Director: Daniel C. Levy

PROPHE Working Papers

All Working Paper Abstracts Are Translated

(mostly into Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Thai).

Included are (tentative) titles projected for 2006-2007

Additionally, PROPHE members also publish their pieces in journals and books.

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Current Publications

1. Levy, Daniel C. 2002. "Unanticipated Development: Perspectives on Private Higher Education's Emerging Roles," PROPHE Working Paper No.1.

The global explosion of private higher education, astonishing in extent and intensity, often catches government and most other observers by surprise. Rarely is the private surge centrally designed or even widely anticipated (despite being related to visible and broad economic, social, political, and international trends). Public policy commonly emerges only in delayed fashion.

Although not all private growth is unanticipated, the unanticipated share is large and it encompasses a startling range of otherwise contrasting settings. It is useful to identify and analyze the settings, quite common ones, where unanticipated development is most characteristic. These settings include demand-absorbing institutions, which dominate private growth in most countries. They include countries with little or no private higher education tradition, particularly in the developing and post-communist worlds. They also include situations in which private higher education is notably different from public higher education.

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2. Levy, Daniel C. 2003. "Profits and Practicality: How South Africa Epitomizes the Global Surge in Commercial Private Higher Education," PROPHE Working Paper No.2.

South Africa’s private higher education largely illustrates the worldwide surge in commercial private higher education. Beyond typicality, however, important features in the South African case epitomize the worldwide growth or otherwise appear in stark form.

At the core of the starkness is the for-profit nature of South African private higher education. For-profit logic plays out in nearly all matters key to the country’s private higher education, including missions, actors’ roles within and beyond the higher education institutions, ties to the job market, and relationships with public entities. In contrast, private higher education outside South Africa is usually nonprofit; more aptly stated, however, it is nonprofit in name and legal status but often for-profit in much form and behavior.

For its profits and practicality thrust, South Africa presents an intriguing case through which to explore the nature of the world’s expanding commercial private higher education. Tendencies in South Africa lead to or support significant hypotheses about this form of education, particularly in its for-profit manifestation. In turn, such hypotheses, along with data on other countries (especially the United States), help guide empirical exploration of the South African case.

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3. Levy, Daniel C. 2004. "The New Institutionalism: Mismatches with Private Higher Education’s Global Growth," PROPHE Working Paper No.3.

Spectacular contemporary growth in private higher education challenges the “new institutionalism” and its emphasis on “isomorphism.” The growth brings great inter-organizational distinctiveness and is linked to technically rational competition.

Findings about this growth and distinctiveness lead us to re-assess and revise tenets of the new institutionalism. Some tenets remain in tack in logic even as they miss on the empirical side, failing to anticipate salient tendencies such as the retreat of the state. The new institutionalism requires much less revision to help us understand the degree of isomorphism that does accompany private higher education growth.

The findings come largely from analysis of three countries (Argentina, China, and Hungary), inter-sectoral differences, and organizational goals. They extend our view of variables such as subsectors, environment, and time. They cover both the coercive and non-coercive sides of the new institutionalism’s isomorphism. And they encompass international as well as domestic tendencies.

Private higher education growth is linked to widespread changes in political–economy. These changes often reduce the centrality of the state and its public institutions while opening up possibilities for alternative organizational goals and means to legitimacy. The findings on private higher education thus allow for speculation on how the new institutionalism can be modified and interpreted in many fields undergoing robust and multi-faceted privatization.

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4. Bernasconi, Andrés. 2004. "External Affiliations and Diversity: Chile's Private Universities in International Perspective," PROPHE Working Paper No.4.

The expansion of private sectors of higher education has usually been regarded as a factor of diversification in higher education systems. Some of this differentiation has been associated, but without systematic study, to the affiliation of private institutions with organizations outside the field of higher education. This article reports the results of a study of this form of interorganizational relationship in private universities in Chile. Cases include universities founded or sponsored by religious, business and military organizations.

A typology of private universities is proposed, on the basis of the forms affiliation (or its absence), was observed to take in the cases examined. Weak and strong forms of affiliation are described, and affiliated universities are compared to “proprietary” universities, i.e., those owned by individuals who govern them from their positions in the board of directors, and “independent” universities, in which governance lies with internal –academic or administrative—constituents. Albeit derived from the case of Chile, the typology could be applied to the analysis of private higher education in other national systems. The second part of the article seeks to ascertain whether affiliation operates as a source of differentiation in Chilean private higher education.

