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Competition and regulation in higher education: a comparison of the Netherlands and the United States

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Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts the higher education systems of the Netherlands and the United States in an effort to highlight issues in the competition vs. regulation debate. Based on these illustrative cases, an array of policy options to inject competitive dynamics into a highly regulated system are presented and evaluated. These include both demand-oriented policies such as price changes and enrollment limits as well as supply-oriented policies such as increased institutional autonomy in generating revenues, more flexible input policies, and incentive-based budgetary reforms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Administration, University of Southern California, 90089-0041, Los Angeles, California, USA

    James M. Ferris

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  1. James M. Ferris
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Additional information

This paper is based on research conducted while the author was a visiting scholar and participant in the project on Higher Education Financing Systems, directed by Professor Jo Ritzen, at the Department of Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of anyone other than the author.

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Ferris, J.M. Competition and regulation in higher education: a comparison of the Netherlands and the United States. High Educ 22, 93–108 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02351201

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