Regulated Isomorphic Competition and the Middle Layer of Institutions: High Participation Higher Education in Australia

Abstract

This chapter provides a detailed and extensive assessment of Australia’s high participation systems (HPS) of higher education, in terms of the HPS propositions in relation to governance, horizontal diversity, vertical stratification, and equity. The propositions generally fit the country case. In Australia, the state has created a symbiotic relationship between the growth of participation and neo-liberal competition. Higher education institutions of all types within this system are impelled to grow, facilitating and legitimating expanding social demand for places. Australia’s ‘unified national system’ is a state regulated quasi market in which public universities carry out commercial activity, rather than a producer-driven commercial market. Social competition between families has been modified by standardized tuition charges and especially by income-contingent loans, and the government carefully sustains a large middle layer of universities that are competitive in the global market for fee-paying students. However, the hierarchy between artisanal and demand-responsive institutions remains steep.