Results show that, compared to the other types of private universities, the affiliated ones possess distinctive mission statements and declarations of principles, consistent with the orientations of their sponsor institutions, tend to be smaller, and tend to have more full-time and better qualified faculty. Some receive financial support from their sponsor organization or its members. Distinctiveness was not found in indicators of prestige and student selectivity, nor in tuition levels, program offerings, curriculum design, the weight of research and graduate programs in their functions, student socioeconomic profile, and faculty involvement in governance. This is not to say that there are no differences in these dimensions among private universities: much diversity exists, but most of it cuts across all categories of interest for our study.

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5. Kinser, Kevin; and Levy, Daniel C. 2005. "The For-Profit Sector: U.S. Patterns and International Echoes in Higher Education," PROPHE Working Paper No.5.

Analyses of private higher education should consider the increasingly important for-profit sector in many countries. Yet information on the for-profit sector has been quite limited. Even in the United States, where for-profit higher education is well-established, only recently have researchers turned their attention to studying its scope and impacts. While the growth of the for-profit sector is influenced by many of the same forces that have encouraged the global expansion of private higher education, including commercialization and privatization beyond higher education, the focus here is on identifying the international dimensions of for-profit higher education and defining its main types. We feature U.S. data and patterns as starting points for an international portrait. We outline the legal and regulatory aspects for-profit institutions, and note their often ambiguous status in many countries. And we propose a tentative classification of the for-profit sector based on the U.S. experience, beginning to apply it to the international context. Generally, while emphasizing the diversity of the sector, we highlight several tendencies of for-profit institutions of higher education that seem to hold in international analyses.

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6. Abbott, Malcolm Abbott. 2005. "Private Higher Education Penetration into a Mature Education Market: The New Zealand Experience," PROPHE Working Paper No.6.

Since 1989, when it became legally possible for private higher education to operate in New Zealand, the sector has grown to become a significant part of the country’s higher education system. We explore the private penetration, trace the changes that have occurred in private higher education, and evaluate the sector’s position in New Zealand today. The private sector has had to find a niche for itself in a higher education sector dominated by a mature, well developed public sector. In so doing, New Zealand’s private higher education exhibits differences and similarities with the private higher education internationally. Particular case study attention goes to the New Zealand case as one of private entry into a mature higher education system in an economically advanced country. Additional attention goes to the dissimilarities between the private sector and the more predominant public tertiary education institutions in New Zealand. It becomes apparent that the private sector has characteristics that make it quite different from that of the public sector in New Zealand.

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7. Levy, Daniel C. 2006. "AN INTRODUCTORY GLOBAL OVERVIEW: The Private Fit to Salient Higher Education Tendencies," PROPHE Working Paper No.7.

Private higher education has surged in recent decades and now forms a major part of the world's total higher education. A fourth of total enrollment might be a reasonable guess, albeit a very rough one. Only Western Europe remains mostly marginal to the global trend. Whether new or continuing, contemporary private growth is notable, especially in developing regions.

This working paper provides only an introductory, quite partial sketch of how private higher education tends to fit broader higher education patterns, particularly patterns of recent change. Since higher education, and even just private higher education, is very diverse and involves multiple tendencies, it would be far too simple to say merely that private higher education fits broad higher education tendencies. Yet we see reason to highlight private sector characteristics such as huge expansion, responses to rising student demand and changing economies, average smallness in institutional size, tuition dependence, commercial orientations, hierarchical governance, political order, and a certain global self-identification. On the other hand, comparatively limited on the private side are academic research, graduate education, full-time staff, government finance, and government control.

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8. Scheker, Ancell M. 2007. "COMPARING SCHOOL-LEVEL TO PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION: Using the Dominican Republic as a Pioneer Study," PROPHE Working Paper No.8.

This working paper reviews concepts and categories developed in private higher education research, analyzing their applicability to lower levels of education. Most specifically and prominently, the paper uses the three waves of private growth identified in Latin American higher education-Catholic, elite, and demand-absorbing-and categories of finance, governance, and function to analyze new and prior private growth in primary and secondary schools in the Dominican Republic.

For Latin American private higher education, Levy (1986a) identified certain patterns of growth. The private sector expansion began with Catholic universities, followed by some elite secular universities, and lastly a boom of secular institutions that absorb a growing demand that the public sector could not satisfy. This pattern was confirmed for the Dominican Republic (Levy, 1991). Like some other Latin American nations, the Dominican Republic did not have a private university until the 1960s, the first being a Catholic university. Later, other private institutions emerged, two of them classified as institutions for the elite. The great demand for higher education facilitated the proliferation of many private institutions. In the last decades, the private higher education sector growth in the Dominican Republic has been remarkable. More than 60% of the enrollment is in private higher education institutions. Hence private higher institutions in Dominican Republic have emerged in three waves, following the regional patterns for Latin America, each one with a relatively distinctive role and its own rationales and dynamics. Has primary and secondary private education followed a similar pattern of growth? Such an inter-level question has not hitherto been studied in any country.

