Markets in Education and the Public Goods Problem（教育市场与公共产品问题）

　　Markets in Education and the Public Goods Problem  Prof. Simon Marginson 

　　（Chair Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne） 

　　Many economists have imagined that education and research can be produced as market commodities. This idea has influenced the design of higher education reform programs in many countries. After 20 years of such reforms, however, certain limits are apparent. While New Public Management principles are now widely established, the reformed systems generally take the form not of economic markets in the full sense, but government controlled ‘quasi-markets’ in which some features of a commodity market (e.g. competition between producer institutions, use of product formats) are apparent and government steering is a strong element. First-degree education is not produced as a full market commodity in any nation though commercial forms of teaching/credentialling services flourish in some vocational education and international education programs. Few national governments supported open entry of producer institutions into education during the WTO/GATS negotiations on educational services. In research policy there has been a swing away from the 1990s emphasis on production of saleable intellectual property in universities, towards a renewed focus on ‘open science’, i.e. freely disseminated findings from basic research. The paper argues that the limits of market reform reflect not so much a failure of political will, or capture of the policy agenda by education institutions/ producers, or the control impulse of states, but the inherent limits of the commodification project deriving principally from the public good nature of knowledge (Stiglitz 1999), and also other public goods produced in education. Arguably higher education produces a mix of public and private goods. While market reform has increased the private goods side of the balance, it has not transformed this mixed character of education. Arguably research is predominantly a public good, as is knowledge transmission and co-produced learning in teaching programs, while educational credentials and the networking benefits of attending elite universities are predominantly private goods.   

　　Simon Marginson is Chair Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. His work is focused principally on higher education, including comparative and international aspects of higher education, in the context of communicative globalization and the knowledge economy. His books include Markets in Education (1997), The Enterprise University (2000, with Mark Considine), Prospects of the University (2007) and Creativity and the Global Knowledge Economy (2009, with Michael Peters and Peter Murphy). He is active in governmental and media discussions of policy in Australia, has prepared three papers for OECD on aspects of globalization and higher education, and has ongoing collaborations in Western Europe, East and Southeast Asia, and North America where he has received awards for scholarly publication from both the American Educational Research Association and the Comparative and International Education Society. Three of his books have been published in China and two more are in preparation. Among his current research projects are studies of the global strategies of research universities in 15 Asia-Pacific countries, and of the boundary between universities and other knowledge-forming organizations in the knowledge economy.   

　　时间：2009年3月30日（周一）下午2：00–4：00 

　　地点：北京大学电教楼207 

　　Simon Marginson（西蒙·马金森）教授，国际著名教育学者、政治经济学者、澳大利亚墨尔本大学讲座教授。在高等教育、教育政策、比较教育领域卓有影响。对人力资本理论、萨缪尔森经济理论做出了深刻的批判性分析，代表作Markets in Education（中译本：《教育市场论》）1997年获澳洲博士论文最高奖––大学校长奖。浙江大学出版社新近出版《澳大利亚教育译丛》，所收录的《教育市场论》等四本书全部为其专著。