Higher Education in Small States: Evolving Patterns in the Context of Globalisation

Abstract

Parts of the literature in the 1980s and 1990s declared a relatively high population floor for small states wishing to offer domestic higher education. The literature highlighted challenges of filling classrooms and recruiting qualified teachers from small pools, pointed to the lack of economies of scale, and noted that few small states could hope to have well-resourced libraries for specialist studies. For some small states, it was argued, the solution lay in regional cooperation. And for small states without regional partners, the best approach was perhaps simply to send students abroad. In the 2010s, the situation looks very different. The threshold for establishing national institutions has been lowered, as illustrated by the opening of the University of Seychelles in 2009 to serve a country with just 90,000 people; and some small states have now have several higher education institutions. It is then pertinent to ask why the changes have occurred. One answer lies in the intensification of globalisation. Beginning with the libraries, the internet now allows students and staff in small states to access the same electronic resources as their counterparts in large states. Globalisation has also brought cheaper and easier travel, which has facilitated partnerships between small and larger states. And a global upward shift in levels of educational qualifications has increased the proportions of populations seeking higher education, and thereby provided some economies of scale even in the smallest of the small. Nevertheless, challenges remain and require tailored strategies. Higher education institutions in small states need to offer qualifications that have international recognition; and although the upward shift in levels of educational qualifications has increased the supply of academic staff as well as the supply of students, small states are still to some extent constrained in their choices of personnel. Tensions may arise in the balances through which institutions serve their host countries and/or serve wider international agendas; and certain specialist disciplines remain beyond the reach of planners and thus should still be pursued abroad rather than at home. At the same time, institutions in small states have special opportunities arising from their roles in the societies they serve. The literature of the 1980s and 1990s remains valid in stressing some of distinctive features of small states, showing that they are not merely scaled-down versions of large states.