The Concept of Higher Education

Abstract

The idea that higher education is an economic process is widely held. However, it is necessary to isolate more specifically what is considered to be higher education because in a broad sense any learning after receipt of a high school diploma could be classified as higher education. It is also necessary to provide some outline of the process involved in higher education since higher education as used here does involve a great deal more than just the teaching of studetns. Such an outline is important to provide a basis for relating the economic concept of public goods to higher education. In this paper the concept of public goods is very briefly discussed first, with reference to higher education. Then, the institutional framework of higher education will be briefly outlined with the context in which the term higher education is to be used. Also, an attempt will be made to provide an overview of what is involoved in the process called higher education. However, in providing this overview of the process, a conscious attempt is made to avoid the problem of defining the outputs of the economic process because this is too complex problem and should be the topic of another paper. An attempt to discuss the public goods nature of the higher education process is made, but this must be somewhat limited until the outputs of higer education are fully discussed.