Public-private substitution in higher education : has cost-sharing gone too far?

This paper looks at the current challenge facing higher education by exploring the historical relationship between higher education funding and long economic cycles in the UK, USA and France. It examines the consequence of the transformation of public-private income in higher education that followed the 1970s downturn, questioning whether the rise of private resources acted as additional or substitutive resources for public spending. The paper suggests that there is a risk that the cost-sharing strategy could be turned into a policy of public-private substitution of funding and provision, leading to a transfer rather than an increase of resources with strong implications on quality and equity. However, the Kondratiev cycle suggests an alternative route by designating the impact of the 1970s economic downturn on education as unique. Previous economic crises were contemporary of accelerations of public funding towards education which in fact contributed to economic recovery. The current crisis could represent an opportunity to revive counter-cyclical policy by looking not only at efficient public spending but also at developing fairer taxation. A revival of public funding complemented by an additional rather than substitutive diversification of income would rebalance the public-private structure of funding and drive a sustainable higher education system capable of playing a key part in these counter-cyclical transformations

Funding in Higher Education and Economic Growth in France and the United Kingdom, 1921-2003

The 2004 Higher Education Act generated important debates about the relationships between higher education (HE), economic growth and social progress. The range of positions expressed in relation to the increase of annual tuition fees raises crucial questions about the public and private funding of HE and its individual and social economic benefits. The analysis of new historical data from the 1920s onwards shows that the expansion in university resources was not linear and may be related to long economic cycles. Moreover, private funding periodically increased in order to replace diminishing public funding, rather than taking the form of additional resources. In consequence, private funds did not provide an overall rise in the universities’ income. The considerable fluctuations of funding, combined with a more consistent growth of enrolment, led to a recurrent mismatch between resources for and access to HE, explaining the wide fluctuations of resources per student over the period. Such historical trends question whether, in the future, increased fees will be a substitute for public spending. Or will variable fees rather combine with even greater increases in public funding as part of a national project to support HE students from all social backgrounds and to boost expenditure per student

Topology of Bands in Solids : From Insulators to Dirac Matter

Bloch theory describes the electronic states in crystals whose energies are distributed as bands over the Brillouin zone. The electronic states corresponding to a (few) isolated energy band(s) thus constitute a vector bundle. The topological properties of these vector bundles provide new characteristics of the corresponding electronic phases. We review some of these properties in the case of (topological) insulators and semi-metals.Comment: Talk at Seminaire Poincare (Bourbaphy), Paris, June 2014, www.bourbaphy.f

Compatible Hamiltonian Operators for the Krichever-Novikov Equation

It has been proved by V. Sokolov that the Krichever-Novikov equation's hierarchy is hamiltonian for the non-local Hamiltonian operator H_0=u_x D^{-1} u_x and possesses twi weakly non-local recursion operatos of degree 4 and 6, L_4 and L_6. We show here that H_0, L_4H_0 and L_6H_0 are compatible Hamiltonian operators for which the Krichever-Novikov equation's hierarchy is hamiltonian