3	The State of Higher Education in 1994 and Prospects for the Future
	3.1	The Growth of Private Higher Education Since 1983
		Since AKU was established there has been a significant strengthening of the place of private higher education in the Third World.The establishment of AKU came at a fortunate time when new sympathies for private higher education were appearing after decades of resistance. AKU has had a pioneering role in Pakistan, its good example encouraging the birth of several new private institutions. The growth of private higher education in Pakistan has been part of a trend toward privatisation of higher education that has been notable in both developing and industrial countries.
		One motivation has been the desire for better quality that has inspired the founding of AKU. Another driving force has been the mass demand for higher education that has strained public resources and led to efforts of many sorts to supplement them. Both rich and poor countries have felt pressures to move away from traditions of essentially free higher education and make the beneficiaries of higher education pay some part of its costs. In the developing countries, European traditions of free higher education were strengthened in the decades after World War II by egalitarian nationalism, with resulting strong resistances to fee-paying private institutions or private costsharing. The sharp distinction made in Meiji Japan between free public education for the needs of the state, and fee-paying private higher education for individual advantage was made nowhere in the Third World. But what we have called the irresistible expansion of higher education has brought changes of attitude and policy in recent decades, as governments have been forced to seek ways to share its costs with private wealth. Sharp resistances have appeared in many places, rich and poor. In Egypt, recent efforts to relieve the disastrous state of public higher education by allowing the establishment of a private university (or universities) have been opposed on the moral grounds that ability to pay fees should provide no advantage in access to higher education. And in Europe we read that a contributing cause to the March-April 1994 demonstrations against the French government's proposal to change the minimum wage for young people was anger in the public universities over proposed increases in the public support of private schools [Corriere della Sera, April 2, 1994, p.9]. Such resistance has produced tactical retreats, but the overall trend has been toward increased recourse to private cost-sharing and private institutions in higher education, a trend that has certainly been strengthened by the rising legitimacy of private institutions throughout national societies. A pragmatic realisation that the dual objectives of remedying deficiencies in quality while widening opportunities for higher education require the growth of private higher education has now largely overcome the hesitations of past decades.
		The recourse to private institutions both as a way of responding to the powerful demand for higher education and as a means of achieving special quality is certainly no transitory feature of the 1990s. We expect it to continue for decades to come, and to provide Aga Khan University with opportunities to serve as an influential model in many countries. The academic level of many -perhaps the great majority -of new private institutions may be as poor as has been common in the Philippines, or Indonesia, or Brazil. But the growth of a substantial private sector in higher education may permit the emergence of the healthy educational diversity that has been seen in the United States, Japan, or the Philippines, with competition and emulation acting as steady forces for academic improvement. In such situations an institution of high quality, such as AKU aims to be, can exert a broad influence in whole national systems. One of the serious difficulties faced by private higher education in many developing countries has been the principle of uniform national standards in degrees. This carryover of European practice will have to be eased if the creative variety that a private higher education sector potentially offers can be realised. Fortunately, there are signs of new interest in differentiation and variety which we can now relate.

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