Demand for Higher Education and the Supply of Graduates

Discussion of higher education policy is today dominated by an assumption that universities and associated institutions are in a critical state of transition, adapting with varying degrees of difficulty and grace to increasing demand from the admissions side, while seeking to adapt their output of graduates to labour market demand.Underlying this assumption is a fuzzy conception of a 'traditional university' increasingly pressured by the social and political imperatives of democratic societies, and by the more directly economic imperative of market forces.But these factors have been shaping the education system for the past 150 years, and have formed what is taken to be the traditional structure, now under attack.More pertinent to present problems is the fact that, throughout Europe, education systems are in one way or another controlled by governments.The widespread sense of crisis and need for reform is hence directly political rather than economic or social, driven on by politicians employing the language of modernisation and reform.In Britain, as elsewhere, this has become a self-perpetuating process: there will always be something in need of reform, and careers to be made by promoting it.And in