This volume focuses on the question of whether it is appropriate and inevitable that higher education systems are becoming so large and so diverse that the only realistic way they can be analysed is as aggregates of market-like transactions.

Contents: Ourania Filippakou: Higher Education As a Public Good: Notes for a Discussion – Ronald Barnett: In Search of a Public: Higher Education in a Global Age – Paul Standish: Transparency, Accountability and the Public Role of Higher Education – Peter Scott: Higher Education, the Public Good and the Public Interest – Mala Singh: Institutionalising the Public Good: Conceptual and Regulatory Challenges – Pedro Teixeira: A Most Public Private Matter - Changing Ideas of Economists about the Public-Private Dimensions of Higher Education – Angela Brew: The Paradoxical University and the Public Good – Ted Tapper: Is Higher Education a Public Good? An Analysis of the English Debate – Kai-ming Cheng/Rui Yang: A Cultural Value in Crisis: Education As Public Good in China – David D. Dill: Assuring the Public Good in Higher Education: Essential Framework Conditions and Academic Values – Jon Nixon: Inequality and the Erosion of the Public Good – Gareth Williams: Reflections on the Debate.

«Perhaps never before has the need to argue the case for higher education to be regarded as a public good been more apparent. But the public good can be a contested concept. The great virtue of this book is that it describes itself as a ‘conversation’ about the public good and it brings together distinguished contributors who offer contrasting sets of views on the subject. This is a book for our times and should be read by anyone interested in the question what universities are for or why their function is not just to provide higher education as a marketable commodity.» (Michael Shattock, Visiting Professor, Centre for Higher Education Studies, Institute of Education; Author, ‘Making Policy in British Higher Education 1945-2011’) «The extent to which higher education is a private or a public good goes to the heart of what it means to be a university. It is both a philosophical and very practical matter. The challenges in interpreting the responsibilities and opportunities afforded by the constantly shifting nature of the private-public dynamic is reflected in this excellent and thought-provoking collection of papers presented by a group of leading thinkers and policy analysts. The book provides important new insights into the way this key issue is understood in an age characterized by a fuzzying divide between ‘private’ and ‘public’ interest. ‘Higher Education as a Public Good’ will help to inform and revitalize debate about the purposes and multiple identities of higher education.» (Bruce Macfarlane, Professor of Higher Education, University of Southampton)