Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions

Living Edition

Privatization, Higher Education

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_91-1
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Defining Privatization

The term “privatization” is used, in a higher education context, to describe the degree to which institutional revenue comes from private (e.g., individual, foundation, or corporate), rather than public (e.g., government) sources (see also “Revenue Generation” and “Revenue Diversification”). Privatization also describes the shift in behavior that occurs in universities as a function of changes in revenue stream. More privatized higher education systems, such as the US model, typically depend to a greater degree on private sources of revenue such as tuition than do their less-privatized peers. Privatization, it should be pointed out, has an effect on both revenues and expenditures. Economists such as Toutkoushian (2001) have demonstrated that private universities receive a greater share of their revenue from tuition and spend far more on student services (e.g., advising, campus landscaping, residence life) per student than do public universities (see “Tuition...

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of EducationJohns Hopkins UniversityBaltimoreUSA
  2. 2.Education Policy and Leadership StudiesUniversity of IowaIowa CityUSA