What is PROPHE's Subject Matter?
PROPHE is interested in all facets of PHE development and functioning. Priority subjects for present and future include:
- Public policy for private higher education
- For-profit activity, whether at legally for-profit institutions or at legally nonprofit ones or involving for-profit/nonprofit partnerships
- Non-elite, demand-absorbing, vocational, and other non-university postsecondary private institutional options that are key to expanding access and serving the workforce
- Culturally distinctive higher education
- Academically distinguished private higher education
- Private-public partnerships via affiliation of private colleges to public universities or establishment of private modules within public universities
- Internationalization, including branch campuses and foreign ownership
One concern throughout is distinctiveness. How distinctive is private from public higher education and how distinctive are private sub-sectors and institutions from each other and from public counterparts? Distinctiveness is assessed against isomorphism, a tendency to emulate and be non-distinctive. Related to this concern is assessment of private-public cooperation and conflict.
