A Cross-National Comparison of Higher Education Markets in Western Europe

In my contribution I want to mark the contours of a new governance concept in the European higher education context. It concerns the notion of ‘market governance’ that refers to the use of the market mechanism of supply and demand in governance processes. In this governance mode, government interventions are focused on the shaping of a level playing field. While government intervention in the higher education market may be justified, it may come at the cost of lower consumer sovereignty and restricted producer autonomy. Through marketisation policy, students and higher education providers have more room to make their own trade-offs and interact more closely on the basis of reliable information. This contribution will present an analytical frame, which is based on eight conditions for perfect markets, to assess to what extent market governance has become a reality in contemporary European higher education. The analytical part concerns a cross-national comparison of eight European countries. It will be argued that there is still a key role for the government to co-design framework conditions and facilitate interaction in a more demand-driven higher education sector.