University reform is a type of education reform applied to higher education.
Education reform is the name given to the goal of changing public education. Historically, reforms have taken different forms because the motivations of reformers have differed. However, since the 1980s, education reform has been focused on changing the existing system from one focused on inputs to one focused on outputs. In the United States, education reform acknowledges and encourages public education as the primary source of K-12 education for American youth. Education reformers desire to make public education into a market, where accountability creates high-stakes from curriculum standards tied to standardized tests. As a result of this input-output system, equality has been conceptualized as an end point, which is often evidenced by an achievement gap among diverse populations. This conceptualization of education reform is based on the market-logic of competition. As a consequence, competition creates inequality which has continued to drive the market-logic of equality at an end point by reproduce the achievement gap among diverse youth. The one constant for all forms of education reform includes the idea that small changes in education will have large social returns in citizen health, wealth and well-being. For example, a stated motivation has been to reduce cost to students and society. From ancient times until the 1800s, one goal was to reduce the expense of a classical education. Ideally, classical education is undertaken with a highly educated full-time personal tutor. Historically, this was available only to the most wealthy. Encyclopedias, public libraries and grammar schools are examples of innovations intended to lower the cost of a classical education.
Higher education is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completion of secondary education. Often delivered at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, conservatories, and institutes of technology, higher education is also available through certain college-level institutions, including vocational schools, trade schools, and other career colleges that award academic degrees or professional certifications. Tertiary education at non-degree level is sometimes referred to as further education or continuing education as distinct from higher education. The right of access to higher education is mentioned in a number of international human rights instruments. The UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 declares, in Article 13, that "higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education". In Europe, Article 2 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1950, obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education.
Examples include:
- Argentine university reform of 1918
- Chilean university reform
- Reform of French universities
The Law on Higher Education and Research of July 22, 2013 replaced laws promulgated by the previous French government in 2006 and 2007 regarding the organization and autonomy of universities and other research and higher education institutions in France.
Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities is the official name of a French law aiming at revamping entirely the French public higher education system. The bill was presented by the French Ministry of Higher Education Valérie Pécresse and was officially voted on 11 August 2007 by the Parliament. The law is commonly referred to as the law LRU, or Law Pécresse. It is sometimes called the law on the autonomy of universities, because the law give universities more financial autonomy, so that the government will stop funding them.
- Norwegian university college reform
- Oxford University Act 1854
The Argentine university reform of 1918 was a general modernization of the universities, especially tending towards democratization, brought about by student activism during the presidency of Hipolito Yrigoyen, the first democratic government. The events started in Córdoba and spread to the rest of Argentina, and then through much of Latin America. The reform set up the freedom for universities to define their own curriculum and manage their own budget without interference from the central government. This has had a profound effect on academic life at the universities through the nationalization process that boasts academic freedom and independence throughout the university life.
In Chile, the University Reform was a process of change in the Chilean universities that begun in the 1960s and ended with the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat. The aims of the reform movement was to establish an inclusive co-government in the university administration and to establish university autonomy.
The reform of French universities is a vast overhauling of French public higher education system. One occurred in 2007: Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities. Another in 2013: Law on Higher Education and Research. The last one was the "Law on Orientation and Academic Success" in 2018.
