academic capitalism

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Universities learn the lexicon of business

New global demands could mean a big harvest in the groves of academe

Phil Sommerich in Lisbon
Monday June 3, 2002
The Guardian

The talk in the common rooms and quads of British universities is of
cross-border alliances, mergers, new global brands and public private
partnerships. The lexicon of the business world has well and truly
entered academe, and it is likely fundamentally to change the way
knowledge is delivered.

Local and global trends are behind these changes. In Britain, the £1bn
funding gap which the Guardian reported last month is facing
universities, and the government's ambitious aim of 50% higher education
participation among under-30s by 2010 - meaning a 25% increase in
provision - has created financial strains. In contrast the advent of
e-learning across the internet, the growth in workplace learning and
exploding demand for higher education in developing countries offer
financial incentives.

At last month's World Education Market in Lisbon, which attracted nearly
1,000 organisations from 82 countries, British universities were
relatively thin on the ground, but few experts doubt they will be part
of the change. "It is not a question of if but when," said Ron
Perkinson, senior education specialist at the World Bank's International
Finance Corporation. "What is happening around the globe is that the
larger traditional markets are being challenged through the
globalisation of education. Britain and its fantastic tradition has so
much to offer. It is certain politicians and government officials are
going to look for better use of their education pounds."

In London, Colin Biggs, higher education analyst at
PricewaterhouseCoopers, said some British universities are more
suspicious of PPP than US or Australia counterparts, but things are
changing. For a start, e-learning means universities are starting to
talk of mergers. "The sort of market needed for e-learning means that a
lot of institutions are going to look at whether they are the right size
and have the critical mass. I expect to see at least a 10% reduction in
the number of universities over this decade."

He thinks it unlikely that private funding will be kept out of this new
academic landscape. "E-learning requires considerable levels of
investment. Not only that but it requires the joined-up approach that
universities need to act in consortiums, which they are not necessarily
used to. A private sector partner can bring not only money but also
provide a way of managing the relationships between the consortiums." He
once regarded the tech sector as most likely to blaze the university PPP
trail but suspects the dotcom im plosion has quelled enthusiasm. Mr
Perkinson is less sure. "[The] private education sector is one of the
few sectors to have held firm since September 11 and, in the first
quarter of this year, US post-secondary private education showed 15%
growth."

Universitas 21, a consortium of 18 uni versities in 10 countries -
including those in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Nottingham - has
already formed a $50m alliance with Thomson Corporation, aiming "to take
a substantial share of the global e-education market".

Sir Graeme Davies, vice-chancellor of Glasgow University, is cautious
about the PPP potential. He points to the Unext consortium which he says
has fallen to bits because it concentrated on the US market which "many
would argue is already the best provided market in the world".

"We thought long and hard about the U21 partnership but e-learning is an
arena into which no university can afford to go it alone. It is not a
cheap business and if it is going to be done it has to be done well and
professionally. This is why we are in such a focused arena. What has
tended to happen is that people in the main focus on niche elements of
the market. We are interested in medical ethics, travel medicine, things
like that."

Does this mean esoteric subjects could be extinguished as PPPs pump
funds into ones with global potential? Dr Biggs, a former lecturer in
theoretical linguistics, smiles: "I remember speculation during the
1970s and 1980s that there would no longer be professors of Sanskrit
about because it would no longer be sustainable. We still have
professors of Sanskrit."

He denies e-learning replaces academic diversity and human contact with
a homogenised, cheaply delivered curriculum. "The possibility exists
that private sector money and expertise can go into producing content -
collaboration with HE institutions - and those institutions will then
work with and deliver those materials." For the foreseeable future,
partnerships would be built around specific projects rather than entire
courses.

Dr Barry McGaw, deputy director for education at the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development, told a Lisbon seminar: "Education
has been largely absent from the debate about globalisation because it
was thought to be essentially a non-trade service." Yet there are 1.5m
post-secondary students attending colleges and universities abroad in
OECD countries. Their grants and fees amounted to £2bn, equivalent to 3%
of total services trade between OECD members.

While Britain has about 200,000 such students, second only to the
450,000 in the US, it is Australia which has shown by far the fastest
growth. It earns £80 per capita of its population from exports of
educational services, compared with £27 for the US and about £40 for
Britain, according to Dr McGaw.

As the World Trade Organisation prepares to include education in its
next general agreement on trade in services, it will also have to take
account of three other fast-growing areas of global trade in education,
he added: provision of services across borders through
internet-delivered and other forms of distance learning; universities
establishing "offshore campuses" abroad; and secondment of academic
staff to foreign countries.

The downside, nobody denies, is a widening of the gap between the
technological have and have-not nations. "It is one of the sad
possibilities," Dr Biggs says. "It is clearly a challenge for the World
Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other internationally focused
bodies."

Bringing business practices into education is causing other worries.
Philip Altbach, professor of higher education at Boston College in the
US, said: "I have a deep concern about the public interest as we rush
into new issues which are dominated by other considerations."