National Funding of Higher Education from a Non-affirmative Perspective

This chapter aims to demonstrate that the non-affirmative theory of education offers conceptual tools to analyse the tension between universities´ autonomy and accountability. The autonomy of universities becomes affirmative in character when it is geared towards finding the most functional and efficient ways of reaching externally defined performance targets and thereby to implicitly affirm the norms, values and standards that the performance targets rest upon. At the same time societal accountability measures make visible what is hidden or concealed: governmental objectives in higher education and the instrumental emphasis of universities in attaining those objectives. This exemplifies that the second regulative principle of the non-affirmative theory of education always is tied to the first: the governance of education is always linked with the current idea of the role of education in society at large. The non-affirmative theory of education provides us with a view that makes this relative autonomy visible. The chapter argues that the key aspect for universities and their stakeholders today is to find an appropriate balance between instrumental and institutional approaches, accountability and autonomy as well as affirmative and non-affirmative orientations.