The Failure of Public Higher Education Reform in North America and Western Europe: The Need for a New Beginning

A consistent set of criticisms of the organisation, dynamics, and failings of public higher education (HE) has been articulated since the early 1990s. Most are on target and point to a system in freefall—expensive, ineffective, and unsatisfactory for students, faculty, many staff members, and the relevant communities they serve. Despite this, the situation in HE in North America and Europe has only worsened as neoliberal management continues to intensify management by the numbers, control of student and faculty speech, administrative bloat, and increases in tuition costs.

The consequent decline in public and employer support and the approaching significant decline in birth rates, and consequently in the number of college-age students in Western industrialised countries, have not moved the powerholders in these institutions to reform the institutions in fundamental ways. I argue that piecemeal public university reforms no longer hold any promise. Only a fundamental re-creation of public HE will change the situation. This re-creation must be based on open systems dynamics, transdisciplinarity, and a focus on sustainability for the stakeholders (the faculty and students, the surrounding communities, and the larger planetary ecology). The chapter closes with an examination of what such public institutions might be like.