Government financial strategy in UK higher education: the relationships between quality, quantity and efficiency

Abstract

The reformers of the UK higher education system hoped that radical reform would simultaneously result in: improvements in the quality of education provided, increases in cost efficiency and a significant expansion in student numbers. This paper takes a close look at the reforms by undertaking both a time‐series and a cross‐section econometric analysis of the data to examine the relationships between quality, quantity and efficiency. Claims that the evidence shows that there have been genuine efficiency improvements and that these can be explained by the mechanics of the principal‐agent relationship which exists between the taxpayer and the higher education sector. However, it is also found that educational quality is costly, for example it is likely to cost the taxpayer £1,200 per academic per year to gain one percentage point in the production of first‐class graduates.

Citation

Ghosh, D. and Rodgers, T. (1999), "Government financial strategy in UK higher education: the relationships between quality, quantity and efficiency", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 197-208. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684889910297703