What really happens in higher education governance? Trajectories of adopted policy instruments in higher education over
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What really happens in higher education governance? Trajectories of adopted policy instruments in higher education over time in 16 European countries Giliberto Capano 1 & Andrea Pritoni 2 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Over the past three decades, governments have recurrently intervened in higher education. Over time, significant changes have occurred in inherited national governance modes. These reforms have been assessed in different ways, such as by emphasising the shift to the more supervisory role of the State, or the increasing privatisation and marketisation following the neoliberal paradigm, or the overall process of re-regulation. This paper sheds light on these different judgements by addressing the governance shift by focusing on the sequences of policy instrument mixes adopted over time in 16 European countries. By analysing 25 years of policy developments, it is shown how the content of national governance reforms consistently varied over time and that no common template has been followed. Keywords Trajectories of policy design . Policy change . Policy sequence . Instruments . Governance
Introduction Higher education (hereafter HE) policies have undergone significant changes over the past decades in Europe and other continents. Many components of higher education systems (hereafter HESs), especially those related to the governance dimension, have
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-02000529-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Giliberto Capano [email protected]
1
Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
2
Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Torino, Turin, Italy
Higher Education
been changed. Through changes in the governance dimensions, governments attempted to push HESs to be more effective, efficient and responsive to societal needs. These reforms have been considered a very relevant historical watershed that represents the rise of the evaluative state (Neave 2012), ‘supervisory/steering at the distance’ policies (Van Vught 1989; Capano 2011), and New Public Management applications (Paradeise et al. 2009; Bleiklie 2018). However, the judgement of the content of these reforms has changed over time. In fact, while there was initially great emphasis on the politics of autonomy (through which universities were given more autonomy in pursuing their missions under the supervision of the state (Neave and Van Vught 1991)), the other side of this policy has recently been emphasised by noting that the reforms have constituted a kind of reregulative process (Hedmo and Wedlin 2008; Enders et al. 2013). By using evaluation and specific regulation, governments have substantially constrained the autonomy of their universities. Furthermore, this long process of continuous reforms has been the object of more radical critics, who stigmatised the neoliberal nature of such reforms and their common goals to transform HE into a
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