Policy changes, marketisation trends and spatial dispersion in European higher education: comparing public and private sectors

Abstract

Decades of expansion in European higher education have led to the need to cater to an increasingly diverse student population in a more economical and efficient way. The realities of mass higher education have resulted in major transformations, with visible changes in the modes and instruments of regulation and a greater emphasis on market forces and institutional competition. In this article we reflect about the relevance of those changes from a regional point of view, especially by looking at the public–private mix of higher education and the way those regulatory changes may have influenced patterns of spatial and programmatic diversification across a sample of European countries.