Despite the obvious benefits derived from education, governments face difficult trade-offs when balancing the share of public and private contributions to education. Understanding how private expenditure is sourced, through public transfers or through private funds, can make a difference in enabling access to education and provide insights into…

Each month, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) surveys a random sample of individuals who three months prior registered on mba.com--the GMAC™ website for prospective graduate business students. Their survey responses provide an inside look into the decision-making process of people currently considering applying to a graduate…

The objective of this paper is an efficiency analysis concerning higher education systems in European countries. Data have been extracted from OECD data-sets (Education at a Glance, several years), using a non-parametric technique--data envelopment analysis--to calculate efficiency scores. This paper represents the first attempt to conduct such an…

When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, it looked at first as if many European universities were going to escape the worst. Higher education has long been considered a public right and a taxpayer-financed obligation, and there was optimism that universities, which government leaders hail as drivers of economic growth, would emerge relatively…

The relationship between the state and higher education institutions has always been a complex one. The "state" itself in this context is a heterogeneous mix of elite people--bureaucrats, politicians, committees of co-opted academics and business leader--and it increasingly faces pressures from diverse stakeholders, including students…

Two pilot projects on environmental profiles in the chemical and metal industries and in the public sector were conducted in four countries. Two aspects were studied: job requirements in selected enterprises and departments of the civil service and the occupational competencies of the staff carrying out these tasks. Studies on the chemical and…