Abstract
Debates and policies in Europe as regards the diversity of higher education institutions and programmes have changed substantially over the years. When expansion of the rate of new entry students was expected to grow beyond 10%, diversification between types of higher education institutions became the most popular option, whereas no consensus emerged as far as the extent of diversity and the most desirable classifications are concerned. In the 1980s, attention shifted gradually towards “vertical” differences among institutions of formally the same type. Since the 1990s, more extreme modes of vertical diversity were more frequently advocated as options to embark into world-wide competition for “world-class university”. The concurrent popular debates are criticized as blaming moderate vertical inter-institutional diversity, emphasis on intra-institutional diversity, efforts to put prime emphasis on a variety of profiles of any model other than extreme vertical diversity as counteracting “quality”, although evidence for the superiority of the model praised is feeble.
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Teichler, U. Diversification? Trends and explanations of the shape and size of higher education. High Educ 56, 349–379 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9122-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9122-8