HE-F05 — Higher Education Policy and Systems

Course Code: HE-F05  |  School: School of Higher Education  |  Cluster: Level 1 — Foundations of Academic Practice

Level: Foundation  |  Duration: 6 weeks · 24–30 learning hours  |  Language: English  |  Certificate: Professional Certificate (non-degree)  |  Format: Self-paced with AI support under human supervision

Overview

Higher education systems are governed, funded and regulated by instruments that most academics never read and most administrators encounter only as compliance. Yet those instruments determine what institutions may teach, who may enrol, how quality is judged, what research is funded and what a degree is worth. Policy literacy is therefore not a specialism; it is a condition of competent institutional practice.

This course examines higher education as a policy field. It covers the instruments available to governments, the architecture of national systems and their variation, the politics of expansion and cost sharing, the regulation of quality and qualifications, research and innovation policy, and the internationalisation of both students and rules.

The course is comparative throughout, drawing on European, North American, East Asian and Southeast Asian systems, and it treats policy transfer sceptically: an instrument that works in one system frequently fails in another because the surrounding institutional conditions differ. The capstone is a policy analysis with a recommendation addressed to a named decision-maker.

Learning outcomes

On completion, a successful learner will be able to:

1. Identify the instruments available to governments in higher education — regulation, funding, information, direct provision — and explain the conditions under which each is effective.
2. Compare the architecture of at least three national systems, including binary and unified structures, and the placement of authority between ministry, buffer body and institution.
3. Analyse the politics of expansion and cost sharing, and evaluate tuition, loan and grant arrangements against equity and sustainability criteria.
4. Explain qualifications frameworks, credit systems and recognition arrangements, and assess their effect on mobility and comparability.
5. Evaluate national research and innovation policy instruments, including performance-based funding, and their documented behavioural effects.
6. Assess the drivers and consequences of internationalisation, including transnational provision and its regulatory challenges.
7. Produce a policy analysis that states the problem, evaluates options against criteria, and recommends a course of action to a named decision-maker.

Who this course is for

The course is designed for ministry and regulatory staff, institutional leaders and planners, quality assurance agency personnel, sector association and union officers, consultants and analysts working on education policy, and graduate students in public policy or education. Practitioners who must respond to policy without having shaped it will find it especially useful.

Prerequisites

Undergraduate-level policy literacy. HE-F01 is helpful background. Learners need access to policy documents from at least one system, which are generally public, and the ability to read official and statistical material critically.

Syllabus

Module 1 — Policy instruments and the state

The module classifies what governments can actually do: regulation and licensing, funding and its conditions, information provision including rankings and outcome data, and direct public provision. It examines the trade-off between steering and autonomy, and why instruments intended to raise quality frequently raise compliance cost instead.

Lessons. 1.1 A typology of instruments. 1.2 Steering at a distance. 1.3 Compliance cost and unintended effects. 1.4 Buffer bodies and their independence.

Deliverable. Diagnostic note (800 words) classifying the instruments used in one system.

Module 2 — System architecture in comparison

This module compares national structures: unified and binary systems, the place of vocational and polytechnic sectors, private provision, institutional differentiation by mission, and the distribution of authority between ministries, agencies and institutions. It examines how architecture constrains subsequent reform.

Lessons. 2.1 Unified and binary systems. 2.2 Public, private and hybrid provision. 2.3 Where authority sits. 2.4 Architecture as constraint on reform.

Deliverable. Analytical brief (1,000 words) comparing two national architectures.

Module 3 — Expansion, access and cost sharing

The module addresses who pays and who benefits. It covers the politics of expansion, tuition and its alternatives, income-contingent loans and their design, grants and targeted support, and the empirical evidence on how each arrangement affects participation by socioeconomic background.

Lessons. 3.1 The politics of expansion. 3.2 Cost sharing and its rationales. 3.3 Loan design and repayment burden. 3.4 Evidence on participation effects.

Deliverable. Design artefact: a costed access policy option with distributional analysis.

Module 4 — Quality, qualifications and recognition

This module covers the regulatory apparatus: external quality assurance models, accreditation and audit, national qualifications frameworks, credit and workload systems, learning outcome specification at system level, and recognition of foreign and prior learning.

Lessons. 4.1 Quality assurance models compared. 4.2 Qualifications frameworks and levels. 4.3 Credit, workload and comparability. 4.4 Recognition and micro-credentials.

Deliverable. Evaluation report (1,000 words) assessing one quality assurance regime against its objectives.

Module 5 — Research and innovation policy

The module examines the funding and steering of research: dual support and block grants, competitive schemes, performance-based research funding and its documented behavioural effects, centres of excellence, research assessment exercises and the reform of research evaluation, and university–industry relations.

Lessons. 5.1 Dual support and competitive funding. 5.2 Performance-based funding and gaming. 5.3 Assessment exercises and evaluation reform. 5.4 Innovation policy and knowledge transfer.

Deliverable. Implementation plan (1,000 words) for a research funding change with anticipated behavioural effects.

Module 6 — Internationalisation and policy transfer

The final module addresses movement across borders: student and staff mobility, branch campuses and transnational provision, regulatory arbitrage, regional harmonisation processes, and the risks of borrowing an instrument without the institutional conditions that made it work at home.

Lessons. 6.1 Mobility flows and their drivers. 6.2 Transnational provision and its regulation. 6.3 Regional harmonisation processes. 6.4 Policy transfer and its failures.

Deliverable. Final capstone: policy analysis (3,000 words) with options appraisal and recommendation.

Assessment

Pass mark 70 per cent. All assessed components must be attempted. Every mark in this course is issued by a human assessor; no assessment outcome is generated automatically.

Rubric criteria

Each assessed artefact is marked against four criteria at four levels (distinction, pass with merit, pass, fail).

1. Instrument accuracy. Whether policy instruments, agencies and legal bases are described correctly and cited to official sources.
2. Comparative reasoning. Whether systems are compared on stated dimensions and whether differences are explained by institutional conditions rather than asserted.
3. Evidence and data use. Whether statistics are drawn from identified official sources, whether definitions and comparability limits are stated, and whether causal claims are appropriately hedged.
4. Decision usefulness. Whether options are appraised against explicit criteria, whether trade-offs are stated, and whether the recommendation is actionable by the named decision-maker.

Reading list

Core. Pedro Teixeira, Bruce Johnstone, Maria João Rosa & Hans Vossensteyn (eds), Cost-Sharing and Accessibility in Higher Education (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Education at a Glance (Paris: OECD Publishing, most recent edition).

Guy Neave, The Evaluative State, Institutional Autonomy and Re-engineering Higher Education in Western Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Diana Hicks, ‘Performance-based University Research Funding Systems’, Research Policy, 41:2 (2012), pp. 251–261.

Jane Knight, Higher Education in Turmoil: The Changing World of Internationalization (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008).

UNESCO, Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education (Paris: UNESCO, 2019).

Academic integrity and use of AI

AI tools may be used in this course for locating literature, organising evidence, drafting non-analytical sections and criticising the learner’s own work. They may not be used to generate the analysis, the evaluation or the recommendation. Every submission carries a use-of-AI statement naming the tools used and the purpose of each use.

All citations must be verified against the primary source, and institutional facts — regulations, standards, accreditation criteria, published data — must be cited to the issuing body. Fabricated references and invented statistics result in failure and referral. Where learners write about their own institution they must not disclose confidential personnel or student data, and illustrative cases must be anonymised.