The Dynamics of Change in Higher Education

Download or read book The Dynamics of Change in Higher Education written by Svein Kyvik and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In most Western European countries, higher education has to an increasing extent been developing outside universities, partly through the establishment of new ins- tutions, and partly through the upgrading of professional and vocational schools into higher education colleges. The main trend in countries with a binary system has been that student numbers have increased more in the college sector than in the university sector. Yet, there is a shortage of in-depth studies on the changes that have taken place in this part of the educational system, and on the processes that have driven this development. The aim of this book is to improve our understanding of these processes, through developing concepts and theoretical perspectives which might offer new insights of complex phenomena. This book is based upon a large number of studies on college education in Norway and in other Western European countries. I have studied change processes in this field over a period stretching back to the late 1970s (Kyvik 1981), and this book synthesises my former publications, as well as updates the development until August 2008, and presents new analyses based on my gradual attainment of deeper insight into the processes that have taken place.