Ten years back and ten years forward : Developments and trends in higher education in Europe region

The increasing importance of universities as generators of knowledge in the new economy, and the apparent success of the American research university model in putting itself at the centre of the innovation process has led to a widespread re-evaluation of institutional missions. [...] There has been tremendous change in higher education in the past decade – more so in Europe than in North America, and for somewhat different reasons in the countries of the old EU-15 than in the rest of the continent. [...] Massification has happened in stages across the region; the phenomenon began in the United States in the 1960s, moved to Canada in the 1970s and 1980s, Western Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, and in Eastern and Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. [...] In the rest of the region, the expansion of access over the past decade has been much slower: Scandinavia saw an increase of enrolment of 34%, North America of 24% (though this sub-region’s increase still accounted for nearly a third of all growth across the entire region), Western of Europe 16% and Southern Europe saw growth of just 7% (due in large part to a decline in student numbers in Spain). [...] The 50% figure was achieved in the United States in the mid-1970s, not long after the adoption of a national system of grants (the Basic Education Opportunity Grant, or BEOG, later to become the Pell Grant) and in Canada at about the same time.