The article by Prof. Dr. Petya Ilieva-Trichkova, Prof. Ph.D. Pepka Boyadzhieva and PhD student Ralitsa Dimitrova (IFS-BAN): “Higher education as a public good and social cohesion: an exploratory study from a European comparative perspective” was published in the prestigious European Journal of Higher Education indexed in Scopus in Q1.
In the context of the growing importance of higher education, on the one hand, and the preservation of significant inequalities in it, on the other, the article aims to further develop the understanding of higher education as a public good and examine its relationship with social cohesion in a European comparative perspective. The understanding of higher education as a public good and of social cohesion as complex, multidimensional phenomena is defended. This theoretical formulation is the basis for the development of two new instruments: an index of higher education as a public good and an index of social cohesion. The analysis is based on data from Eurostat, the Eurostudent VII Survey and the tenth wave of the European Social Survey. The results show significant differences between individual countries in terms of both the realization of higher education as a public good and social cohesion. The article identifies the existence of a positive relationship between the realization of higher education as a public good in a given country and the level of social cohesion in it. Of the four dimensions of higher education as a public good, related to access, participation, completion and the state’s commitment to its development, the strongest is the relationship between the state’s commitment to the development of higher education and the level of social cohesion in it.
The article is open access: https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2024.2403605
The article was developed within the Skills2Capabilities & JustEdu projects.
