Investing Strategically in Higher Education : Aligning Public Funding with Policy Objectives
Linking higher education finance and policy, referred to as strategic financing, is increasing in popularity throughout Central Europe and the Baltic Countries. Strategic financing essentially implies that public funding mechanisms are informed by...
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| Format: | Policy Note |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/181401488909519414/Investing-strategically-in-higher-education-aligning-public-funding-with-policy-objectives http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26314 |
| Summary: | Linking higher education finance and
policy, referred to as strategic financing, is increasing in
popularity throughout Central Europe and the Baltic
Countries. Strategic financing essentially implies that
public funding mechanisms are informed by and aligned with
specific higher education policy objectives. Governments are
asking how the funding strategy can be more supportive of
policy objectives. Can funding formulae, for instance, be
modified strategically to help realize certain policy
objectives? If a government is seeking to enroll more
science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) students,
for example, could allocating a premium to higher education
institutions (HEIs) per STEM student help achieve the policy
objective? Like many countries around the work, Central
European and Baltic countries are exploring how different
financing modalities can provide additional leverage in
steering their higher education sector towards specific
policy objectives. In recent years, many Central European
and Baltic countries are facing common economic,
socio-political, and demographic factors. These common
challenges can broadly be categorized into three main
themes: challenging economic environment; increasing
European integration; and declining demographic trends.
First, the region still faces fiscal constraints as it
emerges from the global economic slowdown. Such economic
trends have placed downward pressure on public higher
education budgets and increased the call for collaboration
between higher education and the labor market. Second,
national higher education policies across Central Europe and
the Baltic countries are impacted by a broader European
policy environment, including the European Higher Education
Area. Supranational initiatives, such as the EU’s Education
and Training 2020 Strategy, Horizon 2020, and its
Modernization Agenda for Higher Education, as well as the
intergovernmental Bologna Process strongly influence
national higher education policies. Third, a declining
population in Europe is shrinking the number of working- and
student-age people. After decades of growth in the higher
education sector, the number of new students participating
in higher education is slowly declining. |
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