training without education; David Palfreyman and Ted Tapper’s argument that the present system of loans-based tuition should be reformed rather than abolished; and the study by Paul Temple, Claire Callender, Lyn Grove, and Natasha Kersh of varied institutional responses to the post-2012 environment. The last finds that HEIs whose status and resource position within the market is weaker are forced to make larger strategic and administrative adjustments within narrower margins of risk.

Although this is empirical research, the core purpose of the project is theoretical: to build a new generic framework for observing, and where possible measuring, the public and private outcomesofhigher education An analytical framework for public/private higher education Nevertheless,wedonothavetowaituntiltheendofafour-yearresearchprojectoncomparative highereducationtostarttotackletheambiguityofpublic/privateinhighereducation.Perhaps wecanmakesometentativeforwardmovesnow.
Quadrant1combineseconomicallypublicgoodswithpoliticallyprivategoods.Asalsoin Quadrant 2, research and education are non-rivalrous and non-excludable -public goods in Samuelson'ssense.UnlikeQuadrant2,theseactivitiestakeplaceinthenon-stateprivatedomain, outside politics and regulation.Academic staff and students pursue unpaid and unregulated activitiesbetweenmoreformalagendas.Openresearchknowledgeisnotpoliticallypublicunless itispubliclyfundedand/orregulated. Quadrant 2 combines non-market public goods with state sector political public goods, shaped and largely financed by government.This is social democracy. Government manages teaching/learning on the basis of universal quality, not market-induced stratification of quality asinQuadrants3and4.IntheegalitarianversionofQuadrant2,tuitionisfree,qualityishigh, alldegreeshaverealvalue,andhighlyselectiveplaceshaveamodestrole.Quadrant2research is supported from general university funding. Projects are driven by curiosity and merit, not competitiveacumenoruniversitystatus.
In the neoliberal policy era a growing proportion of higher education activity has been movedfromQuadrants1and2toQuadrant3.Quasi-marketscombineeconomicprivategoods characterized by excludability and some rivalry, with the public functions of government.The common element across all Quadrant 3 is government-driven competition. However, quasimarketsaremostlynotfullycommercialinthesenseofprofit-driven (Marginson,2013).Education isregulatedbytuitionfeesandpolicymakersemphasizetheprivatebenefits,buttheyarepartly subsidized. Research projects follow commodity-like product formats but are controlled via governmentfunding.ResearchgrantprogrammesoftensitontheborderofQuadrants2and 3.Atthetop-endoftuitionprices,thisquasi-marketstate-controlledhighereducationactivity movesclosetoQuadrant4.
In the neoliberal era also, economic (non-market/market) and political (state/non-state) definitions of public/private have diverged because of the partial shift to quasi-markets in Quadrant3.Thiscontradictionpartlyexplainstheunstableandcontestednatureofpolicyin Quadrant 3, where higher education remains state driven and is often highly politicized, yet market relationships (including the contrary idea of freedom from state control!) have been factoredintothecentreofthepicture.
This analytical framework, especially Figure 1, may assist in sorting through the data and argumentsprovidedintheinterestingandinformativepapersinthisvolume.

Notes on the contributor
Simon Marginson is Director of the ESRC/HEFCE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) and Professor of International Higher Education at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London.CGHEisapartnershipof11UKand internationaluniversities,carryingout15differentresearch projectsfocusedonglobal, national,andlocalaspectsofhighereducation.He isalso JointEditor-in-Chief of Higher Education. Hisnextbook, The Dream is Over, abouthigher educationinCalifornia,willbepublished byUniversityofCaliforniaPress.