Description and Measurement of Competitionin Higher Education Markets - the Example of Australia

Modern Public Management in general and especially higher education management has undergone amajor paradigm change as new principles of “New Public Management (NPM)” have reached theinstitutions concerned. The new orientation is directed towards output measurement and documentation,quality control and quality management, simulated or real competition between institutions in the publicsector and new methods of organisation and human resources management.1 At the same time the politicaland especially financial framework for the work and development of higher education institutions2 haschanged slowly but dramatically: Whereas from 1960 to 1980 the importance and the public budget fortertiary education was growing on average, in the last twenty-year-period from 1980 to 2000 attention andbudgets were on the move backwards. In Australia the change towards the “Unified National System(UNS)” from 1989 onwards took place with the merger of Universities and Colleges of AdvancedEducation (CAE) as well as major changes in the public funding scheme towards an indicator-basedsystem...