Professor Van Ry

Clark Kerr’s multiversity has spread across the world, but at home it is fraying at the edges. A rethink on tuition fees and on the wider benefits of higher education is needed to ensure its model of balancing excellence and access continues to impact international higher education.

The Californian model of higher education has achieved worldwide influence. Whether it was a process of conscious imitation, or a case of responding to similar conditions to those in California, since 1960 most countries have followed the Californian approach in two respects:

First, the continuous expansion of access to higher education in response to social demand; and second, adoption of the large science university, the multiversity, at the crown of the higher education system.

Clark Kerr’s multiversity is spreading to the four corners of the world. This poses challenges and opportunities for American higher education. Higher education is a core social sector that influences government, business, technology and other domains.

The evolving relations between universities in the US, and the fast-rising East Asian systems on the other side of the Pacific, will do much to shape the future in this country and the world – not just the future of higher education, but the future of society and economy.

So the Californian model – or aspects of it – has been the leading influence on higher education development everywhere. But the high access, high science model has run into difficulties at home. <Read more.>

Via Simon Marginson, University World News.