Interviews

EEP: There are in fact several, often somewhat contradictory trends at play around the world with regard to institutional diversity in higher education. On the one hand, there is a great pressure on institutions to perform well on indicators that are important for success in the main international institutional rankings. This trend has a strong homogenizing effect, focusing attention on the research performance of institutions, on their reputation and, to some extent on their selectivity. On the other hand, massification of higher education, growing costs of provision and the policies calling for social equity and cohesion exert a different pressure. To respond to these demands for greater access, higher education institutions are growing in diversity in many ways. There is a growing diversity in what higher education institutions offer in terms of disciplinary spectrum and in terms of modes of delivery – face-to-face instruction, distance education and blended learning. As well, funding of higher education is increasingly diverse with growing numbers of private commercial, private non-for profit and publicly funded institution in which the share of private sources of funding are growing more rapidly than other sources. Internationalization and its first ‘cousin’, globalization are accelerating both of these trends due to the strong focus on the promotion and easing of academic mobility through greater structural similarity in degree programs, qualifications and most importantly, language of instruction. In my view, diversity is at present increasing and there will be both large multiversities that come together through mergers or other networking mechanisms, but as the student population also diversifies, there may also be a stronger demand for smaller, more elite institutions which will provide a more traditional learning environment. In short, while I do believe major and quite fundamental changes in higher education are taking place and even more are on the horizon, they will occur more by the introduction of new approaches than doing away with old models, thus increasing diversity even more.