Neoliberal theories—whether the new public management, principal-agent theory, or performance management—have provided the rationale for sweeping reforms in the governance and operation of higher education. This paper expands our understanding of neoliberal theory and practice by examining a leading neoliberal reform: performance-based funding (PBF) for higher education in the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Our analysis of PBF examines not only its impacts but also its origins and implementation. Neoliberal theory has been used not only prospectively to design and argue for certain public policies but also retrospectively to analyse the origins and implementation of neoliberal policy. Hence, this paper examines this retrospective neoliberal analysis in order to determine how well neoliberal theory helps us understand the origins and implementation of neoliberal policy: in this case, the socio-political forces that gave rise to PBF; and the political and organizational features of the processes by which PBF was implemented.

Performance-based funding for higher education: how well does neoliberal theory capture neoliberal practice?

At universities worldwide, creating a ‘smart campus’ is gaining significance. This is a response to the increasingly dynamic use of the campus and the pressure on resources: energy, financial and h...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09613218.2020.1784702

Towards a smart campus: supporting campus decisions with Internet of Things applications

This path-breaking addition to the Comparative Politics of Education series studies the influence of public opinion on the contemporary politics of education reform in Western Europe. The authors analyze new data from a survey of public opinion on education policy across eight countries, and they also provide detailed case studies of reform processes based on interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders. The book's core finding is that public opinion has the greatest influence in a world of 'loud' politics, when salience is high and attitudes are coherent. In contrast, when issues are salient but attitudes are conflicting, the signal of public opinion turns 'loud, but noisy' and party politics have a stronger influence on policy-making. In the case of 'quiet' politics, when issue salience is low, interest groups are dominant. This book is required reading for anyone seeking to make sense of policy-makers' selective responsiveness to public demands and concerns.

A Loud but Noisy Signal?: Public Opinion and Education Reform in Western Europe

A successful transition into the knowledge economy is said to depend upon higher level skills, creating unprecedented pressure on university systems – as they expand across countries – to provide knowledge-based labour markets with the skills needed. But what are the political economy dynamics underlying national patterns of high skill formation? This thesis argues that existing theoretical approaches are not well-suited to answer the question: ideational and structuralist frameworks downplay persistent national differences, while institutionalist accounts assume that national differences rest upon the very lack of higher education expansion in some countries, downplaying the crossnational trend of higher education expansion. The thesis proposes a framework that accounts for distinct national trajectories of high skill formation within the convergent trend of higher education expansion. In particular, two crucial variables are identified to theorise the relationship between higher education systems and knowledge-based labour markets: (i) the predominant type of knowledge economy in a given country; and (ii) the degree of inter-university competition across different higher education systems. It is argued that the former explains what type of higher level skills will be sought by employers and cultivated by governments, while the latter helps understanding of why
some higher education systems are more open at the outset to satisfy labour market demands compared to others, determining whether institutional change in a given higher education system is likely to be encompassing or marginal. Cross-national descriptive statistics and systematic process analysis across a set of diverse country case studies (Britain, Germany and South Korea) are used to test the theory. By highlighting the agency of universities, governments and businesses and by linking higher education
policy with knowledge-based growth strategies, this thesis provides a theoretical and empirical contribution on processes of institutional change in higher education and on broader trajectories of institutional change across advanced capitalist countries.

The political economy of high skills: higher education inknowledge societies

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Analysing neoliberalism in theory and practice: the case of performance-based funding for higher education

This article explores the changing character and consequences of state authorities’ evolving relationships with universities in the United States, Germany, and Norway—typical cases for different national worlds of higher education. It argues that across the three OECD countries, welfare states have strengthened market principles in university governance, yet shaped competition in different ways. This conceptualization of institutional changes makes two seemingly conflicting perspectives compatible: one diagnosing national convergence on academic capitalism and one arguing for lasting divergence across national political economic regimes. Upon proposing ideal-typical trajectories of market-making institutional liberalization, the article explores path-dependent movement toward varieties of academic capitalism in the three countries. The findings on the socio-economic effects of this transformation suggest the need to moderate expectations on the ability of reformed higher education systems to contain contemporary societies’ centrifugal forces.

Jennifer R. Olson

Papers

Worlds of higher education transformed: toward varieties of academic capitalism