ABSTRACT
Around the world, governments indicate that national economies rely to a large extent on higher education for success. The emphasis on the economic value of higher education has become more loudly asserted in recent years, perhaps as the implications of globalization have become apparent, though it is visible historically – for example – in the establishment of the Land Grant Colleges in the United States during the nineteenth century, and in the recommendations of the Robbins Report (Committee on Higher Education, 1963) that led to the first major expansion of higher education in the UK. The perspective is one that Becker (1975) described in terms of the development of ‘human capital’, and is seen as particularly apposite to advanced economies since they are decreasingly able to compete in terms of basic production but instead have to concentrate on the advancement and exploitation of ‘high end’ knowledge.
