Overview

A World of Private Higher Education is the definitive treatment of a sector accounting for a third of the world's 200 million higher education enrolment--yet remaining largely unknown even to scholars of higher education and widely mis-characterized when it is considered by stakeholders or the general public. Beyond the eye-popping numbers, several inter-related thematic findings regarding the Private and the Public underscore the subject matter's importance. First, private-public differences are significant-it matters that so many students are in a sector that not long ago was only marginal in much of the world. Second, private higher education (PHE) itself is increasingly diverse, with significant and private-private differences. Third, the overlaying of the first two realities yields increasing diversity in private-public higher education distinctions. Especially for its pioneering mapping of PHE globally, regionally, and nationally, the book draws on the pioneering dataset of the pioneering scholarly program for research on PHE (Program for Research on Private Higher Education). Unprecedented in geographical scope, the dataset is unprecedented in longitudinal coverage too, dating back to 2000. Empirical methods allow for extensive analysis, and theoretical analysis draws on key private-public concepts embedded in literatures on privatization, nonprofit studies, and policy models. For the major challenge of penetrating inside the increasingly diverse private sector of higher education, Levy revises his heralded and widely employed PHE typology.