Conflicting Interests in Higher Education

Five major interests at stake in higher education systems are considered: social justice, competence, academic freedom, autonomy/accountability, and decentralization/centralization. The process by which these are implemented in the United States, England, Sweden, and France is examined and is related to the higher education system's receptiveness to functional differentiation, which can be generated by shifting interpretations of the five interests and by shifting emphases on certain of them. Two propositions are derived from the four systems' recent experience. First, state-controlled systems can be those most labor market driven. And second, the state can initiate and preserve differentiation, yet can also obstruct it. It is suggested that the implementation of conflicting interests in higher education is less a matter of the relation between state and higher education than of relations between the academic profession and the laity--between academic interest interpretations and emphases and challenging interpretations and emphases introduced from outside the higher education system. Two central factors are identified: the power and integration of the academic profession, and the openness of the system to lay access--the stronger the legislative branch of government, the greater the access. It is proposed that the receptiveness of higher education systems to differentiation will be a negative function of the power differential between the laity and the academic profession. The greater the power differential, the less receptive the system will be to functional differentiation.