Are We Marching Towards Laissez-faireism in Higher Education Development?

Over the years, many developing countries have showed apathy towards development of higher education, deliberately neglected higher education, reduced public investments in higher education, allowed laissez-faireism, and even adopted policies towards marketisation of higher education. Market forces have become very active; but since the markets in developing countries are ‘incomplete' and ‘imperfect', the outcomes are also far from perfect, and in fact, in many cases, the market forces produced disastrous consequences. The evolving state approach could be attributed to the faulty assumptions that (a) higher education is not important for development and (b) the State can as well withdraw from its responsibility of providing higher education in favour of the markets. But both assumptions are wrong, and have proved to be costly. The role of the state in higher education development is critical and cannot be reduced.