Money Matters: Economic and Occupational Disruptions

Abstract

The explosion of higher education institutions examined in the last chapter was accompanied by drastic changes in their institutional mix, financing models, connections to the labor market and student expectations and politics. This chapter begins by exploring the growing privatization of higher education and the growth of private higher education institutions both non-profit and for-profit. Second, it examines the varied patterns in the spread of cost-sharing as an important feature of higher education financing. Third, it looks at the manner in which changes in economic conditions and occupational structures affected the complex and contradictory interconnections between higher education and employment. Finally, the issue of contestations over higher education organized around the vexing questions of access, affordability, and accountability is analyzed in the context of the changing dynamics of student activism around the world.