Global Private and Total Higher Education Enrollment by Region and Country, 2015

 See Levy, et al (2024).

UIS provides no data on Kosovo, as a divided UN does not officially recognize it, though many countries do. We use raw enrollment data (provided by A. Papadimitriou)   from   the   NORGLOBAL   project.  But   these   come   from institutional responses at only two universities, and how many higher education institutions should be included is unclear. However, the NORGLOBAL share (41.2%) approximates Zgaga et al.’s (2013), which reports its sources as national statistics offices. Zgaga does not give raw enrollment but  its  national  shares match or are within 2% of the UIS shares on 5 other West Balkan countries, differing by more only on Montenegro. We use our 2010 PHE share estimate of 41.2% for both 2000 and 2005.

Myanmar (formerly Burma) shows 0 PHE enrolment in UIS data through 2015, after which the UIS provides no higher education data. But, with heavy international orientation, nonprofit PHE has been functioning. Offering only UK degrees, Myanmar Imperial University claims its private existence since 2004. Its ties with private enterprise, including the jewelry business, and its rhetoric and photo images, suggest semi-elite aspirations. Parami University has its license from a US agency and will seek US accreditation. Its Board of Trustees composition and promotional statements also suggest semi-elite aspirations. Likewise upscale in appearance is Strategy First University, which boasts its international partnerships and variety of offerings. It is not clear, however, whether it is authorized to offer any level 6 degrees, while level 5 degrees are foreign ones. Joseph Education University, founded by a religiously committed businessman, apparently under national business law, was canonically approved by the local archbishop in 2020 and commits itself to Catholic values, as well as to liberal arts; though it seems substantially business-oriented in practice, it has faculty in fields such as missiology. Established in 2015, the small University of Medicine claims state recognition.

By the early 2020s, PHE enrollment was significantly increasing, in part from failures at public institutions, exacerbated by repression after the 2021 military coup, ending the period of public higher education reform. PHE now even includes alternative platforms like Spring University Myanmar (SUM), primarily funded by USAID and other aid agencies, and linked to the country’s shadow government democratic government. To be sure, a basic driving force for Spring and other PHE institutions is job-seeking. Like others, Spring offers short tertiary education courses imparting job skills. Much of Myanmar’s PHE is online. Research must determine which private institutions grant state-authorized and recognized degrees (and thus count as having domestic PHE enrollment) as well as whether the many foreign students have their degrees recognized back home

UIS totals for each year in the Netherlands are unproblematic, while private shares are  very problematic and would be so regardless of what figures are chosen. The UIS provides the private share for only 2012,  13.4%, without explaining the sudden inclusion or the basis for the 13.4% figure. We use that percentage along with the UIS total to calculate the private enrollment for 2010. OECD provides the figures for 2000, showing a 69.0% private share,  which appears consistent with scholarship on the country highlighting similarities to the Belgian case (Geiger 1986). We then estimate the 2005 private share simply (too simply) by taking the mid-point between the 2000 and 2010 private shares, and again we use the UIS total enrollment. Of course the  decade  did  not  see  the private share decline drastically and steadily in the sense of enrollment shifts between private and public institutions. The numbers’ apparent decline comes instead from volatile treatment of whether the bulk (or even entirety) of the institutions are private or public. European datasets do not indicate why their majority private enrollment in 2000 changed in 2003 (OECD and 2004 EUROSTAT) to 100% private or why this flipped to 100% public  in  2008 (OECD and 2010 EUROSTAT). The European organizations in question normally follow the breakdown provided by the country, according  to the organization’s written criteria. But the domestic perspective is complex and ambiguous. Dutch law appears to consider all institutions private, according to expert Gerrit de Jager (personal communication, October 17,  2012)  who ultimately concludes that whether now to categorize Dutch higher education as private or public is “a matter of taste.” Clearer is that if the institutions are private, they were at least historically government-dependent. Karl Dittrich (2009) of the Dutch accreditation agency reports around 10% as the current private independent figure; this includes the 70 “registered universities” (essentially professional  schools), privately funded, while excluding theological ones and universities of applied sciences. This percentage approximates our UIS-based estimate for 2010. Perhaps our 2010 figure represents “independent private” while our 2000 figure represents “government-dependent private.” We use UIS 2012 for 2010; OECD 2000 for 2000, and estimate 2005 based on 2010 & 2000 figures.

UIS shows that Tajikistan has recently established PHE, though we maintain the UIS’ zero for 2000, 2005, and 2010. PHE is very limited, tottering on a political-legal edge (Hasanova, 2010). As with Turkmenistan, the near absence of PHE owes to the lack of greater break from the Soviet Communist legacy.

For the UK, UIS shows no private-public breakdown  and, worse, counts the total enrollment as private. It is one thing to count the UIS’ “government-dependent private” enrollment as private in countries like Belgium, where the private reality is long recognized in law and usage. In contrast, in the UK the law is not explicit on the point while both popular discourse and scholarly treatments have routinely counted virtually all higher education enrolment as public, often noting the exception of one small private university, the University of Buckingham (Geiger, 1986). Neave (1985) declares it erroneous to call U.K. higher education private. Only in 2011 did the UK officially open higher education to additional private providers, however much some had been de facto precursors (Fielden & Middlehurst, 2017; Middlehurst & Fielden, 2011). Allowing both for-profit and nonprofit, even including universities, the policy change created a dual-sector system. To count UK enrolment as 100% private (which the UIS does at least through 2015) because its public universities have charters, governing boards,  ample  private finance, or other such autonomy- related characteristics would require that we take U.S., Developed British Commonwealth, Israeli, and probably some other countries’ public university enrolment as private.

Accordingly, we need to count the UIS as public instead of private for 2000-2010 and then estimate the private enrollment for 2015 (and add that estimate appropriately to the total). For the 2015 estimate, we additionally consult work by Hunt and Boliver (2019), along with Hunt’s generous 2019 email commentary. Government data gathering includes only the institutions it funds, which omits especially the relatively smaller private providers (and recent improvements will likely reduce incompleteness only modestly). Meanwhile, eliminating from lists of “alternative providers” those that are public, not operational, or lie outside “higher education,” yields 813 for 2017. As only 115 of those receive government funds and thus figure into government counts, their enrollment (58,735) is just  part of the real private total. Analysts have then surveyed the other providers to estimate total private enrollment (Shury, Adams, Barnes, Hewitt, & Oozeerally, 2016) – a prominent estimate being 245,000 to 295,000 for 2014, which  might  be  compared  to  roughly  160,000  for  2011 (Hughes, Porter, Jones, & Sheen, 2013). One might therefore estimate 300,000 for 2015 based on a mid-range 270,000 for 2014 and a simple 2011-2014 growth- line. We opt for a lower estimate. Just as the 115 funded institutions  are  likely larger on average than the 698 non-funded ones, so those responding to surveys are likely larger than non-responders, and many private institutions include part time and lower than higher education students, as well as courses delivered intermittently and even by distance overseas. (Some such considerations probably apply to many “private providers” in several other countries.) For the UK, Hunt concurs with this reasoning and its consequent private estimate of 250,000 for 2015. We add a mighty asterisk. While we therefore put 250,000 for the private enrollment, we do not add that full number to the U.K.’s total enrollment. That is because the government does count enrollment at private institutions it funds. As that enrollment was 58,735 for 2017, from which we could roughly estimate 45,000 for 2015, we add 205,000 (rather than 250,000) to the 2015 total. Our 2015 private share of the total is 250,000/2,535,334 (9.9%)