Institutional Logics in the Global Higher Education Landscape: Differences in Organizational Characteristics by Sector and Founding Era

This article examines patterns in the global higher education landscape associated with sector (i.e., public or private) and founding era. Using data on the formal and academic structure of 15,133 higher education institutions (ISCED 6+) from 183 countries and territories, we examine factors associated with the student body size, number of degree-granting programs, doctorate degrees, and curricular offerings. We find that only sector and age are associated with an institution's student body size, while sector, age, and founding era are all associated with degree and curricular offerings. Private universities tend to be smaller and are more likely to offer business degrees, while public universities offer more degree programs on average, and are more likely to offer programs in science and technology and doctoral degrees. Meanwhile, in both sectors, universities founded after 1990 are less likely to offer doctoral degrees and more likely to offer degrees in business, science, and technology. Despite some regional variation, these trends are found worldwide. To interpret these findings, we argue that both sector- and era-specific institutional logics link higher education to knowledge production and the labor market in distinct and path-dependent ways. Notably, the expansion of higher education post-1990 has been accomplished by establishing new teaching-focused institutions and orienting academic programs to the labor market in both sectors.