ECONOMIC AFFAIRS最新文献

Any higher education institution in England wanting degree awarding powers has to register with the Office for Students (OfS), an agency set up under the Higher Education and Research Act, 2017. (In the UK, higher education is a devolved responsibility. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have their own regulatory bodies.) Registering with the OfS brings with it a huge range of regulations, with implications for content taught, teaching methods, employment of staff and admissions of students, which drastically undermine educational independence (see Tooley, 2024).

Degree awarding powers in England, as in many countries across the world (e.g. Australia, India, Ireland, the Netherlands and New Zealand), go in tandem with strict government regulations. However, is it conceivable to provide higher education without degree-awarding powers and hence freedom from these regulations?

This article focuses on the case of the University College at Buckingham's ‘licence’ as an example of what is, or at least was, possible. The experiment lasted from the 1976 opening of the University College at Buckingham until the University of Buckingham was granted a Royal Charter in 1983.

To be clear, I am not discussing here higher education in countries which have permissive regulatory regimes, such as the United States, where there is no national protection of the title of university and degree-awarding powers (although some states have restrictions). In such countries, different issues could be explored, outside the context of this article. In certain states in the US, for instance, unaccredited institutions of higher education arise, often deemed to be low-quality and dubbed ‘diploma mills’, although conversely there are also unaccredited Bible colleges and seminaries, whose degrees do have considerable value in the market. Instead, this article asks: in countries where degree-awarding powers and the use of the university title are tightly regulated, is it possible to conceive of market-led higher education outside of this government tutelage? I argue that the case of Buckingham answers this question in the affirmative.

By the late 1960s, notable academics in the UK were worried about the ways in which government was impinging upon university autonomy, and hence on academic freedom and scholarly excellence. They sought to launch a new university as a beacon for independence. This was not some fringe group: chaired by Sir Sydney Caine, Director of the London School of Economics (LSE), the Planning Board for an Independent University included distinguished professors such as Oxford's Max Beloff, and the LSE's Michael Oakeshott and Alan Walters.

In the introduction to the seminal paper setting out the case for a new independent university, the Institute of Economic Affairs' Arthur Seldon wrote: “For some years the increasing finance of universities by government has provoked thought on the urgency of at least o

Covid-19 triggered a wave of lockdowns across the world, contributing to a severe downturn in economic activity. Governments responded by introducing expansionary fiscal and monetary measures. We compare the health and economic outcomes in Sweden, commonly viewed as an outlier relying more on recommendations and voluntary adjustments than on strict lockdowns, with those of comparable European OECD countries. Our results suggest that the Swedish policy of advice and trust in the population to reduce social interactions voluntarily was relatively successful. Sweden combined low excess death rates with relatively small economic costs. In future pandemics, policymakers should rely on empirical evidence rather than panicking and adopting extreme measures. Even if policymakers appeared to act rapidly and decisively, the rushed implementation of strict lockdowns in 2020/21 probably did more harm than good.

This study examines the effect of the Russia–Ukraine conflict on global financial markets and the resulting changes in investor psychology. We have analysed weekly data from January 2021 to March 2023, including indicators such as gross national income, Bitcoin historical price, Standard and Poor 500 index, US consumer price index, US dollar index, and investor psychology index, using a variety of econometric techniques. Our findings reveal a positive and significant correlation between investor psychology and market returns. These results highlight the importance of monitoring investor psychology during times of conflict as it can greatly impact investment decisions in financial markets, providing valuable insights for investors and policymakers.