A Power Perspective on Programme Reduction

Jeroen Huisman and Oscar van Heffen

Higher Education Management and Policy, 2003, vol. 15, issue 2, 117-133

Abstract: In the beginning of the 1990s, Dutch government and representatives of employers’ organisations have urged the higher professional education sector (HBO) to restructure the supply of the programmes in the sub-sectors of HBO. The sub-sectors were challenged to cut back the number of study programmes to increase the efficiency of the supply. A theoretical framework based on resource dependence and network analysis is proposed to explain why different sub-sectors have reacted differently to the pressure to reduce the pressure. An empirical analysis is carried out for foursub-sectors: agriculture, economics, engineering and the socialcultural sector. The hypotheses could only partly be confirmed, but the simultaneous effect of government dependence, labour market dependence and sub-sector heterogeneity can be shown. Given the restricted number of cases, suggestions for further research are formulated. At the same time, it is implied to complement the chosen quantitative macro-approach with micro-analyses (case studies) on the emergence and disappearance of study programmes.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/hemp-v15-art17-en (text/html)
Full text available to READ online. PDF download available to OECD iLibrary subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:edukaa:5lmqcr2jj140

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Higher Education Management and Policy from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().