• Part I: British Higher Education as a System: Shifting Perceptions, Changing Realities


• 1: The Governance of British Higher Education: State, Market, and Institutional Decision-Making


• 2: Exploring the Unitary Model: A Diversity of Definitions


• 3: The Dearing Report: Sustaining British Higher Education as a System


• Part II: The Pressure for Change: Internal and External


• 4: Universities and Markets: (I) Historical Background and Contemporary Context


• 5: Universities and Markets: (II) Theory and Critical Debate


• 6: The Student as Consumer: Legal Framework and Practical Reality


• 7: The Rise of the Research Agenda: Redefining the Academic Mission


• 8: The Globalization of Higher Education: Coping with rankings and league- tables while delivering more and charging less


• Part III: Responding to Change: Organizational Fragmentation


• 9: The HE Industry: Speaking with more than one Voice


• 10: Responding to the State-regulated Market: Universities under Duress


• 11: The Descent from Acropolis to Agora: The Entry of the For-Profits


• Part IV: Towards the Free Market: English Higher Education 2020


• 12: From Public Good to Marketplace: From Provider-State to Regulatory- State


• Conclusion

David Palfreyman, MA, MBA, LLB, FRSA is the Bursar of a Fellow of New College, University; he is also the Director of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (www.oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk). He has written extensively on the law of higher education (with Dennis Farrington) and on the idea of the collegial tradition (mainly with Ted Tapper). His publications also include research into both London's Livery Companies and Inns of Court. He is a co-editor of the Routledge 20-plus volume comparative series, 'International Studies in Higher Education' (as detailed at the OxCHEPS website). David also serves as the Honorary Treasurer and a Trustee of the Society for Research into Higher Education.
Ted Tapper spent most of his academic career at the University of Sussex (1968-2003). He is an Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Sussex, and also holds a research professorship at the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (OxCheps) which is based at New College, Oxford. At Sussex he was a member of the Department of International Relations and Politics, completing his career as departmental chair. He is a fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) and with David Palfreyman and Scott Thomas (Claremont Graduate University, California), is Series Editor for the Routledge comparative series, 'International Studies in Higher Education'.

This book aims to understand the development of higher education over recent decades by exploring in particular the context and consequences of the decline in public funding to support undergraduate teaching, and the increasing diversification and stratification within national systems.