ABSTRACT

Justifying higher education is a political exercise in which representatives of universities advocate for resources from the state while also seeking autonomy to manage their own affairs. This analysis builds upon Collini’s identification of the conflict over the value of higher education in the UK. It sets out the ‘worlds of worth’ typology to explain the basis of conflicting justifications in UK higher education policy debates. It elaborates the six worlds of worth and links them to pragmatic justifications utilised in higher education, varying according to situated contexts. It explains the conflicts between the worlds and how they play out in practical ways in higher education policymaking. The Research Excellence Framework constitutes a compromise between multiple worlds of worth. Debates around ‘low value’ courses are centred around conflicts between the industrial and market worlds. It concludes that the worlds of worth model offers a productive framework for the analysis of pragmatic policy conflicts and illuminates political struggles about what universities are for, embedded in power struggles for autonomy and control.

摘要

为高等教育辩护是一项政治活动，大学代表主张从国家获得资源，同时寻求自主管理自己的事务。这一分析建立在 Collini 对英国高等教育价值冲突的识别之上。它提出了“价值世界”类型学来解释英国高等教育政策辩论中相互矛盾的理由。它详细阐述了六个价值世界，并将它们与高等教育中使用的实用主义理由联系起来，这些理由因情境而异。它解释了世界之间的冲突以及它们如何以实际方式在高等教育决策中发挥作用。卓越研究框架构成了多个价值世界之间的妥协。围绕“低价值”课程的争论集中在工业世界和市场世界之间的冲突上。它的结论是，价值世界模型为分析务实的政策冲突提供了一个富有成效的框架，并阐明了关于大学目的的政治斗争，这些政治斗争嵌入在争取自治和控制的权力斗争中。