Editorial Policy

Critical view

HIGHER EDUCATION REVIEW is an academic journal committed to the critical examination of post-school education. It is the policy of the Review to encourage fundamental discussion and to question received wisdom.

The Review acts on a number of assumptions: first that higher education is a stage of education to which different kinds of traditions and institutions contribute; second that there is a continuing need for fundamental re-examination of this stage - its teaching, research and control; third that answers to problems can be found in all sectors and kinds of institutions - there is no monopoly of excellence.

Problem based

HIGHER EDUCATION REVIEW is committed to a problem-based epistemology. In all countries there is an urgent need to formulate the problems of post-school education, to propose alternative solutions and to test them. The policy and practice of governments and institutions require constant scrutiny. New policies and ideas are needed in all forms of post-school education as new challenges arise.

Fundamental issues

There seem to us to be five main areas in higher education where fundamental discussion is needed. These are:

• What is post-school education for? Should it continue in 'autonomous' or 'service' traditions? What is its responsibility to society?

• Who is to get post-school education? Should it extend to all adults, and what can this mean in practice?

• What should post-school education consist of? Is it bound to be conservative in content or method? How can innovation be encouraged?

• How is post-school education to be organised? What should be the relationship between individual and institutional freedom and public accountability?

• What are the implications of all these questions for those working in post-school education? How should they be paid? What should be their conditions of service?

International coverage

These issues are the concern of all countries, and HIGHER EDUCATIONAL REVIEW attempts to provide a continuing commentary and critique of developments in post-school education worldwide. An independent journal is particularly well placed to mount this fundamental discussion. It can publish a variety of views, however controversial, from across the world, subject only to standards of rigour and scholarship.