This book explores some of the major forces and changes in higher
education across the world between 1945 and 2015. This includes the
explosions of higher education institutions and enrollments, a
development captured by the notion of massification. There were also
profound shifts in the financing and economic role of higher education
reflected in the processes of privatization of universities and
curricula realignments to meet the shifting demands of the economy.
Moreover, the systems of knowledge production, organization,
dissemination, and consumption, as well as the disciplinary architecture
of knowledge underwent significant changes. Internationalization emerged
as one of the defining features of higher education, which engendered
new modes, rationales, and practices of collaboration, competition,
comparison, and commercialization. External and internal pressures for
accountability and higher education's value proposition intensified,
which fuelled struggles over access, affordability, relevance, and
outcomes that found expression in the quality assurance movement.