Enhancing the quality of higher education: governance and funding challenges

Stéphan VINCENT-LANCRINOECDCentre for Educational Research 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)

Source: Levy and Murnane

Mea

n ta

sk in

put

as p

erce

ntile

s of

th

e 19

60 t

ask

dist

ribut

ion

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)

EDUCATION / TEACHING

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)

Change in expenditures on tertiary education (1995-2003)

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 population

2005 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 tertiary education learning outcomes

• Differentiated tertiary education sector– Avoid academic drift

• Develop soft skills during first years of university– Implies better student/staff ratio for the undergraduate

years (funding)– New pedagogies and productivity enhancements (e-

learning?)

• Internationalisation– Encourage outward and inward student mobility

Quality of education• Autonomy and accountability

– Lift administrative burdens of public accountancy– Autonomy to hire and to some extent set wages

• Quality assurance mechanisms– Risks: costly and burdensome– Objective: should develop quality culture

• Performance-based funding– Important to have agreed targets– Mix of input- and output-based funding works well

• Importance of lifelong learning– Not necessarily in tertiary education– Examples: community colleges in the US

RESEARCH

Share of students enrolled in advanced research programmes (ISCED 6) (2005)

Research

« Public » research expenditures as a percentage of GDP (2005)

Lisbon agenda target

Number of (ISI) articles per million inhabitant

Relative public research productivity

Public research as % of GDP

Sci

enti

fic

art

icle

s per

mill

ion inhabit

ants

Relative public research productivity

Public research as % of GDP

Sci

enti

fic

art

icle

s per

mill

ion inhabit

ants

Quality of research

• Concentrate the funding?– A question of balance: project-based funding

and block grants– Avoid short term funding and « research to the

assessment »

• Relocate the excellent research?– World class universities, mergers, centres of

excellence– To be balanced against regional innovation

• Avoid academic drift

CONCLUSIONS

Conclusion• Research is important, but education even more so

• Funding is important: level and type of allocation

– More funding for tertiary education(new cost sharing?)– Balance in funding mechanisms, based on inputs and outputs– In research, be ready to « lose » money – Competing with Harvard will be difficult…

• But quality is not just about money

– Education: innovation in teaching, focus on graduation and not just entry

– Research: be ready to lose and waste money by funding controversial research and researchers

• Internationalisation contributes to quality enhancement

THANK YOU

Stephan.Vincent-Lancrin@oecd.org

www.oecd.org/edu/universityfutures