Thus, this working paper analyzes causes of the non-higher education proliferation of the private sector and identifies parallel patterns of growth to those found in private higher institutions. However, differences are also found. Contrasts are presented and may facilitate understanding the characteristics of each level (see appendix 1) as well as the distinction between private and public institutions.

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9. Otieno, Wycliffe and Levy, Daniel C. 2007. "Public Disorder, Private Boons? Inter-sectoral Dynamics Illustrated by the Kenyan Case."PROPHE Working Paper No.9.

Within and beyond Africa, it is the public sector much more than the private sector that is the scene of strikes and other forms of disorder, conflict and difficulty. Yet the private sector can be much affected by the public problems. Effects may be simultaneously positive for the private sector and deleterious for the public sector. Although a few higher education works have considered the private sector impacts of general public sector disorder, our Kenyan case study goes much further in uncovering and detailing inter-sectoral dynamics. Compared to the (sparse) literature on higher education inter-sectoral dynamics, it extends consideration from Latin America to Africa, from elite to other private higher education, and from challenges facing public universities to ensuing challenges facing private universities. It also extends consideration of strikes to the faculty side. Faculty strikes have been less common than student strikes in higher education, but Africa stands out for experiencing both strike forms. We treat faculty strikes as a prominent case of the wider phenomenon of disorder, conflict, or difficulty.

The ramifications of public disorder do not stop at one-shot impacts on private higher education. On the contrary, the Kenyan case reveals dynamic and multiple, sometimes sequential, public-private interactions. The public sector does not haplessly suffer and the private sector does not inevitably gain. Both face challenges as the other sector shifts strategies and as macro political and economic contexts change. The case of Kenyan faculty strikes tells us much about unfolding realities in African higher education and much about private-public dynamics more widely. Whether in regard to particular private gains or generally in regard to multiple public-private shifts, the case provides insights into significant conceptual and empirical questions about inter-sectoral impacts-whether in higher education or beyond.

10. Marie Pachuashvili, 2007. "Changing Patterns of Private-Public Growth and Decline: The Case of Georgian Higher Education."PROPHE Working Paper No.10.

Click here for the full article as PDF, WORD

In most post-communist countries, the beginning of the 1990s witnessed creation and growth of private higher education institutions on the one hand and privatization of public educational services on the other. The Georgian developments mostly fit this general pattern, but, in many respects, it is an extreme case. First of all, both private and public sectors in higher education saw striking fluctuations in their growth patterns. Besides, these powerful developments took place against a fairly unchanged regulatory background. For these reasons, examination of the Georgian trends allows better appreciation of the relationship that exists between private and public sectors in higher education, as well as further generalizations. It is argued here that in Georgia, in face of a lax regulatory regime, increased market competition has served as one of the main factors for shaping private-public sector dynamics. That is, rapid private higher education proliferation in the beginning of the 1990s had greatly contributed to the fall in the public sector's enrollment share, while rigorous public sector privatization later took its toll on the private sector's share of enrolment. Examination of institutional types also reveals significant interrelationships between the nature of the courses offered by the two sectors in higher education.

11.Levy, Daniel C. Access through Private Higher Education: Global Patterns and Indian Illustrations.PROPHE Working Paper No.11.

Click here for the full article as PDF, WORD

One of the salient concerns in contemporary higher education internationally is access, which is rapidly expanding. Another salient trend is the rapid expansion of private higher education. These two salient tendencies have not been treated in scholarship as heavily intertwined. Much of the reason is that many people associate “private” with “elite,” in part because of the U.S. reality of leading private universities clearly associated with elite functioning. In much of the rest of the world, suspicion of privates runs deep and there is little disposition to couple the negative connotations of private with the positive connotations of access.

Yet as enrolment has been rising rapidly and keeps increasing, there are strong limitations on what can be accommodated through public higher education. Practically, either access is spurned, widely considered politically, socially, and even economically untenable or there must be explosive growth of private higher education. This is largely a matter of demand for higher education greatly outdistancing at least the public supply of higher education. Thus, much of the link between access and private higher education concerns “demand-absorbing” institutions, which is not to overlook more specialized avenues of access to other types of private institutions. At any rate private higher education has grown powerfully in recent decades and seems destined to grow further.  India is a marked case of still very low cohort enrolment in higher education but with great demand and rapid private growth.

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