Hans Vossensteyn

Challenges in Student Financing: State Financial Support to Students – A Worldwide Perspective

While higher education is regarded a high priority for economic development in many countries, public budgets often fall short to support desired levels of expansion in higher education. This leads to cost‐sharing: students and their families are required to contribute more to the costs of higher education. This paper explores worldwide trends to cope with this issue based on the following questions: Is it fair to ask for larger contributions from students? What are the global patterns and forms of higher private shares in the costs of higher education? And what is the impact of cost‐sharing on higher education access and equity?

Comparing national policies on institutional profiling in Germany and the Netherlands

The concepts of differentiation and profiling are cornerstones in discussions about the organisation of contemporary higher education systems, following the trends of massification and global competition. This contribution provides a system-level description and comparison of the German and Dutch higher education systems regarding these topics, and points to possible interactions and development concepts connecting differentiation, strategic profiling of universities and excellence. Though both higher education systems started from very different positions and with differing policies towards differentiation, the global trends and national aspirations for the systems, as well as individual universities in Germany and the Netherlands, are comparable. A look into the resulting ranking positions of German and Dutch universities generally shows a more successful development for the Dutch higher education institutions in the last few years – which could possibly indicate a crucial time lag in the effects of differentiation policies in higher education as the German excellence and differentiation efforts fundamentally took hold more than 10 years after the Dutch initiatives in this field.

How To Get In?‐‐A Comparative Overview of Access to Higher Education

In many countries, the transition from “elite” to “mass” higher education has provided a strong stimulus for putting access high on the political agenda. The accessibility of nine western European countries is explored on the basis of the concepts of selectivity and affordability. The nine countries concerned display a degree of variation in terms of relative selectivity, ranging from those with strong entrance selection procedures, such as Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, to countries with an open system, such as Austria, Belgium (Flanders), and The Netherlands. In addition, there is a good deal of variation in the extent to which students can afford to attend higher education. In countries in which student support is predominantly given directly to the students through grants and loans, they are in a better position to meet their costs than in countries in which students are mainly subsidized with public support through their families

Dropout and completion in higher education in Europe: main report

Improving completion and reducing dropout in higher education are key concerns for higher education in Europe. This study on dropout and completion in higher education in Europe demonstrates that national governments and higher education institutions use three different study success objectives: completion, time-to-degree and retention. To address these objectives policy makers at national and institutional level apply various policy instruments. These can be categorized under three main policy headings: financial incentives; information and support for students; and organizational issues. The evidence indicates that countries that have more explicit study success objectives, targets and policies are likely to be more successful. Particularly if the policy approach is comprehensive and consistent. As such, it is important that study success is an issue in the information provision to (prospective) students, in financial incentives for students and institutions, in quality assurance, and in the education pathways offered to students. Furthermore, increasing the responsibility of higher education institutions for study success, for example in the area of selecting, matching, tracking, counselling, mentoring and integrating students in academic life is clearly effective. Finally, to support the policy debate and monitoring of study success evidence, there is a need for more systematic international comparative data and thorough analysis of the effectiveness of study success policies

Transparency in higher education : The emergence of a new perspective on higher education governance

Reliable information and transparency on the benefits that higher education institutions offer their students, funders and communities are key to their legitimacy, their funding and their competitiveness. Worldwide, relationships between governmental authorities and higher education institutions are changing, particularly because of the increased demands for transparency about outcomes and impacts of higher education. In our contribution, we discuss three higher education ‘transparency tools’: accreditation, rankings and—briefly—performance contracts. We present some recent developments regarding these tools in the broader context of governance and policy-making and analyse how they aim to address the growing need for more transparency. The transparency tools are part of a recently emerging governance paradigm in higher education, networked governance; a paradigm that explicitly acknowledges the diverse information needs of a wide variety of higher education stakeholder groups.

Performance Orientation for Public Value: Dutch Myths and Realities in an International Perspective

Steering relationships and governance instruments are proving to be a dynamic field of policy-making and research in higher education. Governments continuously change policies trying to improve their steering instruments in order to encourage higher education institutions to become more efficient, to deliver higher quality services and to conform to national priorities

Breaking Fresh Ground: Regional Co-operation in Higher Education.

One of the most recent European developments in the internationalization of higher education is the stimulation of regional co‐operation among institutions. In the so‐called border countries policy, Flanders, The Netherlands, and the German Lander of North‐Rhine Westphalia, Bremen, and Lower Saxony are collaborating in different ways to establish an “open higher education space”. Within the framework of this border countries policy, various initiatives have been taken in order to support co‐operation among higher education institutions from the countries involved. Amongst other things, research was undertaken in order to gain insight into the differences and similarities of the programmes offered in the five countries. In addition, the Ministries of Education of the participating countries have begun to allocate funds to institutions that have taken co‐operation initiatives that coincide with the policies of the countries concerned. These two aspects of the border countries policy will be discussed in thi...