The expansion and differentiation of global higher education without a well-defined strategy means that the sector faces a ¡°period of anarchy¡±, a study warns.

The from the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) at Boston College added that governments have attempted to regulate enrolment and providers but with ¡°diminishing success¡± as international forces such as rankings, market forces including the demand for new knowledge and skills, and social demand for greater access ¡°make it nearly impossible to keep pace¡±.

The study, which calls for the ¡°anarchy¡± to be turned into a ¡°coherent and integrated system of good quality post-secondary institutions¡± that can deal with ¡°21st-century challenges¡±, was commissioned by?the K?rber Foundation, a non-profit German organisation,?in collaboration with the German Rectors¡¯ Conference.

¡°Postsecondary education is passing through a period of anarchy, being diversified by a wide range of purposes and clienteles and seemingly beyond the capacity of any government to manage these changes well,¡± the study says.

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Philip Altbach, founding director of CIHE and co-author of the study, Responding to massification: differentiation in postsecondary education worldwide, told Times Higher Education that countries ¡°don¡¯t quite understand how [higher education] works and what can be done to make it as effective as possible¡±.

He said that this is a ¡°universal problem¡± but that some states in the US, such as California, have for the public sector ¡°reasonably well-organised systems that divide the different kinds of institutions¡± based on the needs of the state and the needs of students.

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The will to coordinate the system must come from governments, he said, because all higher education institutions ¡°want to be Harvard¡±.

However, Professor Altbach said that the private sector, the fastest-growing portion of post-secondary education globally, is ¡°not managed very well¡± in terms of quality or serving the broader public interest in any country, despite the fact that it has an ¡°important¡± mission to serve a wider section of society.

Although former US president Barack Obama attempted to crack down on for-profit private universities, Professor Altbach?said that these institutions are likely to ¡°grow rapidly again¡± in the US under Donald Trump, who owned for-profit education company Trump University between 2005 and 2010.

¡°I¡¯m not a guy who believes in Soviet planning models but I do think that what European analysts call government steering of systems broadly stated is necessary,¡± Professor Altbach said.?¡°The California Master Plan is very state interventionist in that sense. Californians wouldn¡¯t think of it that way but it is.¡±

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Another potential model would be to classify types of institutions rather than rank them, in order to ¡°get the public and governments to understand that there are different kinds of institutions¡±.

But Professor Altbach said he was ¡°not that optimistic that there¡¯ll be a major change¡±.

¡°Countries have to realise there¡¯s a problem first and many don¡¯t,¡± he said. ¡°Massification is inevitable and dealing with it is not easy. And countries don¡¯t want to devote more public resources to it and in many cases have neither the will nor the capacity to manage the growth that is occurring.

¡°And the changes in the economy present different needs which it¡¯s hard for governments to predict.¡±

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ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com