Introduction
This issue features
several articles that focus on private higher education. Privatization is one
of the slogans of the 1990s, and it is a trend worldwide in higher education.
The first two articles here discuss the role of research institutes in Latin America,
and private initiatives in Azerbajian. A third article, on Russia, also deals
in part with privatization trends. Not only are new private institutions being
established worldwide, but public universities are being partially privatized
by making them responsible for an increasing share of their budgets. British higher
education, for example, has slowly been privatized over the past decade. The implications
for access, equity, basic research, traditional ideas of autonomy and academic
freedom of these trends have hardly been examined. Privatization may be inevitable,
but it also deserves critical analysis and debate.
