Global Public Space

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Global Public Space Global Marketplace

• Rethinking the public/private
• divide in higher education
• Simon Marginson
• SRHE conference, 16 December 2004

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Coverage of paper

• Method of argument
• Traditional meanings of public/private
• Problems of the economic approach, and problems
  of the statist approach
• Preferred definition of public/private
• Applying this to national higher education
• Applying this to global higher education

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Wrong Way, Go Back

• Loose uses of the public/private distinction
• Public government state-owned non-market
• Private privately owned business (or civil
  society or home and family or self) market

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Method of paper

• The first purpose of inquiry is explanatory not
  normative
• The essential issue is not ownership
  (state/non-state) but the social and economic
  outcomes of education (public/ private)
• Public and private attributes are not fixed, or
  natural, or universal. Higher education is a
  (variable) mix of public and private attributes
• The incidence of public/private attribute is
  policy sensitive, historically relative,
  culture-bound.
• Public goods are heterogeneous to private goods,
  not the aggregation of private goods
• Public/private goods in higher education are not
  mutually exclusive. Sometimes zero-sum, sometimes
  positive-sum
• We need a concept of public/private that works
  consistently across both the national and global
  dimensions

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Public Goodsstatist definition

• Public government or state ownership

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Public Goodsdefinition in economics

• non-rivalrous can be consumed by any number of
  people without being depleted (e.g. knowledge of
  a mathematical theorem)
• non-excludable the benefits cannot be confined
  to individual buyers (e.g. social tolerance)
• -- Samuelson 1954

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includes

• externalities or spillovers positive effects
  of individual higher education not fully captured
  by the student (e.g. improved productivity of
  workmates)
• collective goods not captured by individuals
  (e.g. social peace, more diverse cultural
  exchange)

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Problems of traditional approaches to
public/private

• neo-classical economics naturalises
  public/private, biased in favour of markets
• statism underestimates potential of markets and
  civil society
• both neglect global dimension, especially
  global public goods

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Definition of public goods in higher education

• goods with a significant element of non-rivalry
  and/or non-excludability and
• goods that are made broadly available across
  populations

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Examples of public/private goods in higher
education

• private goods student places that confer
  personal cultural capital and relative individual
  advantage (positional goods),
• public goods knowledge, social literacy,
  collective cultural formation, systems of
  recognition of qualifications, etc.

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Revision 1inverting public/private

• In national higher education systems, higher
  education is not necessarily or overwhelmingly
  public in character. Regardless of formal
  ownership or fee systems, a substantial part of
  the goods produced are individualised private
  goods

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Revision 2inverting private/public

• In national higher education systems, higher
  education is not necessarily or overwhelmingly
  private in character. Regardless of formal
  ownership or fee systems, a substantial part of
  the goods it produces are public goods

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Global private goods in higher education

• foreign degrees acquired across borders and
  often used globally
• cross-border transfer and adaptation of
  commercial knowledge

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Global public goods

• goods that have a significant element of
  non-rivalry and/or non-excludability and
• are made broadly available across populations on
  a global scale
• Whether and how - global public goods are
  provided determines whether globalisation is an
  opportunity or a threat Kaul et al. 2003, p. 2)

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Some global public goods in higher education

• Extensive and intensive cross-border networking
  creates scope for externalities in particular
  nations. both global goods, and global bads
  (e.g. brain drain, cultural subversion by foreign
  influences) are produced
• Academic knowledge and the systems for
  circulating and codifying it (again note cultural
  asymmetries)
• Cross-cultural encounters and exchanges
• International understanding and tolerance
• Infrastructures and resources that assist
  production and trade, government, creation of
  ideas and images, etc.
• Systems and protocols in higher education for
  recognition, etc that facilitate people mobility
  (and hence migration)

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But

• Global public goods are under-recognised there
  is a discrepancy between a globalised world and
  national, separate units of policy-making (Kaul
  et al. 1999, p. xxvi).

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Revision 3inverting private/public

• In the global environment, higher education
  involves not just production of private goods in
  a trading environment, but the production of
  significant public goods. We need an
  inter-governmental space in which global
  educational goods are recognised and facilitated.

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Revision 4inverting public/private

• In addition to national governments and
  international agencies, global negotiations on
  global public goods in higher education should
  also take in civil agents, including NGOs,
  autonomous higher education institutions,
  disciplinary communities, and professions and
  also the relevant market actors, given that the
  production of private goods can also spin-off
  into public goods

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Conclusions

• We need tools for measuring and judging
  cross-border externalities and global collective
  goods, we need to focus national policy on these
  elements
• We need inter-governmental spaces at global level
  focused on higher education
• Global agencies have a key potential
• We need to enhance global access to goods already
  available, such as research

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Whether and how - global public goods are
provided determines whether globalisation is an
opportunity or a threat