The university and the welfare state

There are two contrasting narratives about universities and the welfare state. The first emphasizes the relationship between the mass expansion of higher education and other social and economic reforms under the umbrella of the ‘welfare state’. This expansion can also be seen as the culmination of the nineteenth-century universal provision of elementary and secondary education. The second narrative emphasizes that much of the expansion came after a renewed emphasis on the efficacy of the market in the 1980s and 1990s, heralding the retrenchment of the post-war welfare state. The chapter will discuss these competing narratives. Is the mass university a ‘social democratic’ or a ‘market’ institution? Although recognizing the plausibility of the second one, it will conclude that on balance the educational values of the contemporary university are deeply interwoven with those of social reform, even if many of its management practices reflect more entrepreneurial forms of organization.